[nabs-l] Ignorance vs. Prejudice

Tue Jun 16 20:32:51 UTC 2009

Hi all,,

We sometimes seam to do things to prove a point. I would rather take part in 
some activity because I enjoy it, and want to get something out of it than I 
have to prove to sighted people that I can dance, walk, swim, speak, read, 
sing, breathe.

Some days we tolerate ignorance better than others, but we should not 
tolerate discrimination at any time.

When have you been discriminated against, and what steps did you take to 
resolve the situation? What steps should you have taken instead, or do you 
think your actions were appropriate?

Antonio M. Guimaraes Jr.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sarah Alawami" <marrie12 at gmail.com>
To: "'National Association of Blind Students mailing list'" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 3:21 AM
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Ignorance vs. Prejudice

> Hmm this sounds like a seminar topic we once might have had at the LCB. 
> I've
> ben lucky so far. My dance teacher is making me, for the first fiew times 
> so
> I can get my barengs use my cane while doing the steps, and mainly so I 
> can
> get my ballence issues sorted out, but there will come a time, and there
> already has where I am out there on my own with theother students and  we
> have to perform this stuff in less then a month. Will I have my cane to
> dance with, no, but I feel confident enough  to know the ruteen and bee in
> the exact pisition I'm supposed to be in. Now the person who is helping me
> just needs to tell me the steps and when to move and whair but like I said
> bnefore there will come a time when even that will probably not happen in
> performance day. Am I afraid, Yes. However, I know that if I know the 
> steps
> and get my barengs, I will be able ot show the sighted audience that I can
> dance even though I have no site. There is a lot of truth in what you say
> and I believe that by showing the sighted people, in my case that I can
> dance, maybe not well, but I can dance, sing, and act, this will open 
> there
> eyes, and many doors for me, and other blind people in the future. I hope
> what I said makes sence. Sorry I rambled it is way too early in the 
> morning.
> Hehaha!
>
> Oh just in case anyone is interested in the dance class and what we do
> google "life long dreams" in Nevada.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On 
> Behalf
> Of Arielle Silverman
> Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 10:01 PM
> To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> 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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