[nabs-l] Ignorance vs. Prejudice

Tue Jun 16 17:51:06 UTC 2009

Acutally I went to a place for a week where everyone  treeted me and my
blind friend like we were 5 year olds, efven when I did show them I could do
it, What stopped them was when I jumped up, asked for help to the stage, got
on the mic right away and did what I needed to do. I think they had a little
more respect for me after that.

-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Beth
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 6:00 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Ignorance vs. Prejudice

I have probably the best friend you could ask for.  Aaron is probabl the
coolest sighted guy ever.  We don't normally talk about blindness, it's
something I don't wish to always talk about, but Aaron accepts that I use my
computer differently than others.  I guess being able to chat on FB and AIM
makes me more of a person than if I don't.  There are those who use MSN and
Skype who can probably see my point.  But a lot of people use FB.  But one
of the nicest things about Aaron is that he doesn't ever say I can't do
something because I'm blind.  I don't know if other sighted people in
Florida really view us that way.
 That's just my two cents worth.
Beth

On 6/16/09, Rania <raniaismail04 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it has to do with both the experience the person has or has 
> not had with blind people as well as the personallity of the person. I 
> have found some people to just except me for who I am and ask me 
> questions like how I use the computer. Once I explain how it works 
> they understand at least to me it seems that way. I really like it 
> when sighted people whom have never been around a blind person are 
> interested in learning what they can by asking me questions. That 
> shows me that they are excepting of my blindness and how I do things.
> Rania,
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Arielle Silverman" <arielle71 at gmail.com>
> To: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 1:01 AM
> Subject: [nabs-l] Ignorance vs. Prejudice
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> Recently we've been talking about airline discrimination, which has 
> historically served as a good representation of the kind of 
> second-class treatment that we often get in everyday interactions with 
> members of the public. I think Jedi made some good points in 
> describing the tendency of some sighted people to judge us as 
> incompetent based on the role of sight in their own lives and their 
> assumption that losing their sight would leave them incapacitated. It 
> is true that we are a tiny minority (even within the disabled
> community) and that a lot of sighted people simply don't know how we 
> perform everyday tasks. In some cases this ignorance leads to 
> discriminatory treatment ("The blind person can't sit in the exit
> row") or stereotypes ("Blind people are slow").
>
> What I've always found fascinating, though, is that lack of 
> knowledge-ignorance-doesn't always translate into discrimination. In 
> fact many sighted people are simply curious, and if we tell or show 
> them how we use the computer, read or travel, they quickly accept our 
> alternative techniques and treat us just the same as everyone else.
> But this doesn't happen all  the time. And then, on the flip side, 
> there are those who know all the facts about blindness and still 
> "don't get it". This includes, for  instance, the mobility instructor 
> who's taught O&M for thirty years but who still insists that you 
> should walk three blocks out of your way rather than cross a busy 
> intersection. Many of us find that our own parents make more of a big 
> deal out of our blindness than do people we've just met, even if our 
> parents have met competent blind people or been to blindness 
> workshops, know Braille, etc. So there definitely is a difference 
> between ignorance and prejudice. The combination of both is bad, but 
> you can easily have one without the other. And it's prejudice, not 
> ignorance, that actually causes us trouble.
>
> Unfortunately, while we can easily remedy ignorance with simple 
> education, alleviating prejudice isn't that simple. It seems like much 
> of the persistence of people's prejudices comes from their emotional 
> or "gut" reactions to blindness. The experienced teacher of blind 
> students may know all the facts about Braille, including the fact that 
> children who learn Braille while young can read just as fast as 
> sighted children. And yet, on some gut level the teacher feels an 
> aversion to Braille, seeing it as a stigma or a symbol of weakness. So 
> no matter how well this teacher is trained, if she gets a kid in her 
> caseload who has partial sight, it's going to be  a struggle for the 
> teacher to actively teach the child Braille. The parent who finds his 
> child's blindness frightening, likewise, is going to have a hard time 
> letting the child play outside or do chores, no matter how  much he 
> reads about what is best for blind children, unless he figures out how 
> to let go of  his fear. I think so much of the success of our training 
> centers comes from their ability to not only teach us practical 
> skills, but also help us  overcome our own fears and negative feelings 
> about blindness.
>
> And yet, as Monica has demonstrated, there  are those sighted people 
> who display a lack of prejudice and who automatically include us and 
> treat us normally without any prior knowledge about blindness or 
> education on our parts. We all know sighted people like this, even 
> though we often tend to spend most of our mental energy grumbling 
> about the sighted people who treat us strangely. My boyfriend never 
> met a single blind person before me, and yet in some ways seems to 
> instinctively "get it" more than my mother, for example, who besides 
> raising me for twenty-four years, also read many of the leading  books 
> about raising a blind child. (Never mind that many of the messages 
> espoused in those books are rooted in prejudices of their own).
>
> So  what do you guys think makes the difference between those members 
> of the sighted public who show prejudice and those who don't? Is it 
> something about their personalities or experiences? And if simple 
> educating isn't enough to address people's deep-seated emotional 
> reactions, what can we do about it? Do we have any control over 
> whether the sighted guy on the street grabs us or treats us with 
> respect? It's easy enough for us to tell who will be responsive to 
> education about blindness and who won't. But for those who aren't 
> responsive, how do we deal with them civilly while still protecting 
> our rights and our freedom? And how do we deal with educators like O&M 
> instructors, who have power over what we learn or what accommodations 
> we get but whose judgments are affected by their misconceptions about 
> blindness?
>
> I look forward to a lively discussion on this topic, as it's central 
> to how we act as an organization and how we can really change what it 
> means to be blind for ourselves and for others.
>
> Arielle
>
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