[nabs-l] Acceptance and judging

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Jedi,

Hmmm... But aren't you now judging me and not accepting me for what I
think? I may disagree with a person's views, but this doesn't stop me
from engaging in a friendly relationship with them. And disagreeing
isn't necessarily judging. On a philosophical level, I completely agree
with you. I respect your passion and dedication to your point of view. I
still disagree on some points, but I respect the fact that you at least
have an opinion. Acceptance goes both ways, my friend.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 13
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:49:25 -0500
From: Jedi <loneblindjedi at samobile.net>
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Body language and facial expressions
Message-ID: ebe88a9e-94a3-4337-92b5-46e9b95bb61c at samobile.net
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format="flowed"

Bridgit,

As someone speaking on the side of acceptance, I don't feel that I'm 
making anything into a blind versus sighted thing. I feel like I'm 
pointing out the obvious: we're a minority group that is expected to 
conform to the majority. If we don't conform, we're considered worse 
off than if we do conform. If we do conform, we're considered to be 
somehow different from the worst members of the minority we represent. 
As part of that system, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to 
conform to the majority as well for the same reason: we don't want to 
be associated with the worst stereotype of our minority group. None of 
this is to say that members of the majority (the sighted in this case) 
are evil people. It just means that we blind are experiencing the same 
kinds of intercultural tensions faced by other minority groups, and, 
like other minorities have done, we're trying to navigate that tension 
by trying to do what the majority does so we won't be alienated quite 
so much. This doesn't make us bad people, it just means that we're 
trying to make the best of a frustrating situation. The serious down 
side to that is that we're potentially alienating members of our own 
group (and maybe even ourselves) by rigidly clinging to a set of 
arbitrary norms.

This idea I have about acceptance is not about anything more or less 
than not adding more stress to our lives than is necessary. It's 
already bad enough that we're frustrated by our experiences with the 
sighted community (you included), so why do we need to add more 
frustrations to our lives by harshly judging and criticising ourselves?

On a possibly related note, I think I'm beginning to understand why 
some blind people are frustrated with the Federation. I've heard a lot 
of blind people say that the Federation tends to be too judgmental of 
those who maybe aren't as skilled, confident, or as "acceptable" (in 
quotes) as we perceive ourselves to be. what I hear these people saying 
(now that i think about it) is this: I want to be accepted for who I am 
and where I'm at. For some of these people, perhaps they want to stay 
where they're at and so acceptance is extremely important to them. But 
as it is, I'm of a humanistic bent, so I believe that acceptance makes 
room for growth. If I truly accept you for who you are and am not in a 
hurry to change you in any way, you have full license to fully explore 
and be in your experience while in my company. from that place, you are 
more able to make autonomous decisions about whatever behaviors, 
thoughts, feelings, etc that you may want to change if at all. The 
bottom line is that it would be your choice, and I would accept you and 
your choice unconditionally. Humanist philosophy contends that human 
beings, if given the total choice, would probably choose to grow rather 
than stagnate; this tendency may be all that is needed to initiate 
positive growth for that person who initially didn't seem to want to 
change. I think that's what many of these blind people are looking for 
in the Federation. But perhaps, because we're having so much trouble 
accepting ourselves, we can't offer that to them. We're so hell-bent on 
being accepted by the majority, so how could we be available to another 
person? Now to clarify, I'm not suggesting that all Federationists are 
like this, but it seems to be a prevailing pattern in our Federation 
culture. On further reflection, I'm wondering if Dr. Jernigan didn't 
try to address this issue in some way by writing "The Nature of 
Independence." While I don't agree with dr. Jernigan's rigid definition 
of the three stages of independence, I do agree that a little 
acceptance of each of us is definitely at hand and would be a good 
idea. While he specifically covered blindness skills and independence, 
I'm extending the idea to so-called mannerisms. As is the case with 
blindness skills, it's a good idea to know how to be effective, but 
it's not useful to harshly judge and criticise people if they aren't 
yet effective or make the active choice to define effectiveness 
differently, especially if (in this case) the norms we're considering 
are arbitrary anyway. Is any of this making sense?

Respectfully,
Jedi