May 7, 2025 • 44 mins
Anthropologist Dr. Nora Groce from University College London discusses the troubling connection between disability and witchcraft accusations. Dr. Groce shares her research on why people with disabilities are targeted, including her study on the experience of persons with albinism in East Africa. We explore how traditional beliefs create stigma, discuss the global disability rights movement, and examine community-based solutions to protect vulnerable populations. This conversation will inform you on lesser-understood human rights issues related to witchcraft accusations worldwide.
Disability & Inclusion Network Africa
Prof. Nora Groce on World Disability Day
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The Salem witch trials resulted in witchcraft accusations
against more than 150 people andthe executions of 20.
So what went wrong? We explored this and other
facets of the witch hunt in our new podcast The Thing About
Salem, premiering June 1st. The Thing About Salem offers
bite size episodes in both videoand audio formats that you can
(00:23):
enjoy in 15 minutes or less. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
I'm Sarah Jack. Our ancestors experienced the
Salem witch trials. And here's a little taste of
what you can expect from the Thing about Salem.
Possibly Doctor William Griggs decides that the girls.
Oh, they're not. Sick.
(00:44):
In a natural way, they're. Under an evil hand, just like
that one, Sarah. So what does it mean that
they're under an evil hand? The devil has come to Salem.
The devil's in Salem. Each week, the Thing About Salem
(01:05):
brings you information on a thing from the witch trials.
Episodes will stream on YouTube and all podcast platforms.
To get ready, find usoutaboutsalem.com.
Be sure to join us for Episode 1on June 1st.
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast, the show that explores
witchcraft accusations past and present.
(01:27):
I'm your Co host Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm. Sarah Jack Today we're joined by
Doctor Nora Gross, professor at University College London and
anthropologist specializing in global health and International
Development. Doctor Gross's expertise focuses
particularly on people living with disabilities in low and
middle income countries, examining the social, economic
(01:49):
and political contexts that create barriers to their full
participation in society. After hearing Doctor Gross
present at an online workshop for the International Network
Against Witchcraft Accusations and Ritual Attacks and the
Disability Inclusion Africa Network about how witchcraft
beliefs affect people with disabilities, we knew we had to
(02:11):
get her on the show to share herexpertise and insights.
Today we discussed why people with disabilities are sometimes
targeted for witchcraft accusations, the social
constructs that create these vulnerabilities, and how
communities can work toward moreinclusive.
Approaches Dr. Gross shares insights from her research,
including a disturbing study on the targeting of people with
(02:34):
albinism in East Africa, and helps us understand how
traditional beliefs about disability can fuel dangerous
stigma. We'll also learn about the
global disability rights movement and the UN Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which has been
ratified by 191 countries worldwide.
Thank you for coming on Witch Hunt Podcast.
(02:57):
We are so happy to have this discussion with you.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your expertise and
interests. My name is Nora Gross.
I'm a professor at University College London and my area of
expertise is actually the I'm ananthropologist.
I work in global health, International Development with a
(03:17):
strong area of concentration on people living with disabilities,
especially people in low and middle income countries who live
with a disability. And so I look at this social,
economic, political context in which they live and the barriers
they all convinced to being fullmembers of the communities, how
much they live. Why?
(03:38):
Are people with disabilities targets of witchcraft
accusations? Well, it depends on the society.
So not all societies target people with disabilities.
And actually, there's an enormous range of variation in
how people with disabilities aretreated in society, depending on
both the societies, the types ofdisabilities, and, of course,
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the beliefs and how the disabilities occurred.
And also are dependent on what people in the general societies
think about how people with disabilities will be able to
adapt to the communities around them as they become adults.
So it's more complex than peoplewith or without disabilities.
But in a number of communities around the world, we found that
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people with disabilities are often considered different or
other they are. The issue is why the disability
covers what could they or their families have done that they
have aggravated a divine presence or the divine being or
broken the taboo or in some way compromised how people the
(04:45):
society is supposed to work. And in those communities, when
someone is born with the disabilities, they often, not
always, but they often are viewed as different or other and
are more likely to fall into therealm of people accused of
having or feeling in some ways with witchcraft or people who
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can cause a curse or misfortune to occur to others.
So it's, again, it's not universal, but when it's found,
it can be a major issue and a major barrier to allowing people
who are born with the disabilities or become disabled
to be fully integrated into the communities in which they were.
(05:27):
What is? Important for us to understand
about barriers for persons with disabilities when it comes to
integrating into the community in life.
Well, the most important thing to understand probably is that
the barriers are negotiable, that they don't automatically
occur, that people can when you it becomes part of open
(05:50):
discussions and attempts to change.
Societies can change, They can be inclusive.
And so if there's nothing inherently in a person's
disability that causes these barriers to occur, it's really a
social construct. And in the people are viewed as
other or different. If they're viewed as causing
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misfortune, if they're viewed asevidence of incest or God's
disfavor, then they can be very quickly stigmatized and pushed
aside. And the issue is not just a
stigma, but the stigma often negates their ability to get
lots of resources from the community that would kind of
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allow them to be full participants.
So if you're born with a disability, you're often
shunned. Again, not in every community.
But for a young child who would be shunned and not other kids
wouldn't, might not play with that child.
The family may not bring it to afamily gathering.
When the child gets to school age, that child may not be
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allowed in school or may have very negative experience in
school. That will mean that the child
doesn't get an education similarto that of their non disabled
peers but their non disabled, which then it's a negative
feedback loop. If you would.
That child would then be targeted as a teenager.
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If they'd be less likely to get a job, they'd be less likely to
marry. Which is by the way different
than that being having partners and having children.
Because we know people with disabilities do that at the same
rate as all other people in the community.
They're much less. They're more likely to be barred
from attending religious events or socially events.
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So it's not the disability, it'sa cumulative negative feedback
cycle that would make them increasingly look at it as other
and then have the things like accusations of witchcraft thrown
at them because, look, they're so different from us.
So it's, you know, kind of a lose, lose situation if you were
for many people with disabilities.
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So it's not their disabilities. It's a society and the
misinformation that they often have to deal with that makes
their lives so difficult. And I should say alternatively,
when people we know we're in, increasingly we see that when
people with disabilities are given the same rights as others,
they're allowed to have the sameresources and we're needed get a
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little extra support if they needed.
We know that people with disabilities can thrive and be
very much identical to all othermembers of the community.
But importantly, the more that they're denied equal access to
the resources and social inclusion, the more likely they
are to be other and then accusedof things like witchcraft.
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It sounds like all the negative feedback loop as you described
it really perpetuates poverty and isolation.
Are those two problems that people with disability are
facing? That is an excellent question, A
poverty certainly that we know that not all people with
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disabilities are poor, but people with disabilities are
disproportionately poor. And again, it's often not that
they can't earn a living, it's that they're denied the right to
get the skills or be paid equally.
It's not unusual for people withdisabilities to work alongside
non disabled people and get lessmoney.
Less advanced meant less choice,less opportunities.
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And so again, it's an ongoing negative feedback cycle.
And in cases where there is traditional beliefs about people
with disabilities being in some way other, it could be
bewitched, it could be they found disfavor in the eyes of
God. It could be that their parents
were too closely related or thattheir mother is somehow
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influenced when she was carryingthem with some negative event
that the disability is a manifestation of that.
Especially I'd like to say in times before we understood
things like basic medicine, the prenatal care, and all the
explanations we have now about why people, some people are born
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with a disability or some peoplebecome disabled through illness
or diseases as children or adults.
But even today, you often have the belief that the issue is not
that, say, a child is born with a genetic condition, but for
example, that may have been bornwith a disability.
But they'll all we assume that new science when we get old
(10:35):
science or old beliefs, but often they're just cumulative.
I was working Nepal once and I was talking to a woman who had
given birth to a baby who had Down syndrome.
I was sitting there and the kid is about two or three years old
and she was, she's a well educated woman from the local
village. She had gotten a good education.
We're talking about her baby as a really cheaper kid.
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And she said yes, she loved the baby.
But other people were saying things about how this had been
in heritage. And I said, did the doctors
explain to you about genetics? And this was our initial free
birth? It was just genetics.
And she said, yes, she understood about genetics, but
she said, what could I have donein the past life that would give
me these genetics? So the issue was not that she
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got rid of the idea that in the past, like you or your husband
or the baby must have done something wrong for it to be
born with a particular syndrome,but the fact that she was
combining the best ideas of of rebirth and the best ideas of
genetics. And again, we think that science
negates this stuff, but it doesn't always.
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That's a really good example of just what we see, that
accumulation of beliefs and fears and then the new
information comes in. But does it bring us to that
next place of understanding? And one of the questions that I
had hoping to bring this part ofthe conversation out is who
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believes that disabilities are due to witchcraft, knowing that
it can be any of us and it is a.Lot of us who?
I think that things happen due to curse or misfortune or a
judgement and I really appreciate you, you speaking to
that It's. Not just witchcraft, belief that
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something, a series of things have aligned to designate
someone with a particular type of disability.
So it's we talk about witchcraft, but it's not just
witchcraft. It could be a variety of beliefs
that come together. Again, it will depend on the
cultural tradition which you're working in.
So if there's no formula, or at least we haven't mapped 1 out
yet, we can, It will really depend on a bunch of different
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things. I did a study about 10 years ago
with a colleague named Julian McGowan that we were looking at
people who had albinism called albinos in East Africa.
And there was a spate of killings of people who were
albinos and they were being killed and pieces of their skin
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being taken or body parts being taken.
And there was a tremendous uproar.
It was in the 10810 years ago. Many of the local governments
were very, they moved in right away.
Tanzania in particular was very forceful in dealing with this
and trying to put down the belief system.
But the belief was a century. If you took a body part from
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someone who had albinism, it would give you, you good luck.
And so people that albinism, their lives were at risk and a
number of them were killed. And we started, we looked at it,
we heard lots of reports of this.
And of course, someone who has albinism is someone who's been
with a disability. And so we approached it from who
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are the people who are doing this?
Because if you look in the news,it was all of the news.
And this was terrible. And of course it was terrible.
But more than that, what we found was that I thought it's a
rural phenomenon coming on with more education, It'll go away.
It's accusations, witchcraft. It's just for some reason
there's a local flare up, but the government will take care of
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it. We found, however, that the
people who are paying all this money, when I see all this
money, their body parts for people with albinism were in the
range of, I hate to terribly talk about it, but someone was
Albina would finish their body could pinch 60 or $70,000 US.
This is not a small amount of money, nor was it a rural
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phenomenon. There was a little bit going on
in rural areas, but it was mainly in some of the big
humming African cities where there was tremendous kind of
attention to rising up, making your way in the urban area.
And so a lot of younger, really highly, very ambitious
businessmen were paying for people to go and kill the people
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who were out buying those so that they could prosper.
So it's like a middle class, upper middle class phenomena.
Washington, working class, ambitious.
You open a small store, you wanted to make a big chain if
you thought that a few magic amulets would help and and they
were targeting people with albinism specifically the cause
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of this. And it was also mixed in with
with a couple of other beliefs of the Pentecostal church
believes about the people who are disabled being evil because
they weren't being cured, they couldn't drive the evil spirits
out of them. Evil spirits have very little to
do if you have a spinal cord injury or something.
But so these were the same groupof ambitious, often younger
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people, people in the 30s or 40strying to get ahead in a teeming
urban environment. And they were the ones who had
these beliefs about magic and basically witchcraft.
I would have thought it was a rural belief system, but I would
have thought it would be among people who are less educated.
In fact, it was among more educated and it was very much an
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urban phenomenon. Which is why data collection
like that is so significant whenyou're studying society, because
what it reveals is not necessarily.
Yeah, assumptions, yeah. Yeah, it's really important that
we can't just assume that we know about something like
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witchcraft believes, because what you need to do is these
issues are affecting people in this day and age, and they're
often affecting people who are already in high at risk
populations. And for them to combat these
beliefs to protect themselves. Throughout East Africa, where
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albinism is more common because it's an inherited trait, the
genetically inherited trade, people with albinism themselves
have formed themselves into support groups and organizations
and they've been on the front lines advocating for their own
safety, own well-being. People who are disabled are not
just victims of witchcraft in communities and societies where
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they are at risk. People with disabilities are at
the forefront of being their ownadvocates and their own best
advocates on how they want to betreated and the fact that they
have the same rights as all other members of their society.
There. There's a common term for
everyone with a disability, and that common term is citizen.
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So they are all citizens of the countries in which they live in.
Very important not to make people with disabilities look
like there's some other group. These are people who are all a
part of the communities in whichthey live.
They often share the same beliefs, including sometimes
they'll say I'm not a witch, butit's witchcraft in the
community. So that just because you're
disabled doesn't mean that you necessarily don't adhere to some
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of the other beliefs that everybody in your family, you,
all your neighbors believe as well.
It's not an easily US versus them thing.
It's more a question of thinkingthrough how we redefine
disability in a way where it's avery common human phenomenon.
We think of 16% of the world's population loose with a
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disability, so roughly one in every seven people, every
household or every extended family will have disabled
members. So this is not your need.
But how societies deal with disabilities will vary
considerably. That's what you need to think
about when you're talking about things like accusations with
witchcraft and our accusations of people breaking taboos or
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accusations about people being against God or ungodly or
causing harm or I'll health to others.
Which is of course, it ties verymuch into a lot of the what over
the years what people are accused of being witches are
accused of being. It's been very common, I think
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throughout all of human history where there's beliefs in
witchcraft that people who are disabled or at increased risk
for being accused of either being witches or having some
alliance with evil or being envious of others and causing
others harm. And again, it's not universal,
but it's common and not. So we need to be aware of it and
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if we're working on issues dealing with modern day
witchcraft to be to realize thatpeople who are disabled or at
increased risk of such accusations.
I know we often say, oh, it's women or it's older women and
stuff, but people who are disabled and God forbid you
should be an older disabled woman, you know, you are at
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increased risk for all these things.
I know regarding persons with albinism, there was a judgment
issued in February by the African court that ruled that
Tanzania needs to do more to protect them.
Have you read about that? Is there other legislation?
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I was not. I haven't worked in Tanzania in
the past couple of years. So I don't know.
The answer is that yes, I think all countries need to do more to
protect people with albinism. I think that they're at risk.
And also I think that for a lot of these long held traditional
beliefs, nothing stays fixed. So just because you have a court
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ruling, you have a meaningful documentary, you get the
president of the country to adopt A child with albinism into
his family. All of these are great.
But I think constant vigilance is important because it's very
easy to slide back to beliefs that we think, oh, we've taken
care of that Eugenics is a good example.
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We think that with all the idioces on eugenics, we would
now look at lots of issues that are being brought up today,
especially among the some politicians and say, wait, I
thought we solved that. And instead you're hearing kind
of Neil Eugenics being bandied around because stupid ideas
don't go away, they just recycle.
(21:12):
Yeah, we're seeing a lot of, like, societal and political
neglect of people with disabilities.
Also, efforts to cut funding forprojects that assist people with
disabilities. Regrettably, this is the
ultimate example of Pennywise # foolish, because a lot of these
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programs, it's not just the nicething to do, it's enlightened
self-interest. The more you make people who are
disabled self-sufficient, supported members of the
community, the richer the whole community is, the more we get
out of everybody in the community and the more they can
contribute. So this isn't a nice thing to do
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because we feel we want to be gracious or got a charity.
First of all, it's a fundamentalhuman right and second of all,
it's the more productive. If you want to look at people as
productive, I find it a very unhelpful way to look at things.
But with the more you can get people to be self-sufficient,
the more they can both take the burden off of others so that
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they can decide what they do anddon't want to do and have the
ability to make decisions on their own.
And the more they can help others.
We talk about people with disabilities often as what
should we do for people with disabilities?
There's some sort of oh, we'll do something nice or feel good.
This not a bit of it. That's the most short sighted
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thing we can think of. A person who's disabled is say
take a 40 year old woman with a disability.
She well might have two or threechildren and be in a
relationship or be married. She may be responsible for
supporting her household or doing work around her household.
She's responsible often for worrying about her elderly
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parents. She's a vibrant member of her
local church or temple or mosque.
She This is not the idea that people with disabilities somehow
are the end line of what we should do for others.
It doesn't hold water for most people with disabilities.
Most people with disabilities are engaged in any number of
complex networks throughout their society, and they have as
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many responsibilities as many other people that it's not just
that they're there for to do something charitable for them.
So there's something called the charity model.
We'll do something good for people with disabilities and
feel good about ourselves. It's long since been replaced by
a social or human rights model. I won't go into all the
different models because it's more complex than you need to
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hear. But we we hopefully now realize
that I say we but it depends because not everybody is still
best that people with disabilities are people who are
members of the community. They have the same rights as all
others and they are all part of the.
And again, as I was saying at the beginning of the interview,
much of what they face in terms of barriers are very much
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socially mandated or put in place by the surrounding
societies. And one thing we know is that
societies can change from the perspective of thinking about in
terms of witchcraft. If the a witchcraft accusation
came up and, you know, for a person with a disability, those
networks could be quickly dissolved.
People would be able to say it'snot us.
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We're not that closely related to her.
We don't know what she did in a previous life to have been born
with a disability or become disabled.
But once those accusations occur, I think it's easier for
people to distance themselves and say, we're not disabled.
So we're in a different league than the person with a
disability. So it's very important.
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The issue is not to draw the line and for people with
disabilities is between a witchcraft or non witchcraft,
but to go much, much, much earlier to not even get to the
point where there's this issue of who's disabled, who's not
disabled. But it's a question of a more
comprehensive approach to accusations of witchcraft.
(25:06):
If you say there are a number ofattributes and people in certain
societies that people look for to make these accusations and if
you can anticipate them and dealwith how society frames the
other, which is a you're different than us.
The minute that starts happening, if you're going to
wait to saying if people with disabilities or older women or
(25:29):
stuff, you're, you're missing the boat.
So the issue is, I think for a lot of the stigma, prejudice,
distancing, what society does tomaybe think of things to
anticipate where you start to get forks in the road between
them and us, and to deal with things early there rather than
later. Rather than to say all people
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with disabilities sometimes get accused of being witches or
having or practicing witchcraft or being envious and disabled to
curse their people or to make other people like them long
before that. There needs to be a systematic
approach in societies to saying we're all the same, this is just
normal human difference. And the issue is to focus on how
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alike we are and not how different we are.
And also to focus on making sure, as I said earlier, that
people who are disabled have theresources to allow them to be as
much a part of their surroundingcommunity as they would like and
choose to be. That means things like
education, job training, equal pay, the ability to participate
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in society, the ability to go out into society and be treated
with the respect they deserve. Often if we are attacking where
key issues to ensure the rights and the value of people with
disabilities, we are not waitingto issue of witchcraft come up
or accusations witchcraft come up.
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We've already discussed in society's ways to counter that,
and that can be done in any number of different levels,
schools certainly, but also NASApublic relations campaigns and
cut public information campaignsabout disability.
Long before you talk about witchcraft, you need to talk
about how everyone's equal, how everyone's deserves the same
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respect, how everybody has the same rights.
And there's been lots of attention to this within I'd say
the disability community, but inthe broader mobile community.
And the issue is disability rights.
And again, people who are disabled in countries around the
world have come together to forma major global disability rights
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movement, which is often overlooked by people.
The general public are not awareof the disability rights
movement, but it's been instrumental in putting in place
a number of key pieces of legislation.
The most significant is the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities, but it's now been ratified by 191
(28:07):
countries. I believe that doesn't mean on a
day-to-day basis people with disabilities are always treated
equally, but it does mean that in 191 countries the rights of
people with disabilities are nowguaranteed, the equal rights of
people with disabilities. the United States is not one of the
countries that had ratified this.
And I fear that especially in this day and age now we will be
(28:29):
it's right. The United States is the only
country in the world that has not ratified the UN Convention
of the Rights of the Child. Exactly that.
Thank you for bringing that up. It used to be honest and I think
South Sudan, but they didn't have working government.
And so when the government came together and one of the first
thing they did was ratify it. So it leaves the United States
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in a exceptionally embarrassing situation.
Same thing with you and the rights of prisons with
disabilities. And that was legislation that
was put together. And when this country ratifies
it, that means that this was rights have to be guaranteed by
the government of that country. It's not just a nice thing to do
on paper, their legislation, their policy, their funding have
(29:14):
to be put in place. Now, whether it's actually put
in place in an act that there's great variation on that
unfortunately, but the disability rights movement has
been going since really the early 1970's, the 1970s and
countries around the world. Just a good film to to start an
introduction for the US is a film called Crip Camp, which I
(29:36):
don't know if you've seen it's on Netflix.
CRIP Camp. It was produced by the Obamas.
It was nominated for best documentary film for an Academy
Award. It didn't win, but it was in the
final three or four. However, when does that and it
shows how people with disabilities come together and
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in this case push through major legislation in the United
States. The Americans with Disabilities
at the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is
the result of global efforts to reframe people with disabilities
as full and equal members of society.
It's a really important piece oflegislation and it has relevance
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to people who are worried about things like accusations of
witchcraft because it absolutelyis legislation that's been
ratified and adopted in many of the countries where we are most
concerned about the issues of witchcraft.
So it's not again, on the ground.
It's nice to have a piece of legislation.
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It doesn't make a difference to the safety and well-being of
people who are living in communities in these countries.
Then it it's nice to say, oh, they have the rights, but if
they don't have their safety or protection of that law, then
it's a real lost opportunity. But that doesn't mean the law
doesn't exist and that people ingovernment don't know about it
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and can't be held responsible for these sorts of things.
It's so it people with disabilities, we often talk
about it as though it's a charitable gesture called the
charity Actually, Oh, let's justrecognize for folks with
disabilities, again, it's not a question of doing something nice
for people with disabilities. It's their right to have the
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full protection to the law, equal protection.
Other group can't be prioritizedover them.
We need to really rethink how we're dealing with a lot of
things that on the daily basis people with disabilities have to
put up with. But it's not even if it's
tradition, there's lots of traditions, but they're not good
(31:44):
for women or they're not good for members of ethnic or
minority communities. Recent American politics aside,
that doesn't make it right. And in the same way, to play
with people who are disabled have been treated historically
in many, not all, but in many communities or something that we
really need to rethink. There will always be people left
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behind. And some societies are more
brutal than others or some that are much more equitable or
distribute resources on a fairerbasis.
So societies are whatever peoplemake them.
So you can have a tremendously oppressive society as well.
You have a society where women have no rights.
You have a society whether people from traditional
(32:29):
communities have no voice in ournational government.
There's all sorts of abuses of power and we're really, we're
talking about our here who makesdecisions for other people and
who has the right to have a voice in their lives and the
lives of their families and the lives of their communities.
In reality, we need to be constantly vigilant.
(32:50):
And again, nothing stays fixed. You need to continually, not to
say we need to improve the rights of people with
disabilities and things like accusations of witchcraft, for
example, have thou been negated?You need constant monitoring,
surveillance, monitoring, evaluation, and monitoring to
make sure that things stay fixed.
(33:11):
One thing that's been on my mindbecause you had mentioned the
public perceptions and how that's communicated through
media. How do you things like Nollywood
films impact the public perception of people with
disabilities? That's an excellent question.
Nollywood is an example of that.There were a whole bunch of kind
(33:34):
of horror films in the 1990s, two thousands where people who
are disabled were equated with witchcraft and with evil and the
threats to their neighbors, threats to the community.
And of course it's been a very discouraging because they've
taken a lot of these themes and they because Hollywood is so
(33:56):
broadly distributed throughout the sub-Saharan Africa and
beyond, it just reinforces old beliefs.
I should say that there's a whole field of disability
studies and there are people who've done nothing but gone
through and chronicled out people with disabilities are
treated in Western literature and Western films.
So it's not just Nollywood or Bollywood.
(34:16):
There's a whole bunch of films in all these genres where people
who are disabled are considered menacing or evil or a a threat
to the community. So it's playing on the worst of
old belief systems and it forcesit and it reinforces it, by the
way, often to a new generation. So a lot of these films are
(34:39):
targeted at young adults. A lot of them are targeted to
young urban adults. The same that we were talking
before, that has a belief in if you can get a piece of skin from
someone who has albinism, he canprosper.
By the way, I should say we needto be very careful also not to
tar everybody with the same brush.
(34:59):
So just because there's a beliefin a community doesn't mean
every member remember that community believes that for
every non disabled person holds the same beliefs about
witchcraft and disability. So it really depends on the
individual's their background, what they want to believe, what
the panelists are brought up with, the religious groups they
(35:20):
go to the again, the Pentecostalchurch in some parts of
sub-Saharan Africa have been notparticularly helpful with people
with disabilities and spreading beliefs of how people being
taken over by the devil or as that just really, really
upsetting and non productive ways of viewing fellow citizens.
(35:40):
But again, it really depends on the individual themselves.
And you can get two people, you can get siblings in the same
household and someone will go, Oh yeah, that's true.
And someone else will go, Oh no,that's ridiculous.
How could you believe it in thisday and age?
And the issue is to reach and change the opinions of people
(36:00):
who have these kind of views. It's not to take a whole
community and say they believe. If you did a survey in Mesa, AZ,
Colorado Springs or Hartford, CT, you could find the
differences in households, you'dfind differences between houses,
you'd find differences in beliefsystems of people who are non
disabled and disabled about a lot of these things.
(36:23):
So again, we need really carefulnot to say they all people
believe this, but for those who have a negative opinion towards
people with disabilities, it canbe for, you know, those
interactions with the decisions they make towards people with
disabilities, whether it's letting them on a bus or hiring
them for a job or allowing them into a training program, you
(36:46):
know, or high school training program for something.
If you go on negative beliefs, you can have a really
detrimental impact on people whoare just trying to get through
life like all of us are. By the way, I should say I'm
talking about people with disabilities, but I myself am
not disabled. And so it's very important that
(37:08):
instead of just having the people like me to happen to wind
up working on disabilities studies issues over the years
that you reach and listen to people who are disabled
themselves. So as a basically a university
researcher, I'm there to provideammunition for people with
disabilities to counter many beliefs and stuff.
(37:30):
When I was very young, you'd have discussions about Women's
Health that astonishingly, had, you know, you have a panel of
like 10 people and none of them would be women.
This is what women need. Have a bunch of gynecologists,
but in the same way or with any group.
But the issue is not just what Ihave to say, but with, but what
(37:53):
people with disabilities themselves want you to know
about their lives, their opinions, and and the issue is
not that they can't speak for themselves, but they often pull
up and aren't listened to. So I'm happy to talk about this,
but I will happily yield the floor to the folks who are
themselves disabled, because I've rarely met a person with a
(38:15):
disability who doesn't have plenty to say for themselves.
Yeah, I'll say I. I live with disabilities, and
you're doing an excellent job speaking to concerns I have with
American cinema and television. I pay attention to
representation and whether it's positive or, you know, people
(38:37):
with disabilities get cast in prominent roles or whether
they're secondary. And there's just so much
ridicule still of people with disabilities in what we see.
There are a number of people have done excellent work on mass
media and disability, so I won'tspeak for that whole field, but
(38:58):
it used to be certainly until maybe about 20-30 years ago, if
you ever saw a person with a disability in a film, it was
generally either they were evil character that Captain Hook
missing on the arm, or they wereevil menacing character.
Or if they'd be these terrible films where someone would be
either cured of their disabilityin the end or conveniently die.
(39:21):
They suddenly learn to walk or they again conveniently died.
It was only I I remember I I don't know what the year the
film came out one, but one film that sticks out in my mind is
just I by that by the time it came out, I'd been working on
disability for a while and it was the first film I can
remember. I'm again, I'm not a film person
(39:41):
so I could have missed something, but the film for
Weddings and a Funeral was the first time I'd already been
doing some of my doctoral work on deaf is when it came out.
And the reason I was just so struck by 4 Weddings and the
Funeral of all films was there was the side character that you
Grant's brother was deaf. But it wasn't that he nobody was
(40:03):
trying to solve his problem. It wasn't the main issue in the
film. He was.
It was just a side character andit was the first time I can
remember where. Disability wasn't the key issue,
it was just part of life and since then it's become much more
normal to have people with disabilities and crowd scenes as
(40:24):
well as and lead roles. But that was late in the game
when it came to how you view disability.
So things are changing slowly. But again it will depend on the
film genre and how sensitive thefilm makers are.
But too often you still have someone who's kind of a menacing
(40:45):
figure or happens to be disabled.
Now, having said that, true equality means that people who
are disabled can be as evil as anyone else, or as silly or as
Black Desmond as anyone else. They are just the same as
everyone else. But too often we either vilify
them or we put them in some sortof saintly role.
(41:06):
Again, there's 17% of the world's population.
That's 1.3 billion people. And interestingly, people with
disabilities has been part of human history as long as we've
had human history and in the rebate, human history.
So we get a number of skeletal remains for pretty humans, and
(41:27):
you'll routinely, regularly get some.
An individual who's lived with aDIS, not only has a disability,
a broken arm or a head injury would clearly survive that and
live with those injuries. So it's always been part of
human history. And by the way, those kind of
skeletal remains show us only the things that are usually
(41:49):
trauma or some sort of deformation of the bone
structure. Says nothing about mental health
issues or problems with a visionof hearing that might not show
up in skeletal remains. We've got to assume that
disabilities always been part ofhuman society.
In fact, the person meant you written mention of disabilities
(42:09):
that I know of come from cuneiform tablets.
I think. I think it's Sumerian, but don't
quote me that you have to start having human writing.
You have mention of people who are disabled and this long
predates by the time you get to the Old Testament becomes very
regularly mentioned. So it's always been part of
human history. Thank you for joining us for
(42:31):
this episode of Witch Hunt. Help us spread the word.
Subscribe to our YouTube. Channel and share this.
Episode or some clips to your social media.
Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
The Salem witch trials resulted in witchcraft accusations
against more than 150 people andthe executions of 20.
(42:52):
So what went wrong? We explore this and other facets
of the witch hunt in our new podcast The Thing About Salem,
premiering June 1st. The Thing About Salem offers
Bite Sides episodes in both video and audio formats that you
can enjoy in 15 minutes or less.I'm Josh Hutchinson.
(43:13):
I'm Sarah Jack. Our ancestors experienced the
Salem witch trials. And here's a little taste of
what you can expect from the Thing About Salem.
Possibly Doctor William Griggs decides that the girls.
Oh, they're not sick in a natural way.
They're under an evil hand, justlike that one, Sarah.
(43:38):
So what does it mean that they're under an evil hand?
The devil has come to Salem. The devil's in Salem.
Each week, the Thing About Salembrings you information on a
thing from the witch trials. Episodes will stream on YouTube
and all podcast. Platforms to get ready.
(44:00):
Find usoutaboutsalem.com. Be sure to.
Join us for Episode 1. On June 1st.
The Salem witch trials resulted in witchcraft accusations
against more than 150 people andthe executions of 20.
So what went wrong? We explored this and other
facets of the witch hunt in our new podcast The Thing About
Salem, premiering June 1st. The Thing About Salem offers
bite size episodes in both videoand audio formats that you can
(00:23):
enjoy in 15 minutes or less. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
I'm Sarah Jack. Our ancestors experienced the
Salem witch trials. And here's a little taste of
what you can expect from the Thing about Salem.
Possibly Doctor William Griggs decides that the girls.
Oh, they're not. Sick.
(00:44):
In a natural way, they're. Under an evil hand, just like
that one, Sarah. So what does it mean that
they're under an evil hand? The devil has come to Salem.
The devil's in Salem. Each week, the Thing About Salem
(01:05):
brings you information on a thing from the witch trials.
Episodes will stream on YouTube and all podcast platforms.
To get ready, find usoutaboutsalem.com.
Be sure to join us for Episode 1on June 1st.
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast, the show that explores
witchcraft accusations past and present.
(01:27):
I'm your Co host Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm. Sarah Jack Today we're joined by
Doctor Nora Gross, professor at University College London and
anthropologist specializing in global health and International
Development. Doctor Gross's expertise focuses
particularly on people living with disabilities in low and
middle income countries, examining the social, economic
(01:49):
and political contexts that create barriers to their full
participation in society. After hearing Doctor Gross
present at an online workshop for the International Network
Against Witchcraft Accusations and Ritual Attacks and the
Disability Inclusion Africa Network about how witchcraft
beliefs affect people with disabilities, we knew we had to
(02:11):
get her on the show to share herexpertise and insights.
Today we discussed why people with disabilities are sometimes
targeted for witchcraft accusations, the social
constructs that create these vulnerabilities, and how
communities can work toward moreinclusive.
Approaches Dr. Gross shares insights from her research,
including a disturbing study on the targeting of people with
(02:34):
albinism in East Africa, and helps us understand how
traditional beliefs about disability can fuel dangerous
stigma. We'll also learn about the
global disability rights movement and the UN Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which has been
ratified by 191 countries worldwide.
Thank you for coming on Witch Hunt Podcast.
(02:57):
We are so happy to have this discussion with you.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your expertise and
interests. My name is Nora Gross.
I'm a professor at University College London and my area of
expertise is actually the I'm ananthropologist.
I work in global health, International Development with a
(03:17):
strong area of concentration on people living with disabilities,
especially people in low and middle income countries who live
with a disability. And so I look at this social,
economic, political context in which they live and the barriers
they all convinced to being fullmembers of the communities, how
much they live. Why?
(03:38):
Are people with disabilities targets of witchcraft
accusations? Well, it depends on the society.
So not all societies target people with disabilities.
And actually, there's an enormous range of variation in
how people with disabilities aretreated in society, depending on
both the societies, the types ofdisabilities, and, of course,
(04:01):
the beliefs and how the disabilities occurred.
And also are dependent on what people in the general societies
think about how people with disabilities will be able to
adapt to the communities around them as they become adults.
So it's more complex than peoplewith or without disabilities.
But in a number of communities around the world, we found that
(04:24):
people with disabilities are often considered different or
other they are. The issue is why the disability
covers what could they or their families have done that they
have aggravated a divine presence or the divine being or
broken the taboo or in some way compromised how people the
(04:45):
society is supposed to work. And in those communities, when
someone is born with the disabilities, they often, not
always, but they often are viewed as different or other and
are more likely to fall into therealm of people accused of
having or feeling in some ways with witchcraft or people who
(05:05):
can cause a curse or misfortune to occur to others.
So it's, again, it's not universal, but when it's found,
it can be a major issue and a major barrier to allowing people
who are born with the disabilities or become disabled
to be fully integrated into the communities in which they were.
(05:27):
What is? Important for us to understand
about barriers for persons with disabilities when it comes to
integrating into the community in life.
Well, the most important thing to understand probably is that
the barriers are negotiable, that they don't automatically
occur, that people can when you it becomes part of open
(05:50):
discussions and attempts to change.
Societies can change, They can be inclusive.
And so if there's nothing inherently in a person's
disability that causes these barriers to occur, it's really a
social construct. And in the people are viewed as
other or different. If they're viewed as causing
(06:12):
misfortune, if they're viewed asevidence of incest or God's
disfavor, then they can be very quickly stigmatized and pushed
aside. And the issue is not just a
stigma, but the stigma often negates their ability to get
lots of resources from the community that would kind of
(06:33):
allow them to be full participants.
So if you're born with a disability, you're often
shunned. Again, not in every community.
But for a young child who would be shunned and not other kids
wouldn't, might not play with that child.
The family may not bring it to afamily gathering.
When the child gets to school age, that child may not be
(06:54):
allowed in school or may have very negative experience in
school. That will mean that the child
doesn't get an education similarto that of their non disabled
peers but their non disabled, which then it's a negative
feedback loop. If you would.
That child would then be targeted as a teenager.
(07:15):
If they'd be less likely to get a job, they'd be less likely to
marry. Which is by the way different
than that being having partners and having children.
Because we know people with disabilities do that at the same
rate as all other people in the community.
They're much less. They're more likely to be barred
from attending religious events or socially events.
(07:36):
So it's not the disability, it'sa cumulative negative feedback
cycle that would make them increasingly look at it as other
and then have the things like accusations of witchcraft thrown
at them because, look, they're so different from us.
So it's, you know, kind of a lose, lose situation if you were
for many people with disabilities.
(07:57):
So it's not their disabilities. It's a society and the
misinformation that they often have to deal with that makes
their lives so difficult. And I should say alternatively,
when people we know we're in, increasingly we see that when
people with disabilities are given the same rights as others,
they're allowed to have the sameresources and we're needed get a
(08:20):
little extra support if they needed.
We know that people with disabilities can thrive and be
very much identical to all othermembers of the community.
But importantly, the more that they're denied equal access to
the resources and social inclusion, the more likely they
are to be other and then accusedof things like witchcraft.
(08:42):
It sounds like all the negative feedback loop as you described
it really perpetuates poverty and isolation.
Are those two problems that people with disability are
facing? That is an excellent question, A
poverty certainly that we know that not all people with
(09:03):
disabilities are poor, but people with disabilities are
disproportionately poor. And again, it's often not that
they can't earn a living, it's that they're denied the right to
get the skills or be paid equally.
It's not unusual for people withdisabilities to work alongside
non disabled people and get lessmoney.
Less advanced meant less choice,less opportunities.
(09:25):
And so again, it's an ongoing negative feedback cycle.
And in cases where there is traditional beliefs about people
with disabilities being in some way other, it could be
bewitched, it could be they found disfavor in the eyes of
God. It could be that their parents
were too closely related or thattheir mother is somehow
(09:48):
influenced when she was carryingthem with some negative event
that the disability is a manifestation of that.
Especially I'd like to say in times before we understood
things like basic medicine, the prenatal care, and all the
explanations we have now about why people, some people are born
(10:11):
with a disability or some peoplebecome disabled through illness
or diseases as children or adults.
But even today, you often have the belief that the issue is not
that, say, a child is born with a genetic condition, but for
example, that may have been bornwith a disability.
But they'll all we assume that new science when we get old
(10:35):
science or old beliefs, but often they're just cumulative.
I was working Nepal once and I was talking to a woman who had
given birth to a baby who had Down syndrome.
I was sitting there and the kid is about two or three years old
and she was, she's a well educated woman from the local
village. She had gotten a good education.
We're talking about her baby as a really cheaper kid.
(10:58):
And she said yes, she loved the baby.
But other people were saying things about how this had been
in heritage. And I said, did the doctors
explain to you about genetics? And this was our initial free
birth? It was just genetics.
And she said, yes, she understood about genetics, but
she said, what could I have donein the past life that would give
me these genetics? So the issue was not that she
(11:20):
got rid of the idea that in the past, like you or your husband
or the baby must have done something wrong for it to be
born with a particular syndrome,but the fact that she was
combining the best ideas of of rebirth and the best ideas of
genetics. And again, we think that science
negates this stuff, but it doesn't always.
(11:42):
That's a really good example of just what we see, that
accumulation of beliefs and fears and then the new
information comes in. But does it bring us to that
next place of understanding? And one of the questions that I
had hoping to bring this part ofthe conversation out is who
(12:04):
believes that disabilities are due to witchcraft, knowing that
it can be any of us and it is a.Lot of us who?
I think that things happen due to curse or misfortune or a
judgement and I really appreciate you, you speaking to
that It's. Not just witchcraft, belief that
(12:27):
something, a series of things have aligned to designate
someone with a particular type of disability.
So it's we talk about witchcraft, but it's not just
witchcraft. It could be a variety of beliefs
that come together. Again, it will depend on the
cultural tradition which you're working in.
So if there's no formula, or at least we haven't mapped 1 out
yet, we can, It will really depend on a bunch of different
(12:50):
things. I did a study about 10 years ago
with a colleague named Julian McGowan that we were looking at
people who had albinism called albinos in East Africa.
And there was a spate of killings of people who were
albinos and they were being killed and pieces of their skin
(13:12):
being taken or body parts being taken.
And there was a tremendous uproar.
It was in the 10810 years ago. Many of the local governments
were very, they moved in right away.
Tanzania in particular was very forceful in dealing with this
and trying to put down the belief system.
But the belief was a century. If you took a body part from
(13:34):
someone who had albinism, it would give you, you good luck.
And so people that albinism, their lives were at risk and a
number of them were killed. And we started, we looked at it,
we heard lots of reports of this.
And of course, someone who has albinism is someone who's been
with a disability. And so we approached it from who
(13:54):
are the people who are doing this?
Because if you look in the news,it was all of the news.
And this was terrible. And of course it was terrible.
But more than that, what we found was that I thought it's a
rural phenomenon coming on with more education, It'll go away.
It's accusations, witchcraft. It's just for some reason
there's a local flare up, but the government will take care of
(14:16):
it. We found, however, that the
people who are paying all this money, when I see all this
money, their body parts for people with albinism were in the
range of, I hate to terribly talk about it, but someone was
Albina would finish their body could pinch 60 or $70,000 US.
This is not a small amount of money, nor was it a rural
(14:38):
phenomenon. There was a little bit going on
in rural areas, but it was mainly in some of the big
humming African cities where there was tremendous kind of
attention to rising up, making your way in the urban area.
And so a lot of younger, really highly, very ambitious
businessmen were paying for people to go and kill the people
(15:03):
who were out buying those so that they could prosper.
So it's like a middle class, upper middle class phenomena.
Washington, working class, ambitious.
You open a small store, you wanted to make a big chain if
you thought that a few magic amulets would help and and they
were targeting people with albinism specifically the cause
(15:24):
of this. And it was also mixed in with
with a couple of other beliefs of the Pentecostal church
believes about the people who are disabled being evil because
they weren't being cured, they couldn't drive the evil spirits
out of them. Evil spirits have very little to
do if you have a spinal cord injury or something.
But so these were the same groupof ambitious, often younger
(15:48):
people, people in the 30s or 40strying to get ahead in a teeming
urban environment. And they were the ones who had
these beliefs about magic and basically witchcraft.
I would have thought it was a rural belief system, but I would
have thought it would be among people who are less educated.
In fact, it was among more educated and it was very much an
(16:10):
urban phenomenon. Which is why data collection
like that is so significant whenyou're studying society, because
what it reveals is not necessarily.
Yeah, assumptions, yeah. Yeah, it's really important that
we can't just assume that we know about something like
(16:31):
witchcraft believes, because what you need to do is these
issues are affecting people in this day and age, and they're
often affecting people who are already in high at risk
populations. And for them to combat these
beliefs to protect themselves. Throughout East Africa, where
(16:51):
albinism is more common because it's an inherited trait, the
genetically inherited trade, people with albinism themselves
have formed themselves into support groups and organizations
and they've been on the front lines advocating for their own
safety, own well-being. People who are disabled are not
just victims of witchcraft in communities and societies where
(17:16):
they are at risk. People with disabilities are at
the forefront of being their ownadvocates and their own best
advocates on how they want to betreated and the fact that they
have the same rights as all other members of their society.
There. There's a common term for
everyone with a disability, and that common term is citizen.
(17:37):
So they are all citizens of the countries in which they live in.
Very important not to make people with disabilities look
like there's some other group. These are people who are all a
part of the communities in whichthey live.
They often share the same beliefs, including sometimes
they'll say I'm not a witch, butit's witchcraft in the
community. So that just because you're
disabled doesn't mean that you necessarily don't adhere to some
(18:01):
of the other beliefs that everybody in your family, you,
all your neighbors believe as well.
It's not an easily US versus them thing.
It's more a question of thinkingthrough how we redefine
disability in a way where it's avery common human phenomenon.
We think of 16% of the world's population loose with a
(18:21):
disability, so roughly one in every seven people, every
household or every extended family will have disabled
members. So this is not your need.
But how societies deal with disabilities will vary
considerably. That's what you need to think
about when you're talking about things like accusations with
witchcraft and our accusations of people breaking taboos or
(18:44):
accusations about people being against God or ungodly or
causing harm or I'll health to others.
Which is of course, it ties verymuch into a lot of the what over
the years what people are accused of being witches are
accused of being. It's been very common, I think
(19:04):
throughout all of human history where there's beliefs in
witchcraft that people who are disabled or at increased risk
for being accused of either being witches or having some
alliance with evil or being envious of others and causing
others harm. And again, it's not universal,
but it's common and not. So we need to be aware of it and
(19:25):
if we're working on issues dealing with modern day
witchcraft to be to realize thatpeople who are disabled or at
increased risk of such accusations.
I know we often say, oh, it's women or it's older women and
stuff, but people who are disabled and God forbid you
should be an older disabled woman, you know, you are at
(19:45):
increased risk for all these things.
I know regarding persons with albinism, there was a judgment
issued in February by the African court that ruled that
Tanzania needs to do more to protect them.
Have you read about that? Is there other legislation?
(20:06):
I was not. I haven't worked in Tanzania in
the past couple of years. So I don't know.
The answer is that yes, I think all countries need to do more to
protect people with albinism. I think that they're at risk.
And also I think that for a lot of these long held traditional
beliefs, nothing stays fixed. So just because you have a court
(20:27):
ruling, you have a meaningful documentary, you get the
president of the country to adopt A child with albinism into
his family. All of these are great.
But I think constant vigilance is important because it's very
easy to slide back to beliefs that we think, oh, we've taken
care of that Eugenics is a good example.
(20:50):
We think that with all the idioces on eugenics, we would
now look at lots of issues that are being brought up today,
especially among the some politicians and say, wait, I
thought we solved that. And instead you're hearing kind
of Neil Eugenics being bandied around because stupid ideas
don't go away, they just recycle.
(21:12):
Yeah, we're seeing a lot of, like, societal and political
neglect of people with disabilities.
Also, efforts to cut funding forprojects that assist people with
disabilities. Regrettably, this is the
ultimate example of Pennywise # foolish, because a lot of these
(21:33):
programs, it's not just the nicething to do, it's enlightened
self-interest. The more you make people who are
disabled self-sufficient, supported members of the
community, the richer the whole community is, the more we get
out of everybody in the community and the more they can
contribute. So this isn't a nice thing to do
(21:53):
because we feel we want to be gracious or got a charity.
First of all, it's a fundamentalhuman right and second of all,
it's the more productive. If you want to look at people as
productive, I find it a very unhelpful way to look at things.
But with the more you can get people to be self-sufficient,
the more they can both take the burden off of others so that
(22:15):
they can decide what they do anddon't want to do and have the
ability to make decisions on their own.
And the more they can help others.
We talk about people with disabilities often as what
should we do for people with disabilities?
There's some sort of oh, we'll do something nice or feel good.
This not a bit of it. That's the most short sighted
(22:36):
thing we can think of. A person who's disabled is say
take a 40 year old woman with a disability.
She well might have two or threechildren and be in a
relationship or be married. She may be responsible for
supporting her household or doing work around her household.
She's responsible often for worrying about her elderly
(22:57):
parents. She's a vibrant member of her
local church or temple or mosque.
She This is not the idea that people with disabilities somehow
are the end line of what we should do for others.
It doesn't hold water for most people with disabilities.
Most people with disabilities are engaged in any number of
complex networks throughout their society, and they have as
(23:19):
many responsibilities as many other people that it's not just
that they're there for to do something charitable for them.
So there's something called the charity model.
We'll do something good for people with disabilities and
feel good about ourselves. It's long since been replaced by
a social or human rights model. I won't go into all the
different models because it's more complex than you need to
(23:40):
hear. But we we hopefully now realize
that I say we but it depends because not everybody is still
best that people with disabilities are people who are
members of the community. They have the same rights as all
others and they are all part of the.
And again, as I was saying at the beginning of the interview,
much of what they face in terms of barriers are very much
(24:04):
socially mandated or put in place by the surrounding
societies. And one thing we know is that
societies can change from the perspective of thinking about in
terms of witchcraft. If the a witchcraft accusation
came up and, you know, for a person with a disability, those
networks could be quickly dissolved.
People would be able to say it'snot us.
(24:25):
We're not that closely related to her.
We don't know what she did in a previous life to have been born
with a disability or become disabled.
But once those accusations occur, I think it's easier for
people to distance themselves and say, we're not disabled.
So we're in a different league than the person with a
disability. So it's very important.
(24:46):
The issue is not to draw the line and for people with
disabilities is between a witchcraft or non witchcraft,
but to go much, much, much earlier to not even get to the
point where there's this issue of who's disabled, who's not
disabled. But it's a question of a more
comprehensive approach to accusations of witchcraft.
(25:06):
If you say there are a number ofattributes and people in certain
societies that people look for to make these accusations and if
you can anticipate them and dealwith how society frames the
other, which is a you're different than us.
The minute that starts happening, if you're going to
wait to saying if people with disabilities or older women or
(25:29):
stuff, you're, you're missing the boat.
So the issue is, I think for a lot of the stigma, prejudice,
distancing, what society does tomaybe think of things to
anticipate where you start to get forks in the road between
them and us, and to deal with things early there rather than
later. Rather than to say all people
(25:50):
with disabilities sometimes get accused of being witches or
having or practicing witchcraft or being envious and disabled to
curse their people or to make other people like them long
before that. There needs to be a systematic
approach in societies to saying we're all the same, this is just
normal human difference. And the issue is to focus on how
(26:16):
alike we are and not how different we are.
And also to focus on making sure, as I said earlier, that
people who are disabled have theresources to allow them to be as
much a part of their surroundingcommunity as they would like and
choose to be. That means things like
education, job training, equal pay, the ability to participate
(26:40):
in society, the ability to go out into society and be treated
with the respect they deserve. Often if we are attacking where
key issues to ensure the rights and the value of people with
disabilities, we are not waitingto issue of witchcraft come up
or accusations witchcraft come up.
(27:01):
We've already discussed in society's ways to counter that,
and that can be done in any number of different levels,
schools certainly, but also NASApublic relations campaigns and
cut public information campaignsabout disability.
Long before you talk about witchcraft, you need to talk
about how everyone's equal, how everyone's deserves the same
(27:24):
respect, how everybody has the same rights.
And there's been lots of attention to this within I'd say
the disability community, but inthe broader mobile community.
And the issue is disability rights.
And again, people who are disabled in countries around the
world have come together to forma major global disability rights
(27:46):
movement, which is often overlooked by people.
The general public are not awareof the disability rights
movement, but it's been instrumental in putting in place
a number of key pieces of legislation.
The most significant is the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities, but it's now been ratified by 191
(28:07):
countries. I believe that doesn't mean on a
day-to-day basis people with disabilities are always treated
equally, but it does mean that in 191 countries the rights of
people with disabilities are nowguaranteed, the equal rights of
people with disabilities. the United States is not one of the
countries that had ratified this.
And I fear that especially in this day and age now we will be
(28:29):
it's right. The United States is the only
country in the world that has not ratified the UN Convention
of the Rights of the Child. Exactly that.
Thank you for bringing that up. It used to be honest and I think
South Sudan, but they didn't have working government.
And so when the government came together and one of the first
thing they did was ratify it. So it leaves the United States
(28:51):
in a exceptionally embarrassing situation.
Same thing with you and the rights of prisons with
disabilities. And that was legislation that
was put together. And when this country ratifies
it, that means that this was rights have to be guaranteed by
the government of that country. It's not just a nice thing to do
on paper, their legislation, their policy, their funding have
(29:14):
to be put in place. Now, whether it's actually put
in place in an act that there's great variation on that
unfortunately, but the disability rights movement has
been going since really the early 1970's, the 1970s and
countries around the world. Just a good film to to start an
introduction for the US is a film called Crip Camp, which I
(29:36):
don't know if you've seen it's on Netflix.
CRIP Camp. It was produced by the Obamas.
It was nominated for best documentary film for an Academy
Award. It didn't win, but it was in the
final three or four. However, when does that and it
shows how people with disabilities come together and
(29:56):
in this case push through major legislation in the United
States. The Americans with Disabilities
at the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is
the result of global efforts to reframe people with disabilities
as full and equal members of society.
It's a really important piece oflegislation and it has relevance
(30:18):
to people who are worried about things like accusations of
witchcraft because it absolutelyis legislation that's been
ratified and adopted in many of the countries where we are most
concerned about the issues of witchcraft.
So it's not again, on the ground.
It's nice to have a piece of legislation.
(30:39):
It doesn't make a difference to the safety and well-being of
people who are living in communities in these countries.
Then it it's nice to say, oh, they have the rights, but if
they don't have their safety or protection of that law, then
it's a real lost opportunity. But that doesn't mean the law
doesn't exist and that people ingovernment don't know about it
(31:02):
and can't be held responsible for these sorts of things.
It's so it people with disabilities, we often talk
about it as though it's a charitable gesture called the
charity Actually, Oh, let's justrecognize for folks with
disabilities, again, it's not a question of doing something nice
for people with disabilities. It's their right to have the
(31:22):
full protection to the law, equal protection.
Other group can't be prioritizedover them.
We need to really rethink how we're dealing with a lot of
things that on the daily basis people with disabilities have to
put up with. But it's not even if it's
tradition, there's lots of traditions, but they're not good
(31:44):
for women or they're not good for members of ethnic or
minority communities. Recent American politics aside,
that doesn't make it right. And in the same way, to play
with people who are disabled have been treated historically
in many, not all, but in many communities or something that we
really need to rethink. There will always be people left
(32:07):
behind. And some societies are more
brutal than others or some that are much more equitable or
distribute resources on a fairerbasis.
So societies are whatever peoplemake them.
So you can have a tremendously oppressive society as well.
You have a society where women have no rights.
You have a society whether people from traditional
(32:29):
communities have no voice in ournational government.
There's all sorts of abuses of power and we're really, we're
talking about our here who makesdecisions for other people and
who has the right to have a voice in their lives and the
lives of their families and the lives of their communities.
In reality, we need to be constantly vigilant.
(32:50):
And again, nothing stays fixed. You need to continually, not to
say we need to improve the rights of people with
disabilities and things like accusations of witchcraft, for
example, have thou been negated?You need constant monitoring,
surveillance, monitoring, evaluation, and monitoring to
make sure that things stay fixed.
(33:11):
One thing that's been on my mindbecause you had mentioned the
public perceptions and how that's communicated through
media. How do you things like Nollywood
films impact the public perception of people with
disabilities? That's an excellent question.
Nollywood is an example of that.There were a whole bunch of kind
(33:34):
of horror films in the 1990s, two thousands where people who
are disabled were equated with witchcraft and with evil and the
threats to their neighbors, threats to the community.
And of course it's been a very discouraging because they've
taken a lot of these themes and they because Hollywood is so
(33:56):
broadly distributed throughout the sub-Saharan Africa and
beyond, it just reinforces old beliefs.
I should say that there's a whole field of disability
studies and there are people who've done nothing but gone
through and chronicled out people with disabilities are
treated in Western literature and Western films.
So it's not just Nollywood or Bollywood.
(34:16):
There's a whole bunch of films in all these genres where people
who are disabled are considered menacing or evil or a a threat
to the community. So it's playing on the worst of
old belief systems and it forcesit and it reinforces it, by the
way, often to a new generation. So a lot of these films are
(34:39):
targeted at young adults. A lot of them are targeted to
young urban adults. The same that we were talking
before, that has a belief in if you can get a piece of skin from
someone who has albinism, he canprosper.
By the way, I should say we needto be very careful also not to
tar everybody with the same brush.
(34:59):
So just because there's a beliefin a community doesn't mean
every member remember that community believes that for
every non disabled person holds the same beliefs about
witchcraft and disability. So it really depends on the
individual's their background, what they want to believe, what
the panelists are brought up with, the religious groups they
(35:20):
go to the again, the Pentecostalchurch in some parts of
sub-Saharan Africa have been notparticularly helpful with people
with disabilities and spreading beliefs of how people being
taken over by the devil or as that just really, really
upsetting and non productive ways of viewing fellow citizens.
(35:40):
But again, it really depends on the individual themselves.
And you can get two people, you can get siblings in the same
household and someone will go, Oh yeah, that's true.
And someone else will go, Oh no,that's ridiculous.
How could you believe it in thisday and age?
And the issue is to reach and change the opinions of people
(36:00):
who have these kind of views. It's not to take a whole
community and say they believe. If you did a survey in Mesa, AZ,
Colorado Springs or Hartford, CT, you could find the
differences in households, you'dfind differences between houses,
you'd find differences in beliefsystems of people who are non
disabled and disabled about a lot of these things.
(36:23):
So again, we need really carefulnot to say they all people
believe this, but for those who have a negative opinion towards
people with disabilities, it canbe for, you know, those
interactions with the decisions they make towards people with
disabilities, whether it's letting them on a bus or hiring
them for a job or allowing them into a training program, you
(36:46):
know, or high school training program for something.
If you go on negative beliefs, you can have a really
detrimental impact on people whoare just trying to get through
life like all of us are. By the way, I should say I'm
talking about people with disabilities, but I myself am
not disabled. And so it's very important that
(37:08):
instead of just having the people like me to happen to wind
up working on disabilities studies issues over the years
that you reach and listen to people who are disabled
themselves. So as a basically a university
researcher, I'm there to provideammunition for people with
disabilities to counter many beliefs and stuff.
(37:30):
When I was very young, you'd have discussions about Women's
Health that astonishingly, had, you know, you have a panel of
like 10 people and none of them would be women.
This is what women need. Have a bunch of gynecologists,
but in the same way or with any group.
But the issue is not just what Ihave to say, but with, but what
(37:53):
people with disabilities themselves want you to know
about their lives, their opinions, and and the issue is
not that they can't speak for themselves, but they often pull
up and aren't listened to. So I'm happy to talk about this,
but I will happily yield the floor to the folks who are
themselves disabled, because I've rarely met a person with a
(38:15):
disability who doesn't have plenty to say for themselves.
Yeah, I'll say I. I live with disabilities, and
you're doing an excellent job speaking to concerns I have with
American cinema and television. I pay attention to
representation and whether it's positive or, you know, people
(38:37):
with disabilities get cast in prominent roles or whether
they're secondary. And there's just so much
ridicule still of people with disabilities in what we see.
There are a number of people have done excellent work on mass
media and disability, so I won'tspeak for that whole field, but
(38:58):
it used to be certainly until maybe about 20-30 years ago, if
you ever saw a person with a disability in a film, it was
generally either they were evil character that Captain Hook
missing on the arm, or they wereevil menacing character.
Or if they'd be these terrible films where someone would be
either cured of their disabilityin the end or conveniently die.
(39:21):
They suddenly learn to walk or they again conveniently died.
It was only I I remember I I don't know what the year the
film came out one, but one film that sticks out in my mind is
just I by that by the time it came out, I'd been working on
disability for a while and it was the first film I can
remember. I'm again, I'm not a film person
(39:41):
so I could have missed something, but the film for
Weddings and a Funeral was the first time I'd already been
doing some of my doctoral work on deaf is when it came out.
And the reason I was just so struck by 4 Weddings and the
Funeral of all films was there was the side character that you
Grant's brother was deaf. But it wasn't that he nobody was
(40:03):
trying to solve his problem. It wasn't the main issue in the
film. He was.
It was just a side character andit was the first time I can
remember where. Disability wasn't the key issue,
it was just part of life and since then it's become much more
normal to have people with disabilities and crowd scenes as
(40:24):
well as and lead roles. But that was late in the game
when it came to how you view disability.
So things are changing slowly. But again it will depend on the
film genre and how sensitive thefilm makers are.
But too often you still have someone who's kind of a menacing
(40:45):
figure or happens to be disabled.
Now, having said that, true equality means that people who
are disabled can be as evil as anyone else, or as silly or as
Black Desmond as anyone else. They are just the same as
everyone else. But too often we either vilify
them or we put them in some sortof saintly role.
(41:06):
Again, there's 17% of the world's population.
That's 1.3 billion people. And interestingly, people with
disabilities has been part of human history as long as we've
had human history and in the rebate, human history.
So we get a number of skeletal remains for pretty humans, and
(41:27):
you'll routinely, regularly get some.
An individual who's lived with aDIS, not only has a disability,
a broken arm or a head injury would clearly survive that and
live with those injuries. So it's always been part of
human history. And by the way, those kind of
skeletal remains show us only the things that are usually
(41:49):
trauma or some sort of deformation of the bone
structure. Says nothing about mental health
issues or problems with a visionof hearing that might not show
up in skeletal remains. We've got to assume that
disabilities always been part ofhuman society.
In fact, the person meant you written mention of disabilities
(42:09):
that I know of come from cuneiform tablets.
I think. I think it's Sumerian, but don't
quote me that you have to start having human writing.
You have mention of people who are disabled and this long
predates by the time you get to the Old Testament becomes very
regularly mentioned. So it's always been part of
human history. Thank you for joining us for
(42:31):
this episode of Witch Hunt. Help us spread the word.
Subscribe to our YouTube. Channel and share this.
Episode or some clips to your social media.
Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
The Salem witch trials resulted in witchcraft accusations
against more than 150 people andthe executions of 20.
(42:52):
So what went wrong? We explore this and other facets
of the witch hunt in our new podcast The Thing About Salem,
premiering June 1st. The Thing About Salem offers
Bite Sides episodes in both video and audio formats that you
can enjoy in 15 minutes or less.I'm Josh Hutchinson.
(43:13):
I'm Sarah Jack. Our ancestors experienced the
Salem witch trials. And here's a little taste of
what you can expect from the Thing About Salem.
Possibly Doctor William Griggs decides that the girls.
Oh, they're not sick in a natural way.
They're under an evil hand, justlike that one, Sarah.
(43:38):
So what does it mean that they're under an evil hand?
The devil has come to Salem. The devil's in Salem.
Each week, the Thing About Salembrings you information on a
thing from the witch trials. Episodes will stream on YouTube
and all podcast. Platforms to get ready.
(44:00):
Find usoutaboutsalem.com. Be sure to.
Join us for Episode 1. On June 1st.
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