From A Treatise on Artificial Limbs with Rubber Hands and Feet (1899) | George Edwin Marks / Not in Copyright
On July 14, 1984, an 8,000-pound oak tree fell down in the River Oaks suburb of Houston, Texas. The tree stuck a young man out doing one of his favorite pastimes—running—leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. But the young man, who had just received a law degree from Vanderbilt University, was determined and ambitious. He went on to pass the bar and serve on the state supreme court and then as governor of Texas—the first in state history to use a wheelchair.
As recounted in his 2017 autobiography, Governor Greg Abbott’s all-American youth, accident, survival, and successful political career is a tale of numerous obstacles and fulfilling his chosen destiny—in this case, being “a quintessential American [who] embraces the concept of rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, and optimism.” It’s also a narrative of what I call “cripnormativity,” a set of cultural mores that reinforce a hierarchy of socially acceptable and unacceptable disabilities.
How people are disabled impacts the extent to which they are accepted by others. In what is an almost ideal cripnormative scenario, Abbott’s disability is the result of an accident—and not just any accident but “an act of God” fully beyond his control.
Imagine that the tree hit his body in a slightly different location, rendering his arms or face paralyzed instead of his legs. Handwriting or talking, perhaps, would be difficult or impossible for Abbott, making his disabledness far less acceptable in our cripnormative society; if his speech was slowed, his intellectual capacity might be called into question. Or imagine that nothing changed but Abbott was Black and queer. Given the racism and homophobia in Houston and in the United States overall during the 1980s, he probably wouldn’t have received the generous settlement he did, a compensation package that allowed him and his wheelchair to assimilate into the right-wing political elite.
Even assistive technologies serve as cripnormative markers. A motorized wheelchair would indicate less physical strength and greater dependency to the public imagination, making it less acceptable in a cripnormative framework. A heavier person needing a larger wheelchair would be less acceptable, as would a person who requires assistance moving his wheelchair. Abbott’s wheelchair, by contrast, is highly preferrable: It’s a small, manual chair, and he operates it himself. In cripnormative fashion, this shows our ableist public that Abbott is making the maximum effort to achieve “rugged individualism.”
You might expect his experiences to make Governor Abbott inclined to express solidarity with other disabled people. He was 26 at the time of his accident, and he has lived with a visible disability, in a highly visible position, for 40 years. But cripnormativity rewards crips like Abbott for distancing themselves from other disabled people. Abbott has built much of his career centered around making it harder for his fellow minorities, disabled and otherwise, to achieve diverse, equitable, inclusive opportunities.
Of all the stories Abbott’s autobiography could include about being a lawyer in the courtroom, he focuses on one where the plaintiff was suing a hospital. According to Abbott, the plaintiff said he sustained an injury at the hospital necessitating the use of a cane and that finding a job had become impossible. When Abbott questioned the man, he recalls, the plaintiff “ran toward me and started beating my wheelchair with his cane, apparently forgetting that he needed to use it!”
Here Abbott specifically sets himself up as a good, legitimate, cripnormative crip. The other man, struggling to “pull himself up by his bootstraps” and to find employment, is cast as a violent impostor. Abbott doesn’t acknowledge that the man’s mental health may have been affected by his new disability or by the pressure of what for him is a high-stakes setting. And it doesn’t seem to occur to Abbott that the cane-user’s disability might be unpredictable, meaning that he might not need the cane all the time.
Abbott himself had more success with lawyers. After his accident, he launched a series of lawsuits beginning with the homeowner he deemed responsible for his injuries. The settlements have resulted in him getting $10 million so far, an amount that will grow yearly until he dies. Circumstances were also perfectly aligned for aiding his successful case: He was young, athletic, looking at a promising career, as well as affluent, white, cisgender, male, Christian, heterosexual—all privileged identities that elevate his cripnormativity.
Otherwise, Abbott has used his legal training and three decades as an elected official to advocate against policies that support disabled people. His autobiography, Broken but Unbowed: The Fight to Fix a Broken America (Threshold Editions), supplies extensive, one-sided attacks on Medicaid, on the Affordable Care Act, and on the Veterans Administration—all federal programs the crip often rely on—effectively proving that he’s not “one of those disabled people” who wants a more inclusive society for all. He is currently supporting efforts to disband the Department of Education, which plays a key role in helping crip children. And at the start of his career, Abbott campaigned for the tort reforms that made it nearly impossible for the next person struck by a tree to get the kind of financial compensation he still receives.
The Conservative base in Texas has rewarded Abbott for upholding cripnormative standards with three terms in the state’s highest office. His disavowal of other crips makes him so acceptable that mainstream ableist society can overlook his one “flaw,” his wheelchair.
