[Cabs-talk] article in the Monitor worth reading

[Haben Girma]

I didn't know Dr. Maurer learned to cane chairs at school! He's come 
such a long way, I wonder if he could have even imagined the life he's 
leading now when he was a kid. /grin/

Haben

Angela fowler wrote:
> Good read.
>     I get a good chuckle out of the idea that our other senses are
> somehow stronger because we are blind. I get an even bigger laugh when
> people say to me "Angela, your hearing must be so much better than everyone
> else's!" About the 10th time I make them repeat something they give up on
> that one, Lol.  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cabs-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:cabs-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Bruce Sexton Jr.
> Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 11:04 AM
> To: California Association of Blind Students Mailing List
> Subject: [Cabs-talk] article in the Monitor worth reading
>
> 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.
>                                 
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