Reflections: Thoughts After Reading "Al Capone Does My Shirts"

I don't quite understand it. How is it that we read and have experienced terrorist attacks, school shootings, come across people everyday that look as typical as you and I that end up being rapists, murderers, drug dealers/users, womanizers, self mutilators, and yet we never so much as blink? However, the moment a person with a noticeable disability walks into a room...the room goes silent, we notice. Whether it's the person who is completely annoyed that they've been inconvenienced by having to wait for a person with a physical disability to pass by or to load a bus or the gawker who can't look away... we notice. Why as a society do we feel as though persons with disabilities are such a hassle? What I don't understand is that while a great majority of us will oppose the death penalty in a sense fighting for the lives of some of the most disturbed people who have committed the most atrocious acts, we can't seem to extend simple courtesies to people with disabilities by not calling each other "retards" or referring to people that make a mistake as riders of the short bus or simply not parking in a handicap spot when you clearly don't have a disability and these are just things we can do in our daily lives. On a grander scale we should be advocating for all people and writing about them in respectful ways.

I will never understand why we fight for the right to keep school mascots, protect criminals, and bring our favorite television shows back on air, but we fail to defend the rights of those with disabilities, worse yet, we often times shun these people whose only crime is being unique. Why?