Rant #3,662: It's Not Right

As I have told you many times, there is a rift in the handicapped persons' community that one can only see if they are in it or somehow attached to it.

I am attached to it because of my son, and when I see it, it hits hard.

This rift is multi-level and multi-faceted, and with all of the prejudices unfairly hoisted on this community by the non-handicapped world, it is really almost blasphemous that prejudices also exist within the handicapped world.

Let me begin with a prejudice thst the non-handicapped world places on the handicapped world, perhaps doing it unwittingly, but it still stings.

The first one is between the physically handicapped and mentally handicapped, and this one really is one that the outside world promulgates by its actions, in particular in its hiring practices.

There are two levels of handicapped: those who are physically handicapped, such as thise whose limbs do not work properly, and they are often confined to wheelchairs; and those who are mentally handicapped, such as those whose thought processes might not be up to what society considers to be the norm.

Many companies do hire handicapped workers, because they do get a tax credit when they do so.

But I have noticed that companies lean toward hiring those with physical handicaps rather than thise with mental handicaps, because I do believe that these companies believe they can get more out of those with physical handicaps than mental handicaps.

And when they do get hired for menial jobs, those with mental handicaps get taken advantage of in the workplace; case in point being my son's situation at his job, where his already measely hours were cut by 75 percent, evidently because of the increase in the minimum wage.

These workers are taken advantage of, because they don't have the capacity to speak up.

The entire situation is truly upsetting.