[MD-AtLarge] Homework for May 21 Meeting

[nfbmd]

Hello All,

 

We have some homework to do to prepare for our upcoming meeting.  It won't
be as painful as you think.  Below you will find a speech called Blindness:
Handicap or Characteristic?  If it is easier for you, you may listen to this
speech on Newsline.  After you log in, select number 1 and then select
number 1 again which is the NFB national channel.  Then select number 2,
speeches, follow the prompts and select either the audio version, which is
the actual voice with responses from the audience or select text, which is
the computer voice.  If you want to read the speech, here it is below.
Enjoy!  

 

Handicap or Characteristic: Access Press

Highlights of a speech by Kenneth Jernigan, past president and Executive
Director of the National Federation of the Blind

It has been wisely observed that philosophy bakes no bread. It has, with
equal wisdom, been observed that without a philosophy no bread is baked. Let
me talk to you, then of philosophy - my philosophy concerning blindness -
and, in a broader sense, my philosophy concerning handicaps in general.

One prominent authority recently said, Loss of sight is a dying. When, in
the full current of his sighted life, blindness comes on a man, it is the
end, the death, of that sighted life . . . It is superficial, if not naive,
to think of blindness as a blow to the eyes only, to sight only. It is a
destructive blow to the self-image of a man . a blow almost to his being
itself.

This is one view, a view held by substantial number of people in the world
today.

But it is not the only view. In my opinion it is not the correct view. What
is blindness? Is it a "dying"? No one is likely to disagree with me if I say
that blindness, first of all, is a characteristic. But a great many people
will disagree when I go on to say that blindness is only a characteristic.
It is nothing more or less than that. It is nothing more special, or more
peculiar, or more terrible than that suggests. When we understand the nature
of blindness as a characteristic - a normal characteristic like hundreds of
others with which each of us must live - we shall better understand the real
need . to be met by services to the blind, as well as the false needs which
should not be met.

Are blind people more limited than others?

Let us make a simple comparison. Take a sighted person with an average mind
(something not too hard to locate); take a blind person with a superior mind
(something not impossible to locate) - and then make all the other
characteristics of these two persons equal (something which certainly is
impossible). Now, which of the .two is more limited? It depends, of course,
entirely on what you wish them to do. If you are choosing upsides for
baseball, then the blind man is more limited - that is, he is `handicapped".
If you are seeking someone to teach history or science or to figure out your
income tax, then the sighted person is more limited or "handicapped".

Many human characteristics are obvious limitations; others are not so
obvious. Poverty (the lack of material means) is one of the most obvious.
Ignorance (the lack of knowledge or education) is another. Old age (the lack
of youth and vigor) is yet another.
Blindness (the lack of eyesight) is still another. In all these cases the
limitations are apparent, or seem to be. But let us look at some other
common characteristics which do not seem limiting. Take the very opposite of
old age - youth. Is age a limitation in the case of a youth of twenty?
Indeed it is, for a person who is twenty will not be considered for most
responsible positions, especially supervisory and leadership positions. He
may be entirely mature, fully capable, in every way the best qualified
applicant for the job. Even so, his age will bar him from employment; he
will be classified as too green and immature to handle the responsibility.
And even if he were to land the position, others on the job would almost
certainly resent being supervised by one so young. The characteristic of
being twenty is definitely a limitation.

The same holds true for any other age. Take age fifty, which many regard as
the prime of life. The man of fifty does not have the physical vigor he
possessed at twenty; and, indeed, most companies will not start a new
employee at that age. The Bell Telephone System, for example, has a general
prohibition against hiring anyone over the age of thirty-five. But it is
interesting to note that the United States Constitution has a prohibition
against having anyone under thirty-five running for President. The moral is
plain: any age carries its built-in limitations.

This should be enough to make the point - which is that if blindness is a
limitation (and, indeed, it is), it is so in quite the same way as
innumerable other characteristics which human flesh is heir to. I believe
that blindness has no more importance than any of a hundred other
characteristics and that the average blind person is able to perform the
average job in the average career or calling, provided (and it is a large
proviso) he is given training and opportunity.

Often when I have advanced this proposition, I have been met with the
response, "But you can't look at it that way. Just consider what you might
have done if you had been sighted and still had all the other capacities you
now possess."

"Not so," I reply. "We do not compete against what we might have been, but
only against other people as they are, with their combinations of strengths
and weaknesses, handicaps and limitations." If we are going down that track,
why not ask me what I might have done if I had been born with Rockefeller's
money, the brains of Einstein, the physique of the young Joe Louis, and the
persuasive abilities of Franklin Roosevelt? (And do I need to remind anyone,
in passing, that FDR was severely handicapped physically?) I wonder if
anyone ever said to him:

"Mr. President, just consider what you might have done if you had not had
polio!"

The assumption that the limitation of blindness is so much more severe than
others that it warrants being singled out for special definition is built
into the very warp and woof of our language and psychology. Blindness
conjures up a condition of unrelieved disaster - something much more
terrible and dramatic than other limitations.

When someone says to a blind person, "You do things so well that I forget
you are blind - I simply think of you as being like anybody else," is that
really a compliment? Suppose one of us went to France, and someone said:

"You do things so well that I forget you are an American and simply think of
you as being like anyone else" - would it be a compliment?

The social attitudes about blindness are all pervasive. Not only do they
affect the sighted but also the blind as well. This is one of the most
troublesome problems which we have to face. Public attitudes about the blind
too often become the attitudes of the blind. The blind tend to see
themselves as others see them. They too often accept the public view of
their limitations and thereby do much to make those limitations a reality.

With the blind the public image is everywhere dominant. This is the
explanation for the attitude of those blind persons who are ashamed to carry
a white cane or who try to bluff sight which they do not possess. Although
great progress is now being made, there are still many people (sighted as
well as blind) who believe that blindness is not altogether respectable.

The blind person must devise alterative techniques to do many things which
he would do with sight if he had normal vision. It will be observed that I
say alternative not substitute techniques, for the word substitute connotes
inferiority, and the alterative techniques employed by the blind person need
not be inferior to visual techniques. In fact, some are superior. Of course,
some are inferior, and some are equal.

In this connection it is interesting to consider the matter of flying. In
comparison with the birds man begins at a disadvantage. He cannot fly. He
has no wings. He is "handicapped." But he sees the birds flying, and he
longs to do likewise. He cannot use the "normal," bird-like method, so he
begins to de-vise alterative techniques. In his jet airplanes he now flies
higher, farther, and faster than any bird which has ever existed. If he had
possessed wings, the airplane would probably never have been devised, and
the inferior wing-flapping method would still be in general use.

Which brings us to the subject of services to the blind and more exactly of
their proper scope and direction. There are, as I see it, four basic types
of services now being provided for blind persons by public and private
agencies and volunteer groups in this country today. They are:

1. Services based on the theory that blindness is uniquely different from
other characteristics and that it carries with it permanent inferiority and
severe limitations upon activity.

2. Services aimed at teaching the blind person a new and constructive set of
attitudes about blindness - based on the premise that the prevailing social
attitudes, assimilated involuntarily by the blind person, are mistaken in
con-tent and destructive in effect.

3. Services aimed at teaching alterative techniques and skills related to
blindness.

4. Services not specifically related to blindness but to other
characteristics (such as old age and lack of education), which are
nevertheless labeled as "services to the blind" and included under the
generous umbrella of the service program.

An illustration of the assumptions underlying the first of these four types
of services is the statement quoted earlier which begins, "Loss of sight is
a dying."

According to this view what the blind person needs most is not travel
training but therapy. He will be taught to accept his limitations as
insurmountable and his difference from others as unbridgeable. He will be
encouraged to adjust to his painful station as a second-class citizen and
discouraged from any thought of breaking and entering the first-class
compartment. Moreover, all of this will be done in the name of teaching him
"independence" and a "realistic" approach to his blindness.

Our society has so steeped itself in false notions concerning blindness that
it is most difficult for people to understand the concept of blindness as a
characteristic and for them to understand the services needed by the blind.
As a matter of fact, in one way or another, the whole point of all I have
been saying is just this: blindness is neither a dying nor a psychological
crippling - it need not cause a disintegration of personality - and the
stereotype which underlies this view is no less destructive when it presents
itself in the garb of modem science than it was when it appeared in the
ancient raiment of superstition and witchcraft.

Throughout the Judy San world, but especially in this country, we are today
in the midst Congress' in the midst of a vast transition with respect to our
attitudes about blindness and the whole concept of what handicaps are. We
are reassessing and reshaping our ideas. In this process the professionals
in the field a third cannot play a lone hand. It is a cardinal principle of
our free society that the citizen public will hold the balance of decision.
In my opinion, it is fortunate that this is so, for professionals can become
limited in their thinking and committed to outworn programs and ideas. The
general public must be the balance staff, the ultimate weigher of values and
setter of standards. In order that the public may perform this function with
reason and wisdom, it is the duty of each of us to see that the new ideas
receive the broadest possible dissemination. But even more important, we
must examine our-selves to see that our own minds are free from prejudices
and preconception.

 

 

 

Sharon Maneki, Director of Legislation and Advocacy

National Federation of the Blind of Maryland

410-715-9596

 

The National Federation of the Blind of Maryland knows that blindness is not
the characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the
expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles
between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want;
blindness is not what holds you back.

 

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