Disability, Diversity, and Difference: Idiosyncrasies and Conceptual Differences

Abstract

Since 1980, the United Nations (UN) has played a leading role in disseminating international guidelines against violence, discrimination, and deprivation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Considering this, the Brazilian political and legal framework for inclusion has expanded considerably in recent decades, bringing transversal regulations in favor of specific identity groups, such as people with disabilities, women, and ethnic-racial collectives. Although they are part of the emerging agenda, when confronted by the complex framework of barriers and social exclusions, official inclusion and diversity discourses present idiosyncrasies and contradictions that can even camouflage political intentions, often disconnected from the struggles of the collectives focused by inclusion policies. In this context, this article aims to characterize conceptual differences between disability, diversity, and human differences. We conclude that the definitions and objects of analysis sometimes align with the critical perceptions of the discourse, while at other times reproduce the normative view of subjects-body-minds, camouflaging, often subtly, the asymmetric social construction of human differences in official rhetoric about inclusion and diversity.