Disability activist Imani Barbarin ‘s excellent article about the Trump administration’s plan to decrease SSDI fraud by monitoring the Social Media profiles of recipients is already being shared widely on the Internet; I put it up on the Girl with the Cane Facebook page for easy sharing. I doubt that there’s much more that I can add to her explanation of why this move isn’t just fundamentally icky but also rooted in a profound misunderstanding of disability and disabled people and our lives, but I have some thoughts. And you should really read her article.

Image Description: Two shocked people people looking at a laptop screen.

Content Note: Ableism, Assumptions, Doug Ford, Election 2016, Exaggerated Social Support Fraud Rates, Inspiration Porn, Politics, Rand Paul, Social Isolation, Trump, UK Austerity Cuts

First of all, I was a little surprised to hear that the Trump administration had this in the works, but not shocked. After all, the Republican narrative that SSDI is rife with people faking a disability to collect benefits isn’t new – Rand Paul talked during his campaign for the 2016 election about SSDI “malingerers” and about how “over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurt.”

And it’s not just limited to America – England’s austerity cuts to disability supports beginning in the early part of the decade, including new policies on withdrawing support and making disabled people seek employment, plus the state’s branding of disabled people using supports as “scroungers” who are milking the system, has resulted in thousands of deaths.

Imani Barbarin does an an excellent analysis of why policies like the one the Trump administration is proposing simply aren’t fair, and it seems to me that it really comes down to two things, ultimately:

• Society tends to think of disabled people in terms of snapshots
• Society like to choose which snapshots they pay attention to

After twenty years of answering questions from acquaintances in my community, I’m fairly aware of the snapshot that they take of me, and it’s not usually accurate. They usually assume that:

• I live with my father. I think the idea that I can live one-handed independently surprises them.
• I can’t walk more than small distances. They’re very surprised to hear that I’ve often walked to my doctor’s office without a break (2km) and that I’ve walked much further with breaks.
• I don’t work. Even when when I do tell them I work part-time (10 – 14 hrs a week most of the year), the response is generally that it’s nice that I have something to get me out of the apartment. They’re very surprised that I have my own small business doing writing and social media management.

Acquaintances take a snapshot of me where my disability affects me more than it actually does; people who know me a little better tend to do the opposite. The truth , as
Imani Barbarin does such a great job of explaining, is that disabled people are complex, with complex lives, just as non-disabled people are, and expecting to capture us in snapshot is ableist:

• I do live independently, and can do just about everything that I need to one-handed. However, I do enjoy having support from a PSW three times a week for fifteen minutes because they help me do some specific awkward chores much faster and using much less energy, especially if I’m already fatigued – changing the sheets on my bed, cutting up vegetables, getting my garbage and recycling to the deposit station. The PSWs who have been giving me extra support in the morning since I injured my shoulder a few weeks ago braid my hair, which I love and can’t do for myself.
• I can walk longer distances – one memorable day in Toronto last August, I walked almost ten kilometres in a day. But some days I have a lot of energy for walking and getting around, and some days I don’t. If I walk the two kilometres to the doctor’s office, I’ll probably try to find a ride back. In the winter I walk considerably less because snow and ice make it much more difficult, and during very hot summers I’m also careful, because heat is a seizure trigger.
• I do like working because it gets me out of the apartment. I also like working for the same reasons that everyone else does – I like having a sense of purpose, I like helping people at the job that I go to, I like the people I work with, and I like having some extra money to help with things like cat food and Diet Coke. Like all of you, most days I like my job, and some days I don’t like it so much, and there are a lot of things that swing my attitude one way or the other, depending on the day.

I’m not like to regain much more functionality in the limbs affected by my stroke – if anything, their functionality is likely to take somewhat of a hit again as I get older. But I’m trying to live the best life I can, and it’s unreasonable to expect me or any other disabled person to do otherwise (or to do so and stay quiet about it) out of fear that a snapshot of what my life looks like on a good day could cause me to lose needed supports. This is especially true for people who look at a glance like they should be able to work but have invisible disabilities that make it impossible for them to do so. Society can be particularly hard on people in this situation.

Snapshots are just people in a moment, and often a moment carefully curated for a specific purpose, as Imani Barbarin points out in her discussions on inspiration porn. And more generally, as we all know, people tend to share more of the positive of what’s going on in their life on social life than the negative.

The Social Media Issue

The crux of the social media issue is that it specializes in providing snapshots, (in images and words, not all of them necessarily current – the last picture of me posted on Facebook was one that was a few years old at the time. No wonder that the last Senate-confirmed Social Media Commissioner said at a 2013 Senate hearing about the idea of using social media profiles to detect SSDI fraud, “Social media sites are not exactly clear and reliable evidence.”

I’m quite active on social media, but I use it in a different way than many disability advocates. I talk about myself a bit among good friends in more private spaces (fully cognizant that nothing on social media is truly private.) But I use my public profiles to talk about interests or post things I find interesting or amusing (or to occasionally heckle members of the Trump family, when moved – Don Jr., via Twitter, mostly.) For disabled people who experience significant amounts of social isolation, social media is not just a fun way to pass the time or bother politicians but a way to connect with other people (disabled and non-disabled), to do both paid and unpaid work, to be involved with advocacy efforts at which they can’t be physically present, and to keep up with friends in the community that they may not be able to see as often as they like. It’s a lifeline, and making disabled people fearful to utilize it as a support is unfair and potentially harmful to their well-being.

Imani Barbarin is totally justified in feeling as strongly about this issue as she does – it’s very important.

Besides…

Fraud Rates are Grossly Over Exaggerated

Making disabled people the scapegoats for budgetary woes in order to justify balancing budgets by eliminating the fraud caused by people determined to abuse the system is just getting tired. England did it. America’s doing it. Canada’s been doing it too – not as drastically (although disabled Ontarians have reason to be concerned, considering the cuts that Trumpish Premier Doug Ford has recently made to education and health care).

The truth is that when England made the first of its austerity cuts, the fraud rate for those collecting welfare benefits (this includes disability benefits), was much, much lower than the public believed:

“For 2011-12 it is estimated that 0.8%, or £1.2bn, of total benefit expenditure was overpaid as a result of fraud. This is far lower than the figures widely believed by the public, as revealed repeatedly in opinion polls. A TUC poll recently revealed that people believe 27% of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently. “

The Guardian, April 6 2013

The situation is similar in the United States right now. SSDI fraud exists, yes, but the rate is very low:

My disabled American friends, the Trump administration is counting on the idea that you’re easily pushed around. You are going to have to continue to show them that you’re not, as you have since 2016. You have people behind you all over the world – we will do whatever we can to help.

“SSA data shows that the rate of overpayments for all its programs was well under 1 percent of benefit payouts in each of the last three fiscal years – and not all improper payments are fraud. More often, overpayments occur due to administrative delays at the SSA in making adjustments to benefit amounts due to errors and paperwork snafus. A federal government list of programs at highest risk for making improper payments compiled by the Office of Management and Budget does not even mention Social Security. “

Reuters, March 27 2019

Thank You, Imani Barbarin

I do know who my readership is, and realize that I’m preaching to the choir with this post – but Imani Barbarin’s article not only only clearly and succintly explains why the Trump administration’s proposed legislation is so problematic, it also touches on a great many issues that disabled people are facing today:

• The fears of disabled Americans in the current US political climate
• The narrative that disability support services are rife with fraud and people taking advantage, which numbers don’t support.
• Misunderstandings about disabled people and disability
• The dangers of disability stereoptypes and about making assumptions about disabled people
• Social isolation as an issue for disabled people, and how they use social media to combat it
• Inspiration porn and the problem of which snapshots of disabled peoples’ lives society currently pays attention to.

Everyone should be reading Imani Barbarin’s article, and we should be encouraging non-disabled people to ask us questions about it. It’s a fabulous starting point for all sorts of discussions. Congratulations, Imani Barbarin – looking forward to hearing more from you!

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