[blindLaw] Discrimination

[Daniel McBride]

Dear Group:

This must be among the more remarkable discussions I have followed since
joining this list fifteen years ago.

Going back to the original post in this thread, I have several observations
regarding discrimination and job opportunities.

In the 1986 SCOTUS case of Batson v. Kentucky, the issue was raised whether
state prosecutors could use preemptory challenges to strike minority
veniremen based solely on their minority status. The answer was No in theory
and Yes in its real application.

The case said that preemptory challenges cannot be used to systematically
strike minority veniremen solely because of their being a minority. Rather,
in utilizing a preemptory challenge, the State must have a rational and
articulable reason for using a challenge on any venireman.

The reality of Batson, over the last 33 years, simply changed the State's
approach to voir dire. Prosecutors now ask very clever questions of minority
veniremen in a manner calculated to give the prosecutor a rational,
articulable reason to justify their challenges on minority veniremen, and
the systematic exclusion of minority veniremen, in Texas courts, has not
changed much at all.

So, the true effect of Batson was to tell State prosecutors that they can
continue to systematically discriminate against minority veniremen, but that
they must do so through a filtering system that will allow the prosecutor to
take the witness stand in a Batson hearing and articulate their rationale
for using preemptory challenges on all the minorities they struck.

In a similar fashion, the laws allegedly prohibiting discrimination against
blind persons do not actually prohibit the discriminatory practices we
encounter. Rather, the laws create merely a filter through which the hiring
employer must pass to allow them to reject the blind applicant.

Minority vemiremen continue to be systematically struck by use of the proper
filter. Blind persons continue to be discriminated against through the use
of the correct filters. This is reality, and I am at a loss for a solution
to the problem.

Second, whether a sighted or blind person, the American system is a system
of privilege. Those with connections get jobs, those without connections do
not. I don't offer this observation as an absolute, but, as a general rule,
this is how America works. Over the 36 years I have been licensed, many of
the jobs I desired were denied, not because I wasn't qualified and capable,
but because I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and had no
connections. On the other hand, had I been born to parents with serious
connections, I could have had most any job I wanted, no questions asked.

This is, again, just the sad reality of how things really work in America.
The official story as to how things are "supposed" to work, and how things
"really" work in America are, many times, the difference of day and night.

Just my two cents worth.

Daniel McBride
Fort Worth, Texas