Page 266 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

10. WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION
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ADA was first enacted, employers were very fearful that the definition was
too broad and would cover almost anyone. In the past decade, however,
court rulings have narrowed the legal definition of disability consider­
ably so that if one has a disability that is not severe enough to prevent
working (Hahn, 2000) or has a disability that is correctable (e.g., with
glasses or a hearing aid; Albertsons v. Kirkingburg, 1999; Murphy v. UPS,
1999; Sutton v. United Airlines, 1999), then that person is not considered
disabled. Indeed, the primary reason that plaintiffs lose ADA cases is that
they are determined not to have a disability (Lee, 1998), and therefore, not
covered by the ADA (1990). This is simply not an issue with other civil
rights legislation—everyone has a sex, race, ethnicity, and so forth, and is
therefore protected on these characteristics. Apart from legal definitions,
there is also the issue of how people, both actors and observers, define
disabilities.
The ADA (1990) acknowledges the importance of the perceptual process
involved in defining persons with disabilities by stating that one is covered
by the law if he or she is "regarded" as having an impairment. Furthermore,
Stone and Colella (1996) in their model of how employees with disabilities
are treated at work argue that a critical process is that a person be catego­
rized by the observer as "disabled." We know relatively little about this
process or what features people use to personally define "disability." If
there is legal ambiguity about what constitutes a disability, then certainly
individuals vary in how they define the construct. One could argue that
there are some disabilities that most people would consider as disabilities
(e.g., paraplegia, blindness, and deafness); however, there are others that
may not be so uniformly categorized (e.g., mental illness, back pain, and
recovering addict). This issue is complicated by the findings that show that
people react differently to different disabilities (e.g., Bowman, 1987; Jones
& Stone, 1995; Tringo, 1970) and that reactions to specific disabilities can
vary by the context in which the social interaction is taking place (Christ­
man & Slaten, 1991; Grand, Bernier, & Strohmer, 1982; Strohmer, Grand,
& Purcell, 1984). These issues indicate that in comparison to other dis­
crimination research, disability research needs to (a) understand whether
observers consider the target to be "disabled"; (b) take context into consid­
eration; and (c) deal with generalizing findings across disabilities.
Finally, any discussion of the definition of disability must consider a
person's own self-concept of being disabled (Colella & DeNisi, 1994). The
disability literature has been criticized for making the assumption that
persons with disabilities define themselves in terms of that disability (Fine
& Asch, 1988). Indeed, clinical and rehabilitation psychology researchers
(e.g., Krauss, Mehnert, Nadler, & Greenberg, 1993) have studied the self-
identity as "disabled" of individuals with known disabilities and found