[nabs-l] Security in ourselves, acceptance in others

[Jedi]

Excellent points.

I'm going to add to that some.

I've noticed that we also tend to judge a person's actions when they 
attempt to handle a vexing situation like overhelpfulness or 
discrimination. I've been doing some research on the effects of such 
judgment and have concluded that it creates an invisible audience for 
the blind person in question. This audience is made of both the blind 
and the sighted community and creates thoughts like "What will my blind 
friends and colleagues think of me if I react this or that way? What 
will the sighted person I'm talking to think? What will sighted 
bystanders think?" What this does is create a win/lose situation where 
the stakes are high. Aside from causing stress that limits 
problem-solving ability, this high stakes situation also creates a 
greater likelihood of negative response to perceived threats to the 
blind person's self-concept and sense of efficacy in the interaction. 
So for example, an overly helpful person might cause a blind person to 
feel ineffective as it is. But the invisible audience concept boosts 
that feeling considerably because of the stress involved with feeling 
like they have to show themselves as both effective and graceful in 
handling both the offers of help and the person who's offering it. Is 
any of this making sense? So the bottom line is that by trying to be 
the perfect ambassador for the blind, we may be shooting ourselves in 
the foot by creating such a high stakes situation in our mind that the 
stress lowers our ability to present the cool, calm, and effective 
image we want to offer to the public.

On that note, I've noticed that our community seems to have it in our 
heads that we're responsible for how the sighted feel about us. The 
truth is that there are limits to that responsibility. Sure, we want to 
set a good impression in all areas, but so does everyone else. The sad 
truth is that we are judged based on the actions of one person. But the 
thing is, there's nothing that we can really do about that except to 
expose a given sighted person to the diversity of our population. Even 
if we set the perfect impression, it's likely that the sighted person 
will still stereotype by saying that we're all amazing or that the one 
individual in question is the exception to a rule. It seems to me that 
the only people who really get that we're as diverse as they are are 
those who know how to deconstruct society's grand narrative or are 
those who have seen enough diversity in our population to realize that 
they can't judge all of us based on one person.

Respectfully,
Jedi

Original message:
> That makes perfect sense, but we should not fall into the trap of
> taking responsibility for others' actions. When we do that, we lose
> sight of our own goals and direction in life. Unless you're a
> therapist, or a rehab teacher working with people like that, it is not
> your job to fix them. Even as a therapist or teacher, your place is to
> be a mentor and an instructor. As I previously said, if that person,
> after being shown compassion and alternative ways of thinking, doing
> and living chooses to fall back into old patterns as soon as the
> instructor's back is turned, that shows a lack of respect for everyone
> around them, including themselves. So if a person wants to wallow in
> misery and self-pity, let them! That person will either fall hard when
> they find out their parents/family members/significant other or what
> have you can't take care of them forever, and then they'll realize
> what needs to happen in due time, or they will get sick of the status
> quo and want to change it. And if people hold it against a decent
> blind person because they've met a person like that in the past, it's
> not worth it to try and make them feel any differently. They will
> either come around in time or they won't. Choice is the key word here.
> Everyone is free to think as they choose so long as it's not hurting
> anyone. So, while it might temporarily sting a bit to lose out on a
> potential friendship due to someone's ignorance, as soon as you meet
> someone who's worth your time, you forget about that other person real
> quick

> On 5/26/11, Daniel Romero <djdan567 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think the reason why this might go down is because of the view that
>> we get from the public in general. Most people who are sighted are not
>> used to a blind person. You have to understand that one blind person
>> being seen is a huge thing. They're now reliable for what a person
>> thinks about blind people. They are the ones setting an example. So if
>> you have a blind person who smells bad, rocks, pokes their eyes or
>> just do not have the proper skills, the outside person will make an
>> assumtion and say that all blind people are like that. i'm not saying
>> it's right for blind people to call out other blind people with a
>> skills set that is lower then theirs, they're just calling them out
>> because they are representing blind people. It puts a bad label on us
>> blind people who do take care of ourselves, have the skills to be
>> independent and succeed. like i said, i'm not saying it's right but I
>> don't think us who do have the skills want to have a negative
>> conotation. Not all blind people poke their eyes, rock, hop,
>> twitch,bump into everything, smell bad, do not clean their own
>> clothes, or anything like that. So to be part of a group that's going
>> to display such a view that is negative to the public, we fall right
>> behind that. Am I making sense?

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