[nabs-l] article from Debra Kendrick

[Jedi]

What do you foks think about this article?

Respectfully,
Jedi


Original message:

> Article from the INDEPENDENCE TODAY
> Newspaper<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
> "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

> October 2009

> N.Y. Governor Paterson
> Blind to Tools of Success

> By Deborah Kendrick

> Several years ago, when I received some
> mystifyingly bad treatment at the hands of other
> people who shared my disability, a friend who was
> both black and blind comforted me with her
> insight. “Blind people can sometimes be like a
> basket of crabs,” she told me. “When one of them
> makes it to the top, the others scramble to pull
> him down.” Folks I thought to be my peers, in
> other words, were attacking me out of envy.

> I vowed I would never do that. I would fervently
> support anyone with any disability who achieved
> success in any field. We should all be one happy family, right?

> Then, following the 2006 elections, alarms went
> off that challenged that personal pledge. The
> good news was that New York state had elected a
> lieutenant governor who was both black and blind.
> The more troubling news was that David Paterson,
> that newly elected official, by declaring that he
> didn't use any of those blindness tools –
> Braille, assistive technology, a white cane –
> indicated to those who don't have disabilities
> that he was too cool for all that nonsense. Those
> of us who proudly use the tools of blindness, who
> depend on them to give us a competitive edge in a
> host of professional and educational
> environments, tried to be tolerant. I wanted to
> be first and foremost proud. A blind guy – a sort
> of brother to me in the disability family – was
> rising to the top, and it was cause for serious celebration.

> Governor Paterson clean shaven. A new image
> Of course, when Eliot Spitzer was caught with his
> pants down, so to speak, and Paterson rose to the
> very top of his state, sworn in as New York
> governor on March 17th, 2008, the media made even
> more noise about how this brilliant guy didn't
> need Braille or talking computers or any of that
> blind nonsense. He had a superhuman memory, we
> were told, and relied heavily on staff. His staff
> read important memos and documents into voicemail
> messages that he listened to at all hours.

> Voicemail messages? What?

> He’s governor of one of our most important
> states, and he doesn't use a computer? Still, I
> reminded myself to be tolerant. Each of us has
> different techniques, different ways to
> accomplish the same goal. One deaf person reads
> lips. Another uses American Sign Language.
> Another uses Signed English. And on it goes. The
> man was governor, after all. He didn't have to do
> things the way other blind people do them to earn
> our support. He was one of us, and we should stand behind him.

> Then Paterson started doing really dumb things.
> He didn't always know the facts. He made
> decisions and then, under pressure of one kind or
> another, reversed them. He appointed a lieutenant
> governor when nobody was sure he was even allowed
> to do that and who, to add insult to injury, had
> trampled with dirty boots on transportation
> prospects for New Yorkers with disabilities.

> He seemed to “get it” when he responded with
> disdain to the "Saturday Night Live" skit that
> ridiculed his blindness. And yet, he didn't
> hesitate to grab a few laughs himself at the
> possible expense of people with disabilities when
> he appeared in a wheelchair for a charity gig.

> More recently, he has vetoed one bill that would
> prevent discrimination against people with
> disabilities in public facilities in his state
> and another that would require all polling places
> to be made physically accessible.

> OK, we could argue, just because he has a
> disability doesn't mean he has to always agree
> with us, supporting every bill that comes down
> the political pike to improve the quality of life
> for New Yorkers with disabilities. Shouldn't we
> still support him? He’s both black and blind, after all.

> The proverbial “last straw” in struggling to hang
> on as a cheerleader for this New York governor
> came when I started seeing references in the
> press linking his failures to his blindness. One
> New York state senator, Diane Savino, was widely
> quoted as saying, in effect, that hey, even
> though the guy is brilliant, he’s blind, after
> all, and being blind means he can't use the same
> digital tools -- such as e-mail or a Blackberry -- as his peers.

> Wait a New York minute! And let me do some deep
> breathing so as not to do anything undignified
> like spew bad words in my own e-mail or Smartphone messages!

> One headline read: “It’s not his race, it’s his
> blindness.” Let me set the record straight: “It”
> -- his failure to lead -- is not because of his
> race or his blindness. It’s the man himself. But
> blindness is something I know well and know more
> than a little bit about with regard to tools and
> techniques, so let me tell you now what I was suppressing all along.

> His avoidance – since childhood – of tools
> related to blindness, don't make him superior to
> other blind people, but rather inferior. He can't
> read print but refused to learn Braille. That’s
> denial to the point of masochism. In other words,
> he’s illiterate by choice! Why, I wonder, if he’s
> so “brilliant” did it take him 12 years to get
> two advanced degrees, when lots of “ordinary”
> blind people have obtained those same two degrees
> in six? And even though the second of those two
> degrees is a law degree, he never went into
> practice as a lawyer because he couldn't pass the
> bar exam. Why was that? Was it because he
> couldn't read Braille or use a computer? Now, in
> all fairness, I don't know the answer to that
> question, but his explanation is that he didn't
> receive adequate accommodations. But what would
> those accommodations be, anyway, for a man who is
> blind but doesn't know how to use any of the
> tools that similarly educated blind people avail themselves of daily?

> You could say it’s not his fault. When he was a
> child, New York City schools couldn't promise
> that he wouldn't receive any special education,
> and his parents moved to a suburb where he could
> go to public school “unhindered” by special ed.
> Now, maybe that was a good thing. I wasn't there.
> But it sounds to me like being perceived as
> sighted was more important to the family than
> getting the best education possible.

> And so, here we have a 21st-century governor –
> the first legally blind governor to serve in any
> state longer than 11 days – and he’s using 1960s
> or '70s tools to do his job. Staffers read
> materials onto tapes and into voicemail for him.
> He has no means of prompting himself with notes,
> which would be effortless had he taken the time
> to learn to read and write Braille.

> Had he been governor in 1975, the tools he now
> uses would have been adequate because sighted
> people at the time were using them at the same
> level of sophistication. But those tools now are inadequate.

> Why doesn't Paterson use a computer with one of
> the popular screen-reading programs, such as JAWS
> or Window-Eyes or System Access? If he did, 99
> percent of all documents generated by other
> computers could then simply be e-mailed to him.
> If he wanted to travel light, he could carry a
> netbook (a small laptop computer) or a thumb
> drive, into which staffers could pop anything he
> needed to read. With practice, he could do what
> blind professionals all over the world do – crank
> their reading speed up to several hundred words a
> minute and get through material as quickly as any
> sighted politician. Add that to his amazing
> memory, and he could have been a governor to make us proud.

> Why does he have staffers read newspapers to him?
> For free, he could sign up for the National
> Federation of the Blind's NEWSLINE, a telephone
> service that would enable him to read any of 220
> newspapers around the country, from any phone
> anywhere, at any speed he chose. He could zip
> through articles at his own speed as quickly or
> even quicker than his sighted peers.

> Now, this “brilliant” guy is using tools that
> were state of the art when Jimmy Carter was
> president, has an approval rating that has
> dropped at a staggering rate, and against even
> the advice of President Obama, said he’ll run
> again in 2010. It’s pitiable, really, but I’m not
> feeling sorry for him. How can I when, along with
> his own failure, he’s pulling the overall
> acceptance of and employment opportunities for
> other blind people down with him?

> I’m not saying I could do his job. I don't think
> I could. But I am saying that lots of people who
> are blind could and do it brilliantly. He wanted
> so much to hide his blindness that now, in his
> appalling unpopularity, it’s the one thing that
> outsiders are interpreting as his weakness. It
> hasn't been. His weakness has been his own
> arrogance and denial of reality. It’s a shame.
> With proper training, he might have done a good job.

> But he isn't doing one, and I’m OK with having
> broken my promise to myself. I know now that just
> because he has a disability doesn't mean I have
> to like him. And if he’s going to fall headlong
> into the basket, I don't want him to kick the
> rest of us down to the bottom as well.

> Deborah Kendrick is a newspaper columnist, editor
> and poet. She is currently working on a biography of Dr. Abraham Nemeth.



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