Race and disability share tangled histories. David J. Connor (2008) highlights ‘animality theories’ that historically viewed black and disabled people as less than human: the Freak shows of the nineteenth century that displayed non-European and impaired exhibits as ‘exotic’ and ‘repulsive’ attractions; scientific studies of feeblemindedness that fuelled eugenicists concerns about the mingling of races, classes and abilities; segregation of slaves and ‘village idiots’ from the wider breeding populace. Clearly, as Dan Goodley (2011: 37) stated,
As Brune and Wilson attest (2013), the practice of passing relates to a desire to avoid the stigma and shame associated with a certain identity – in this case, to have an impairment, and be thus marked as ‘other’ from the ideological norm. If we apply this template to an Irish Traveller context, identifying the process of being ‘settled’ as a variant on passing, it raises the question of why an Irish Traveller would wish to pass and, moreover, why a Traveller with an impairment would wish to pass, particularly, as a non-Traveller. Passing is, as we have seen, about minimising shame, stigma and discrimination. Arguably, in the case of Travellers, having an impairment represents a potentially visible marker of identity even if the simultaneous identity, that of a Traveller, may be concealed or ‘passed’ over. These dual sources of potential stigma, that are interwoven and which on becoming especially fraught at points of engagement with settled institutions and service providers, complicate and possibly thwart the possibility of passing in certain contexts, or in certain ways.
In looking closely at the issue of passing and considering reasons why individuals wish to pass, and what incentivises the process of passing, it is helpful to look at Goffman’s (1963) theory of stigma and shame. Goffman’s theory on stigma is a relatively old body of work, but one which has, Cameron (2014) argues, enduring relevance to the disabled community and to disability studies. Goffman’s analysis, significantly, describes the notion of spoiled identity. Spoiled identity is a form of identity, projected onto an individual from without, in the context of a community or group which is considered defective. This spoiled or abnormal form of identity is inherently lesser than the ‘normal’ or unspoiled identity and is always positioned in relation to this ‘normal’ identity. It recreates the individual as one who has a responsibility to the larger population not to cause distress or fear. Thus, projected onto the person, in this case, with a disability is a sense of potentially contagious abnormality in the form of defectivity which is somehow offensive to the norm because it signals otherness and loss. This projection is both indirectly and essentially in-line with the ethos of the medical model of disability – a model which constructs disability as tragedy, and ultimately normalises or structurally reproduces processes of containment and segregation.
Goffman’s (1963) work goes on to look at the development of identity by focusing on personal presentation, impression management and dramaturgy, making use of metaphors taken from acting and theatre to emphasise the performed nature of identity in social and cultural contexts. In spite, or perhaps because of this emphasis on management and performance, those who are outside of the norm – who cannot adequately construct, project, or perform an identity
appropriate to the terms of the dominant cohort – are considered, in this context, negative, or to possess negative attributes. A stigma is ascribed to those who are considered, in Goffman’s words, “not quite human” (1963: 5, as quoted in Davis, 2006). This stigma, although projected onto the individual from outside, is learned and internalised, producing personal and embodied feelings of shame, self-hate, self-derogation and self-consciousness; modelling a lack of respect in which the individual with an impairment, formed by context, interprets his or herself as defective too. Passing, in this context, may be interpreted as a means of screening or
minimising the day-to-day implications of being in possession of this stigmatised or othered identity. It is a way of managing outward impressions which also reproduces or sustains the sense of internalised shame and self- consciousness suffered by the individual with an impairment.
However, Goffman’s (1963) theory has been criticised, for instance by Michael Bury (1997), for its focus on passive acceptance – the subjectivity it conceives of, in terms of disability, is one which accepts labels from without and is conditioned by circumstance, showing what some theorists have identified as a lack of agency in accepting or rejecting these projected impressions and roles. Nevertheless, however stark it may seem, Goffman’s theory does reflect and understand the conditioning influence of social roles and oppressions on the individual’s experience.
In his chapter on stigma, Cameron (2014) refers to Thomas’s (2004) social relational theory to illuminate what might be described as flash-points of counter between ‘normals’ and non- normals; between the impaired and the non-impaired; the putatively unspoiled and the ‘spoiled’ identity. Passing is, of course, an activity which is strongly localised in these flash- points of encounter and exchange. In a Traveller context, spoiled identity is a powerful conditioning influence on sensations of pride and shame, and it is also an identifier which superficially encompasses disabled and non-disabled Travellers equally i.e. as a collective. Travellers are conceived of, by dominant or settled academic work, social policy and political institutions as a homogenous group – it is easier to judge and devalue a group, rather than a individual, not least because stereotypes trade in sameness across a broad number of people within a given category.
In contrast to the lack of research and writing on Traveller experience from the inside, a wide range of literature does exist on Irish Traveller identity viewed from outside. This is often
hindered {if unconsciously} by bias or a lack of understanding. In Ireland as noted earlier, anecdotally, a common view prevails amongst the settled population that Travellers are the descendants of displaced people from the Great Famine of the nineteenth century – a relatively recent doctoring of the truth or fabrication which has lately been shown to be wrong. Cant, the Traveller dialect, contains words formed directly from dialects of the Irish language which were used in the twelfth century (Aoife Bhreatnach, 2007), suggesting a significantly older lineage and ethnic separateness from the settled population. To view Travellers as a group of people who have been displaced is an example of projecting ‘spoiled’ identity – beginning from a positive position {emplaced, settled, belonging} to a negative or declined position {displaced}.
However incorrect, and despite the dubious nature of other speculative claims about the origin of Traveller separateness and Traveller history, this kind of reasoning or guesswork can have a negative impact on Travellers’ conceptions of their own identity. It results from and reflects an institutional refusal to recognise Traveller ethnicity as rightfully separate. This refusal,
implicitly or openly, promotes a view of Travellers as displaced, ‘spoiled’, declined, or
defective, as opposed to simply different or worthy of respect. This conception of Travellers as defective works against efforts towards self-realisation, and indeed pride, within the Traveller community. As stated in the introductory chapter, this study takes as a given that Travellers are an ethnic minority group, not only in the UK and Northern Ireland, but also in Southern Ireland. This position remains a contentious one, as will be explored at a later point in the thesis with reference to Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh (2006). However, as the current chapter focuses on passing as a response to discrimination, the separateness of Traveller ethnicity is relevant, and historic state refusal to accept this or administer to Travellers as an ethnic minority may be considered a key source of racist conflict and bad practice at those flash-points of encounter between Travellers and settled service providers. Nevertheless, despite this historical refusal, Travellers were finally granted ethnic status in March 2017 after a long campaign by Traveller representative organisations and repeated calls by human rights campaigners to formally recognise Traveller ethnicity. However, Traveller ethnicity has yet to be enshrined in legislation.
Little academic writing on Traveller identity, by settled academics, is of use to this chapter, but Lentin and McVeigh (2006) – academics who had written extensively on the need to recognise
Traveller ethnicity as separate – are something of an exception and will be drawn on here. However, pre ethnic status Leintin and McVeigh, like other academics also referred to anti- Traveller sentiment in describing what we in the Traveller community understood as racism.