Customer Reviews

The Kennedy Family and the History of Mental Retardation

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This book examines why and how the Kennedys became involved with Mental Retardation and eventually all disability right issues. Because myself and many other Americans have benefited from the civil rights laws of the last thirty years, it is eye opening to remember a world had once existed without those laws.

People with disabilties were so scorned by society that 'erasing' their presence or locking them up at home was previously considered the most loving option. Partially from their own history with Rosemary, the Kennedys felt obligated to use their reputation and change these public moores.

This same book also notes how the independent living movement eventually surpassed Eunice Kennedy Shriver's Special Olympic work as the most visible manifestation of people with disabilties. Although their visiblity was made possible through the family's previous community organizing, people with disabilities themselves subsequently sought a greater role in a movement dedicated to their rights.

However enlightened for the time, Special Olympics are today considered by some people to instead reinforce 'poster child' sterotypes of people with disabilities. Reccent Special Olympic materials are mindful of the shift, now stressing participant empowerment and dignity. Mental retardation references were revised with the term 'intellectual disabilities'.

This is not a particularly involved read, but it is interesting for people interested in the Kennedy family and/or disability rights. Because it is supposed to focus on the family's contributions to this policy area, the scope is much smaller than other disability history books. At the same time, this book does not pretend this family had all the answers with disability rights issues, and acknowlleged they were as influenced by other activists as the activists were influenced by them.

What Joe Kennedy did was to take a reportedly shy and mildly retarded woman (or so they claimed) and obliterate her humanity with a lobotomy. The reason is reported to be that she was considered an embarassment and a potential roadblock to Kennedy political ambitions.

It was a "failed" lobotomy, the reports frequently say. What would constitute a successful lobotomy? The Kennedys have spent the subsequent decades promoting psychiatric tortures and coercive mistreatments of millions of other Americans who have ended up in the clutches of the "mental health community." In short, their "philanthropy" is one of support for violence and torture. For this they are feted as humanitarians by apologists such as this author.