[Cabs-talk] article in the Monitor worth reading

[Bruce Sexton Jr.]

Hello CABS members,

I think the below speech made into a Braille Monitor article by Dr. Maurer is worth reading.  It's a bit long, but has some rich ideas about our movement and philosophy.  

-B.J.

***

      From the Editor: This address was delivered by President Maurer at
the University of Notre Dame on Friday, March 6, 2009. He was invited to
keynote a conference on blindness. Here is the text:
                                ************
      The idea that blindness and joy may be contemplated at the same
moment is strange to our society. Nevertheless, contemplating these
thoughts simultaneously is a fundamental element of the philosophy of the
National Federation of the Blind. It isn't that we believe that blindness
should bring joy-we haven't lost our minds. However, we know that blind
people can have joy and that, properly understood, the lives of blind
people can generate joy for others.
      A community is thought to be an aggregation of human beings who share
similar interests. Many communities are being created in the United States
identified by characteristics such as race, educational attainments,
political standing, heritage, sex, and economic possessions. How valuable
is it to be a member of a community; what is required to be accepted as a
part of it; what is lost to an individual from joining a community; and how
are communities created? Answering these questions is part of what I do as
president of the National Federation of the Blind, the largest organization
of blind people in the United States.
      In the past discrimination meant discernment-a positive
characteristic. "Discrimination" is a term that today signifies arbitrary,
improper, and illegal classifications of human beings. Our community is
composed of blind people and their friends who want to foster independence
for the blind and who reject as unfounded mythology-the mythology of
discrimination-the assumption that blind people have less ability than that
possessed by the sighted. Challenging established norms is controversial,
and one identifying characteristic of any group challenging discriminatory
practices is that it will become controversial. So much for the oft-
repeated argument that in matters dealing with blindness there can be no
rancor. Many people have told me that I should get along with the people
who disagree with the assessments of the National Federation of the Blind,
as if peace were the ultimate objective. In the past we had all the peace
we could tolerate along with massive discrimination. One way to interpret
the demand that we have peace is to recognize that others wish to tell us
that we should give up some of the fundamental beliefs that make us what we
are. This we cannot do. For somebody else to tell me that I should prefer
peace to participation is to assert that they know more about my business
than I do-that they know what is good for me.
      Disability denominates a physical or mental characteristic that
prevents a person from performing tasks that others regard as among the
customary features of human interaction. The legal definition says that
disability interferes with a "major life activity." In the past disability
meant a legal or ecclesiastical prohibition. In the second half of the
twentieth century, the two terms, "disability" and "discrimination," came
together. The legal system of the United States recognized disability as a
characteristic often unreasonably employed to prohibit disabled individuals
from participation in otherwise lawful activities.
      The change in legal thinking was no accident. Blind people, led by a
constitutional scholar, Dr. Jacobus tenBroek, who was blind himself, joined
in a struggle to demonstrate that most prohibitions based solely upon
blindness or other disability are fundamentally unsound. Dr. tenBroek and
his colleagues created a civil rights movement for the blind and for others
with disabilities. To accomplish an alteration in thought and in law, a
community was required. A group of people needed to come together who
shared a point of view and a set of goals. This group is known as the
National Federation of the Blind, and this organization began the process
of creating the civil rights movement for the disabled. The Federation is
not the only organization that has stood forth in battle to combat the
prejudicial stereotypes of incapacity that have bedeviled the lives of the
blind, but it was the leading contingent in the struggle for equality, with
its leaders and members walking the halls of Congress and the state
legislatures as early as the 1940s.
      Blindness is an isolating condition. The frequently expressed
assumptions about blind people are that the blind will not participate
except in limited circumstances and that blind people have very little to
contribute. Even when no intent to limit participation by the blind exists,
these assumptions effectively limit participation.
      Blind people need more time to complete assignments than their
sighted peers, it is said. In school blind students need additional time to
complete homework, or the amount of the homework should be limited. If
sighted students are assigned fifty questions, it is acceptable to assign
only twenty-five to the blind. Blind people cannot participate effectively
in sports. Blind people are ineffective as public speakers because they
cannot gain eye contact with the audience. Blind people cannot be effective
lawyers because they cannot observe the expressions on the faces of the
jury. Blind people cannot be effective teachers because they cannot react
to the nonverbal communication of their students. The often repeated
customary belief is that vision is essential for learning, life, and love.
The stimulating significance of the passionate glance is recorded in song
and story and described in poetic imagery around the world. Although such
arguments are incomplete or incorrect, they are a part of the current coin
of the language, and the effects are inescapable.
      Blind people are now teaching classes; appearing in court on behalf
of clients; engaging in sporting activities, including Olympic events;
doing their homework; performing assignments in school and on the job
completely and speedily; climbing mountains; riding horses; water-skiing;
and even giving public speeches. The portrayal often made of us is false,
but it persists. Is the false portrayal deliberate misrepresentation, or
does it arise from ignorance?
      In 1829 the first school for the blind in the United States came into
being. For the first time educators believed that blind people could learn.
However, students did not leave the school to accept employment. Employers
did not want blind workers. Consequently, fairly soon after the
establishment of schools for the blind, sheltered workshops for the blind
came into being. They supplied an outlet for blind graduates seeking work,
and they were frequently a source of revenue for the schools.
      Most of the work in the workshops was simple and repetitive. Rug
weaving, broom making, and chair caning are examples. Of course much of the
work in workshops for the sighted during the nineteenth century was also
simple and repetitive. However, the tasks in workshops for the blind have
not progressed much. When I myself attended a school for the blind in the
1950s and early 1960s, I learned chair caning. I was told that this form of
employment was likely to be my future. Of course I had no basis upon which
to challenge the assertions of my teachers, but I hoped fervently that they
were wrong. I left the school for the blind before I learned to make
brooms, but I imagine that I still remember how to cane chairs.
      As I have observed, because of the difficulty in finding employment
for blind workers, workshops specifically oriented to work for the blind
were created. In 1938 the Congress adopted legislation supporting these
workshops through a system requiring government agencies to purchase
commodities produced in them. These commodities frequently bore the symbol,
"Blind Made." More than eighty of these workshops currently operate for the
blind in the United States. Although workers in these shops are often paid
at rates above the federally established minimum, no minimum wage
protection exists for these workers. Sheltered workshops for people with
disabilities other than blindness have also been established.
      Hundreds of millions of dollars of government contracts run through
these sheltered workshops each year. The executives of the workshops (most
of them not disabled) receive very substantial rewards for serving as the
primary officials in them.
      Despite the segregated conditions of these workshops and despite the
inequities built into the employment relationship, these workshops have
served a very useful purpose. Not only do they represent the assertion that
disabled workers have value, but they have served as a gathering place.
Blind people and other workers with disabilities could come together to
share ideas, to inspire one another, to plan for the future, and to hope to
build opportunities greater than had ever been available to them before
they knew each other. In other words, they were establishments in which a
community of like-minded people might be formed-most of the time without
the knowledge of management and without consent.
      Today the schools for the blind are largely anachronistic, and the
workshops are waiting their turn. Most blind students attend the public
schools, in accordance with the provisions of the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act. Blind students are mainstreamed. Because
blindness is a low-incidence disability, the concentration of resources at
the school for the blind, such as Braille maps, Braille texts, machines for
producing Braille, optical scanning equipment, and other material, is in
many cases no longer available. The public schools are overwhelmed by the
multiplicity of needs of both disabled and nondisabled students. In many
cases they can't or won't provide adequate education to blind students.
They have few teachers who know how to read and write Braille, they have
fewer teachers who know how to teach blind people to travel with a cane,
and they have precious little experience or background in the specialized
techniques for teaching the blind. This summation signifies that quality
education for blind students is almost unattainable. Furthermore, the
parents of these students are very often isolated from one another. They do
not know what expectations are reasonable for their children, and in the
name of privacy the public schools refrain from telling parents about
others who are similarly situated. The community of those with similar
interests is restricted.
      Education in schools for the blind was segregated from instruction
for the sighted. Employment in sheltered workshops was segregated from
employment for the nondisabled. The administrators of the specialized
schools and shops argued that activities in these establishments could be
conducted in no other way. At the time these institutions were first
created, this proposition was probably true. Public opinion would probably
not have accepted widespread education of the blind in the public schools,
and widespread employment of the blind is still a goal to be attained. The
unemployment rate for blind people is estimated at 70 percent or greater.
Although this rate is tremendously high and although it has remained high
in spite of government programs directed at employment, the rate in the
1950s was estimated at 95 percent or above, and the rate in the 1940s was
estimated at 98 percent or above.
      At the beginning of education for blind people, all blind students
(or all students who were identified as blind) were taught at schools for
the blind, were educated at home, or remained uneducated. At the beginning
of sheltered employment, almost all blind workers gained employment in
sheltered workshops. Although several thousand blind people still work in
them, many, many more blind people have jobs outside of the sheltered
industries. The valuable benefit of assisting with the creation of a
community of interest in these institutions has also diminished-almost
disappeared. However, the need for this community is as great today as it
has ever been.
      High expectations are central to achievement; and without a sounding
board, without a reflection of hope, without a support structure to
reinforce the faith of a blind person seeking to attain success, the
accomplishments that may be expected are diminished. What did the
administrators of schools for the blind want their students to do and what
were the aspirations of the bosses in the workshops for their employees?
Did they glory in the creation of a community of independence-minded blind
people? Were they supportive of dreams bigger, more aggressive, and more
startling than they had tried to instill? Did they actively challenge those
in their programs to exceed the possibilities that they had imagined?
      In the 1950s the National Federation of the Blind, which had been
formed in 1940, created a form of rehabilitation training previously
unknown. This form of training, led by the most imaginative teacher of the
blind of the twentieth century, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, and incorporating the
philosophical underpinnings of the National Federation of the Blind,
expected of blind people that full participation in society-in schools, in
work, in social activities, in politics, and in almost all other pursuits-
is practical if the specialized skills used by the blind for participation
are mastered and if opportunity to use them can be created. One of the
elements of this specialized training is a grounding in the comprehension
of disability. What does it mean to be disabled, and what are the myths and
the false assumptions surrounding the idea? What is reasonable to expect
from a disabled person, and what alterations in the pattern of activity are
required to permit disabled people to make contributions? Blindness is a
characteristic of those who have it rather than a severe limitation.
      Probably the most misunderstood and controversial statement about
blindness current today is: "The real problem of blindness is not the loss
of eyesight. The real problem is the misunderstanding and lack of
information that exist. If a blind person has proper training and
opportunity, blindness can be reduced to a physical nuisance." This
statement is controversial because some have charged those who have said it
with believing that blindness is a minor matter. Blind people who have
faced severe isolation and discrimination have vociferated that their
blindness is no small hindrance. Officials who have believed that they are
responsible for the blind have taken this statement to mean that their jobs
are unimportant and their service to blind people negligible.
      Blindness can be devastating, but with proper training and with
opportunity it need not be. Misunderstanding and lack of information are
endemic to the customary thinking about blindness. With misunderstanding
comes prejudice. This is the common experience faced by the blind. However,
being misunderstood is not the total experience of blind people.
      The founding president of the National Federation of the Blind, Dr.
Jacobus tenBroek, was a lawyer, a professor, and a constitutional scholar,
as well as being blind. In 1955 he asserted that constitutional principles
apply to the blind and otherwise disabled. He said that civil rights for
the blind are an essential part of the legal structure of our nation and
that laws must be established to assure that the blind and otherwise
disabled have the same protections as are available to others. Furthermore,
he recognized that the laws are not self-executing-they must be enforced.
The National Federation of the Blind was challenging assumptions about
employment possibilities for blind people. It was demanding that
rehabilitation agencies assist blind people to find employment outside
sheltered workshops. It was insisting that blind people had the right to
speak on their own behalf. It was denying the authority of agencies for the
blind to tell legislatures, members of the public, and entities in
government (as well as blind people themselves) what blind people wanted or
needed. It was saying that agency officials could work with the blind but
could not speak for the blind.
      In 1957 so much controversy had been created, so many blind people
had lost their jobs for speaking out, so many blind people had been denied
the right to rehabilitation services that a bill to protect the right of
blind people to join an organization of their own choice was introduced by
Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate of the United States. The Right to
Organize bill brought into stark focus the reality that agencies for the
blind fight to protect their own interests, not the interests of the blind.
They want to preserve and expand their own turf. If they can do this while
advancing the interests of the blind, everybody benefits. If they believe
that their best interest is served by diminishing the aspirations of blind
people, they will take this course. By 1957 the battle between the blind
and the agencies for the blind had been joined. It lasted into the 1980s.
Vestiges of it still exist, but today most of the picket lines are gone.
      These things occurred half a century ago. One argument asserts that,
because blind people are different from the sighted, differences in
treatment are appropriate. If blind people are, in some essential way,
different from the sighted, differences in treatment are not only useful
but necessary. However, if the fundamentals of the blind and the sighted
are the same, differences in expectation or responsibility or performance
or remuneration or involvement must be classified as inappropriate or
discriminatory or otherwise improper. We believe that blind people are
normal-or as normal as anybody else. The obvious difference is that sighted
people have sight and blind people do not. This demands that blind people
approach the task of performing jobs that sighted people would do with
their eyes from a different point of view.
      The techniques used by the blind are not always the same as those
used by the sighted. But the expectations for blind people should be no
less dramatic, no less fulfilling, and no less rewarding than those for the
sighted. For example, many of us use Braille to read and write. Louis
Braille invented the system early in the nineteenth century. His teachers
at the school for the blind in Paris were not amused. They looked upon this
new reading and writing system with suspicion and annoyance. Blind kids
could pass notes that the teachers couldn't read. Braille, the reading and
writing system for the blind that has become known worldwide, was not
adopted in France, the home of Louis Braille, until after Louis Braille's
death.
      Although Braille had been used in the United States as early as the
1860s, and although its use has opened career opportunities to hundreds of
thousands of blind people, in most public schools Braille is not taught to
blind students, and the right to learn Braille was not codified in federal
statutes of the United States until 1998. Two thousand nine is the two
hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille. His reading and
writing system for the blind is the most important invention ever created
for blind people; it has brought opportunity and joy to the hearts of
millions. The National Federation of the Blind has declared this year the
year of Braille literacy-the year of Braille Readers are Leaders. We want
to double the Braille literacy rate for the blind of the nation, and we
have received support for our aspirations from many quarters. The United
States Mint has been instructed by Congress to strike a commemorative
silver dollar with readable, properly-made Braille embossed upon it. If our
society believes that blind people have something to contribute, then we
will believe in the tools used by the blind, and Braille is one of the most
important.
      Much of what I have had to say so far is a reflection of conditions
for the blind in the past. How are we faring today? In 1997 José Saramago
published a book entitled Blindness. The story line is that a society of
human beings is afflicted by a mysterious disease that suddenly and
unexpectedly causes blindness. The disease is communicable, and most people
are susceptible. Those who become blind are quarantined in an abandoned
facility, where they are forcibly detained. The society established by the
blind inhabitants of this facility is brutal, licentious, chaotic, and
filthy. Blind people are depicted as having virtually no ability to
establish an orderly and decent mode of existence or to care for themselves
or their companions. However, some of the internees find the capacity to
create gangs in order to prey upon the others, controlling the food supply
and exacting sexual favors. Apparently Saramago did not notice the
inconsistency. If blindness signifies complete lack of ability, it should
also eliminate the possibility of organizing for the purpose of engaging in
criminal behavior.
      A movie was made from this book that was released in theaters in
October 2008. Protest demonstrations conducted by the National Federation
of the Blind occurred throughout the United States, challenging the content
of the movie as an evil and false depiction of the blind. José Saramago
complained about these demonstrations, saying that the movie was an
allegorical portrayal of society as it currently is, not intended to depict
blind people as we are. He said that we should recognize allegory when we
encounter it and refrain from making complaints. The movie is not meant to
be taken literally, and we should have enough good humor and self-
possession to go along without a fuss. In other words, he can say whatever
he pleases about us, but we are not to respond. Such an attitude boggles
the mind. It tempts a human being to reply to the argument with short,
sharp phrases. Freedom of speech is as much a right for us as it is for
Saramago, and it will be exercised. We are not playing blind people; we are
blind people. To portray us as immoral and unclean is to add to the
isolation that is all too often a part of our reality. We reject the role
of being somebody else's metaphor.
      On December 13, 2008, Saturday Night Live broadcast a skit featuring
an actor playing the role of Governor David Paterson of New York. Governor
Paterson is blind. He assumed the office of governor when Eliot Spitzer
resigned in the midst of scandal. The actor portraying the governor behaved
as if he were disoriented and unaware of his surroundings. In one scene
during the skit he held a statistical chart on display with the chart
upside down. The language of the skit (a purported interview with the
governor) indicates that the governor cannot be expected to perform
adequately in office because, after all, he has used cocaine and he is
blind. Equating blindness with drug addiction is just part of the fun. The
point of the skit was that blind people are incapable of participation in
the activities that others manage with ease and grace. Saturday Night Live
made fun of the governor because of his blindness.
      Once again protests of this depiction of blind people occurred. A
number of individuals responded to these protests by telling blind people
that we should be willing to laugh at ourselves-that we should have a sense
of humor. Mark Twain said, "Against the assault of laughter nothing can
stand." In other words, laugh at the people you want to despise. Find a way
to make them the butt of your jokes.
      Saturday Night Live broadcast more David Paterson blindness so-called
humor in January of 2009. How am I as the leader of the organized blind
movement in the United States to respond? What choices have I? I do not
believe in belittling my neighbors, and I do not intend to let them
belittle me.
      Blind people are not humorless, touchy malcontents. Finding the humor
in life provides relief from the emotional pressure that often surrounds
us, and humor lifts the spirit and frequently offers perspective. If,
however, the humor is intended to belittle-to express superiority for the
sake of domination-its value is eclipsed by the damage it causes. However,
humor has other aspects. It can be employed to bring a group together to
express a common spirit. It is one tool in the arsenal for creating a
community.
      A persistent theory about the capacity of blind people is that our
hearing, taste, smell, and touch are superior to those of the sighted. When
one of our senses is lost, the brain uses its mental agility to increase
the intensity of the others, we are told. The mental ability which had been
assigned to five senses is now spread over four.
      While you ponder this supposedly scientifically based assertion about
the talent and abilities of the blind, consider some others that have
intrigued or bemused. When I was a student, I was told that one of the best
professions for blind people is perfume tester. Our senses of smell are
supposedly superior to those possessed by sighted people. Consequently it
would be easier for us to select the best perfumes. A description of the
HBO movie Blind Justice declares that the hero, a blind gunfighter, shoots
by the sense of hearing and by the sense of smell. Apparently the bandits
in his town don't bathe all that often. On the other hand, I was informed a
number of years ago that blind people do not smoke because smoking is
largely a visual experience. Then we are told that our sense of touch is
superior to that of the sighted in part because of brain plasticity and in
part because we are not distracted by the sense of sight. Our increased
acuteness in the sense of touch means that we are better at kissing than
the sighted. I leave this thought with the hope that interest in blind
people will increase but that crazy notions will diminish.
      What makes a community? Individuals with similarity of purpose come
together to achieve common goals. However, something else may also be
occurring. Those who have been isolated meet others possessing the same
characteristics that they have, and they interact. These individuals
challenge one another, and they come through common, shared experience to
inspire one another. In the process of challenge and inspiration, they
create an identity. They identify who they are, what they want, what
possibilities exist for them, and what limitations are reasonable. They
formulate the expectations that will be sought and the program to reach
them.
      For the blind our community was once circumscribed by the school for
the blind. Later it was expanded to the sheltered workshop. Later still it
became the statewide organization of independent blind people who had the
courage and the energy to believe in each other and to set about the
complex task of altering the legal system to protect the rights of the
blind. In 1940 seven of these statewide organizations came together to form
the National Federation of the Blind, a nationwide organization that also
works with others internationally.
      One hundred and fifty years ago Irish immigrants to the United States
were frequently unwelcome. Signs were posted on places of employment
bearing the legend, "No Irish Need Apply." Today Americans with Irish
ancestors are not shunned. Rather they are regarded with honor and respect.
The respect is not diminished even though the humor about Irish Americans
is a broad subclass of the jokes in circulation.
      One element of building a community is the acquisition of political
ability. The Irish have certainly managed that. From political action comes
recognition within the legal structure of the nation. However, legal rights
do not equal participation. Integration and social acceptance are far more
complicated than any legal structure. A fundamental step in the process of
integration is the creation of identity for the individuals who seek to be
integrated. This demands the formation of a community.
      Joining a community imposes limitations on an individual. The
necessity to think about and plan for the wishes of the other members of
the community diminishes freedom of choice and restricts individuality.
Participation within the community requires diplomacy and the application
of political skill. Even the most benign communities can be threatening as
well as welcoming. However, mastering the disadvantages of being a part of
a community offers benefits. The power that can result from collective,
concentrated action and combining resources creates opportunities that
would not otherwise exist.
      Those who complain that the blind have created a community do so
because they do not want to face combined, collected power or because they
wish that they had the power. The blind do not object to having other
people possess power, but we also want to share in the community, which
demands that we find a mechanism for obtaining this commodity. We do not
believe that our participation will diminish anybody else. Rather we
believe that our possession of power will enhance the opportunities
available to others. We represent a resource that has often been written
off-been declared to be unusable and undesirable. We reject this assessment
no matter who makes it, and we insist upon our right to join with others in
building the world to be the kind of place that we all want to share. We
are serious about this, but we are also fun-loving. Blindness and sorrow
are very often found together, but increasingly, in the hearts of blind
people throughout the nation, you will find joy and a spirit of adventure.