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Discrimination of the Disabled

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Submitted By coy123
Words 1631
Pages 7
Coy Choate
Mr. Pellerin
English 1010
26 November, 2012
Discrimination of Mentally Disabled People
Have you ever caught yourself staring at an individual you believed to be retarded or handicapped? Maybe you snickered under your breath when one of them made a funny noise that caught you off guard. Most people will even make an inappropriate remark about this individual, or look at them as though they’re some kind of monster. In today’s society, discrimination towards disabled people is a very big problem. Statistics show that in 2008 alone, Americans with disabilities were victims of about 47,000 rapes, 79,000 robberies, 114,000 aggravated assaults and 476,000 simple assaults (Invisible Hate Crime). The majority of these crimes are committed against younger people, sometimes as young as 12 years old.
Although it isn’t rare to see an individual with a mental disability, the odds of a child being born disabled are very rare. At age 25, the odds of having a child with Down syndrome are 1 in 1250 (Down Syndrome). As age increases, the odds of having a Down syndrome child become more likely. This disorder occurs when the child has an extra copy of chromosome 21. Generally, everyone has 2 copies of each chromosome, but this extra copy causes the learning process and body/brain development to be slower than the normal rate. There are many health issues that can come with this condition such as congenital heart disease, Alzheimer’s, hearing problems, thyroid dysfunctions, and many others.
This past September, a 16 year old boy and his family purchased tickets for a first class flight which went from New Jersey to California. Upon boarding the plane, airport security refused to allow them to fly first class because they saw the boy as “a possible distraction to pilots”. The airline booked them to the next flight, and the family was seated in the very last row, and no

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