Wade Taylor: A Family Haunting

Abstract:This article explores neurodiversity, eugenics, and Appalachian identity in the early twentieth-century American South through the lens of the author's family history. It discusses the loss of a relative to long-term institutionalization. The article proposes that the central premise of the ideology and pseudoscience of eugenics—that deviance, disability, and most social ills are hereditary—posed a sufficient threat to families with disabled members to enforce their complicity with ableist practices and social structures in many cases, especially when paired with virtually nonexistent home- and community-based services. It also suggests that insufficient home- and community-based services continue to drive disabled people into institutions against their will to this day.