[nabs-l] Humor and Blindness Revelations

[Haben Girma]

Hi Arielle,

Remember how I was considering to respond to that blind poem/joke with a 
poem of my own? Well, a prominent faculty member at the college asked me 
to not respond with humor. This faculty member has a disability and 
explained that there were several instances at the college when s/he 
tried to use humor to ease the acceptance of the disability, but this 
humor was not taken well and had a negative result. I haven't asked the 
faculty member about the details. The faculty member believes the 
college is not ready to handle disabilities with humor, and they're 
planning to ask the college newspaper to demystify blindness by 
interviewing the blind students on campus.  Since I respect this person 
and hardly cared about that comment, I asked the college newspaper to 
cancel my submission. So, there's one example of a disabled person 
finding the use of humor to be unsuccessful. I think humor has been 
successful for me at certain times, but I can't remember any particular 
instances right now.

Best,
Haben

Arielle Silverman wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> The discussion we had a couple days ago about a blindness joke got me
> thinking about how we can use humor as a tool for easing discomfort in
> situations relating to our blindness. There are times when we've all
> had to reveal our blindness to others--in applying for jobs,
> participating in extracurricular activities, with randomly assigned
> roommates, online dating etc. Or we've had to initiate a blindness
> discussion with someone in order to talk about accommodations--an
> employer or professor for instance. In these kinds of situations, when
> we don't know how our blindness will be received, has anyone been
> successful in using humor to ease the tension that might arise from a
> revelation of blindness? What kinds of jokes have been effective in
> this regard? Or, does humor just make things more awkward?
>
> Curiously,
> Arielle
>
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