[nabs-l] Are we blind people or people who are blind?

[Arielle Silverman]

This is interesting. It seems clear that at least for the most part,
"person-first" expressions like people who are blind are used and
advocated by those without disabilities, while those with disabilities
prefer the "identity-first" versions such as blind people. Why the
difference?
It seems there might be at least two reasons why "outsiders"
(sighted/nondisabled) might prefer person-first language. The first is
out of a noble desire to use language that respects us and affords us
full humanity, as "people first". The second is out of a more
prejudiced desire to distance people from disabilities and to hide or
minimize characteristics that are viewed negatively.
I was discussing this with a friend who is a special education
professor (someone who trains future special ed teachers) who does not
herself have any disability. She argued that person-first language is
important because it prevents the use of offensive terms that used to
be used, such as "retards". We also talked about how euphemisms such
as "special needs" and "differently abled", though perhaps more
accurate than the word "disability", have started to take on their own
negative connotations. Personally I never really liked being called
someone with special needs, although it is funny that I don't really
object to being called a person with a disability (or a disabled
person) but when you think about it, blindness is more of a special
need than it is a disability. We aren't diminished in our abilities to
do things so much as we have different accessibility needs, etc. than
do sighted people.
It is clear that what is offensive vs. not is in the eye of the
beholder. I hope that we as blind people will start to be heard by
outsiders if we argue that we want to be called blind people instead
of people who are blind. I admit that as a "white heterosexual" I have
in the past felt awkward and uncertain about how to refer to people
who have dark skin and/or people who are sexually attracted to their
same gender. In fact I'm still not quite sure whether the term "black"
or "African-American" is more appropriate or if there is even a
consensus about that. I am, however, certain that I will only call
these and other minorities by the names they say they want to be
called. Unfortunately it seems we as blind people aren't always given
this courtesy, or perhaps we just haven't really had that conversation
with the sighted about it. It is also a shame that there is such a
disconnect between the group comprised of blind people and the group
comprised of professionals and researchers on blindness. A major part
of the disconnect is that we have been actively kept out of some of
the blindness professions and few of us have elected to initiate
blindness-related research. That is slowly changing with the LA Tech
programs and I hope our generation can continue this trend of
integration between our community and those who serve us. If we are
the ones editing the journals and setting the linguistic norms, not
only might we start being called by a name that affirms our positive
identity, but we might actually get some work done that advances our
standing in the world.
Nothing about us without us!
Arielle

On 12/13/12, Carly Mihalakis <carlymih at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi,, List,
>
> Personally, I feel most comfortable being thought
> of in terms of a blind person, not a "person who
> is blind" I feel it waters down a cultural,  if
> not a physilogical element blindness can entale.
> For that reason, I am completely against
> so-called people first, verbeage. I believe it
> may prove to alienate us further in that by
> expecting people feel they must walk on egg shells when referring to us.
> Besides, too many indirect words waters down a voice already stifled.
>
> use the term "people who are blind" or to say "blind
>>people" and risk causing offense. As a member of the blind community I
>>feel on some level that everyone in this community are members of an
>>extended family, and so it's weird to refer to all you guys as "people
>>who are blind" and distance them from blindness, which I consider a
>>positive identity that I share with all of you. This is also why I
>>like to call someone with partial sight "blind" rather than "visually
>>impaired" because calling them "blind" is welcoming them into my
>>blindness family and community. Those of you who are NFB members, ACB
>>members or part of any blindness organization probably understand the
>>collective pride and joy that can rise up when we are in a convention
>>assembly and call ourselves "the blind". Looking at it that way, I
>>feel like it's almost insulting to refer to members of my blindness
>>family as just "people who are blind" rather than fully including them
>>with the label "blind people". So I understand what the article is
>>talking about. At the same time, I wonder if there are folks out there
>>who truly prefer to be called people who are blind instead, and if
>>they feel this is putting their humanity before their blindness.
>>Arielle
>>
>>On 12/11/12, Kirt <kirt.crazydude at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Brandon,
>> > Thank you for writing my email for me. :-)
>> >
>> > Sent from my iPhone
>> >
>> > On Dec 11, 2012, at 5:11 PM, "Brandon Keith Biggs"
>> > <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hello,
>> >> I used to call myself: "A blind actor" but recently I've stopped and
>> >> what
>> >> I've noticed is that often times people forget you are blind to some
>> >> extent when you don't even say you are blind. I was talking to a guy on
>> >> my
>> >> dance teem and he said he had no idea I was blind until I was talking
>> >> to
>> >> my teacher after a conference and mentioned something about following
>> >> a
>> >> leader as a blind person.
>> >>
>> >> I personally think it matters in a context. If people are talking about
>> >> my
>> >> acting ability, I don't want to be known as a "blind actor" in
>> >> reference
>> >> to my acting ability, that would just be negative. There are aspects
>> >> where
>> >> saying blind actor or actor who is blind would be appropriate at the
>> >> end
>> >> of an article or possibly at the end of a bio, but that is only
>> >> because
>> >> people like the challenge of trying to figure out who the blind guy is
>> >> :).
>> >> I ask them after a show and they tell me what they saw that tipped
>> >> them
>> >> off. This helps me in becoming more natural and makes a little game of
>> >> something that is of no major import for that point of time, but could
>> >> mean me getting or losing a job later on.
>> >>
>> >> If I was in an article about genetic research, I would like it to be
>> >> known
>> >> that I'm blind first, because that is what is being tested for. They
>> >> don't
>> >> really care about me as a person, they just want to know I'm blind.
>> >>
>> >> If I'm talking to a director or agent about my singing, they don't need
>> >> to
>> >> know I'm blind, they want to know my voice type and my best rolls.
>> >>
>> >> I'm a blind person who happens to be blind and I'm OK with both :). I
>> >> don't even notice the difference.
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> Brandon Keith Biggs
>> >> -----Original Message----- From: Arielle Silverman
>> >> Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:40 PM
>> >> To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> >> Subject: [nabs-l] Are we blind people or people who are blind?
>> >>
>> >> I saw the below article on another list and thought it was very
>> >> interesting. What do you guys think?
>> >>
>> >> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> >> From: LILITH Finkler <lilithfinkler at hotmail.com>
>> >> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:41:42 -0300
>> >> Subject: New Article: "Person-first language: Noble intent but to what
>> >> effect?"
>> >> To: DISABILITY-RESEARCH at jiscmail.ac.uk
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Dear Colleagues. Please see article below from the current issue of
>> >> the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The journal is publishing a
>> >> series on "person first language".
>> >>
>> Lilith===========================================================================================
>> >> CMAJ December 11, 2012 vol. 184 no. 18 First published November 5,
>> >> 2012, doi: 10.1503/cmaj.109-4319© 2012 Canadian Medical Association or
>> >> its licensorsAll editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of
>> >> the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical
>> >> Association.NewsPerson-first language: Noble intent but to what
>> >> effect?Roger Collier-Author AffiliationsCMAJKenneth St. Louis grew up
>> >> with a moderate stutter that he eventually got under control in
>> >> college. His struggle with stuttering led to an interest in
>> >> speech-language pathology, which he now teaches at West Virginia
>> >> University in Morgan-town. St. Louis is an expert in fluency
>> >> disorders, including cluttering, a condition characterized by rapid
>> >> speech with an erratic rhythm. Once, after a journal sent him the
>> >> edited version of a paper he had submitted on cluttering, St. Louis
>> >> noticed something curious.“They changed ‘clutterer’ to ‘person who
>> >> clutters’ all the way through,” says St. Louis.The changes to St.
>> >> Louis’ prose stem from the person-first (or people-first) language
>> >> movement, which began some 20 years ago to promote the concept that a
>> >> person shouldn’t be defined by a diagnosis. By literally putting
>> >> “person” first in language, what was once a label becomes a mere
>> >> characteristic. No longer are there “disabled people.” Instead, there
>> >> are “people with disabilities.”
>> >> No reasonable person would challenge the intent behind person-first
>> >> language. Who, after all, would prefer to be known as a condition
>> >> rather than as a person? But is this massive effort to change the
>> >> language of disability and disease having any effect? Is it actually
>> >> changing attitudes, reducing stigma or improving lives? Skeptics point
>> >> to the nonexistent body of evidence. Advocates claim it starts with
>> >> language and that results will follow.Words are indeed powerful, and
>> >> they can perpetuate hurtful stereotypes and reinforce negative
>> >> attitudes, suggests Kathie Snow, a disability rights advocate who runs
>> >> the “Disability is Natural” website (www.disabilityisnatural.com).
>> >> “People with developmental disabilities have, throughout history, been
>> >> marginalized and devalued because of labels,” she says. “Labels have
>> >> always caused people to be devalued. It has caused people to be put to
>> >> death, to be sterilized against their will.”If a person-first language
>> >> advocate had commissioned this sign, it would read: “CHILD WITH AUTISM
>> >> AREA.”Image courtesy of © 2012 ThinkstockSuggesting that a diagnosis
>> >> is a person’s most important characteristic reinforces the
>> >> all-too-common opinion that people with disabilities have limited
>> >> potential and society should expect little from them, Snow has written
>> >> (www.disabilityisnatural.com/images/PDF/pfl09.pdf). She suggests that
>> >> the disability rights movement is changing language to be more
>> >> respectful rather than merely politically correct, in a similar vein
>> >> to past efforts by civil rights and women’s movements.“If people with
>> >> disabilities are to be included in all aspects of society, and if
>> >> they’re to be respected and valued as our fellow citizens, we must
>> >> stop using language that marginalizes and sets them apart,” wrote
>> >> Snow. “History tells us that the first way to devalue a person is
>> >> through language.”
>> >> The global movement to promote person-first language has been
>> >> extremely successful. It is now standard in government documents
>> >> around the world, as well as in scientific journals and many other
>> >> publications. Widespread adoption of this grammatical structure is the
>> >> reason that, present sentence excepted, this article will not refer to
>> >> a stutterer, a cancer patient, a diabetic, a blind man, a deaf woman
>> >> or an autistic person. It might, however, refer to a person who
>> >> stutters, a person with cancer, a person with diabetes, a man who is
>> >> visually impaired, a woman who is hearing impaired or a person with
>> >> autism.
>> >> But some people, including members of several disability groups,
>> >> aren’t big fans of person-first language. They claim it is merely
>> >> political correctness run amok, verbosity intended to spare hurt
>> >> feelings yet accomplishing little more than turning one word into two
>> >> or more words. Even worse, some suggest, tucking the names of diseases
>> >> and disabilities in the shadows may have the opposite effect of what
>> >> is intended. It could stigmatize words that were never considered
>> >> derogatory or pejorative in the first place.
>> >> St. Louis’ introduction to person-first language made him wonder if it
>> >> actually had an effect on opinions about words used to label people
>> >> with various conditions, including speech, language and hearing
>> >> disorders (J Fluency Discord 1999;24:1­24). He found that the
>> >> person-first version of a label was regarded as “significantly more
>> >> positive” in only 2% of comparisons. “For example,” wrote St. Louis,
>> >> “with the exception of widely known terms that have stigmatized
>> >> individuals (e.g., ‘Moron’), terms identifying serious mental illness
>> >> (‘psychosis’) or dreaded diseases (‘leprosy’), person-first
>> >> nomenclature made little difference in minimizing negative
>> >> reactions.”There is no evidence that person-first terminology enhances
>> >> sensitivity or reduces insensitivity, notes St. Louis, and yet health
>> >> professionals and scholarly publishers are now among its strongest
>> >> advocates. Good luck getting your work published in a scientific
>> >> journal if you don’t conform. In the field of speech-language
>> >> pathology, terms such as “person who stutters” or “child who stutters”
>> >> have even become acronyms (PWS and CWS). To St. Louis, the notion that
>> >> calling someone a PWS is more sensitive than calling them a stutterer
>> >> is nothing short of ludicrous.
>> >> “It’s not really about sensitivity,” says St. Louis. “It’s about: This
>> >> is just the way it’s done.”Furthermore, suggests St. Louis, the
>> >> sentiment expressed in communication is far more important than the
>> >> linguistic circumlocutions present in the language. “If you are going
>> >> to be a jerk,” he says, “you can be just as much of a jerk using
>> >> person-first language as using the direct label.”Members of some
>> >> disability groups have become so fed up with pressure to adopt
>> >> person-first language that they have begun pushing back. The National
>> >> Federation for the Blind in the United States has long opposed what it
>> >> perceives as “an unholy crusade” to force everyone to use person-first
>> >> language
>> >> (www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm09/bm0903/bm090309.htm).The
>> >> federation’s main publication, the Braille Monitor, has unequivocally
>> >> defended its right “to cling to its conviction that vigorous prose is
>> >> a virtue and that blind people can stand to read one of the adjectives
>> >> that describe them before they arrive at the noun”
>> >> (www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm09/bm0903/bm090308.htm).
>> >> “Blind people we are, and we are content to be described as such.”
>> >> Many people with diabetes are also surprised to learn that the word
>> >> “diabetic” is now considered taboo. Who turned it into a moniker non
>> >> grata? Not people with diabetes, apparently. Type “diabetic” and
>> >> “tattoo” into Google Images and you’ll find thousands of people with
>> >> the condition who have the word permanently inked on their skin. One
>> >> of those people is Tanyss Christie, a mother of two from Chilliwack,
>> >> British Columbia, who has “diabetic” tattooed on her inner left wrist
>> >> in a style similar to a MedicAlert bracelet. Would she be upset if
>> >> someone called her a diabetic?“No, I wouldn’t be offended,” Christie
>> >> writes in an email. “Diabetes is me and who I am and I don’t need to
>> >> hide that; I am a diabetic and have been for 29 years. I say it strong
>> >> because I survived such a hard disease and hope to [for] many more
>> >> years.”
>> >> The topic of person-first language seems to stir particularly heated
>> >> debate among people affected by autism. In general, parents of
>> >> children with autism appear to prefer person-first language. Some even
>> >> suggest that saying “autistic child” is not much better than referring
>> >> to someone with cancer as a “cancerous person.” Many adults with
>> >> autism, however, believe that autism is central to their identity and
>> >> prefer to use terms such as “autistic person.” This has been called
>> >> identify-first language.Person-first language implies that autism can
>> >> be separated from the person, which simply isn’t true, according to
>> >> Jim Sinclair, an adult with autism who cofounded the Autism Network
>> >> International. In a widely circulated essay, Sinclair wrote that
>> >> autism is such an essential feature of his being that to describe
>> >> himself as a person with autism would be akin to calling a parent a
>> >> “person with offspring” or calling a man a person “with maleness”
>> >> (www.cafemom.com/journals/read/436505). Attempting to separate autism
>> >> from personhood also “suggests that autism is something bad — so bad
>> >> that it isn’t even consistent with being a person.”
>> >> Then there are those who take a more moderate position, varying their
>> >> language according to their audience so that focus remains on their
>> >> message rather than how it’s delivered. This is the approach taken by
>> >> Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, a writer who chronicles her “journeys with
>> >> autism” on her blog (www.journeyswithautism.com).“I will use
>> >> person-first (i.e. person with autism) and identity-first (i.e
>> >> autistic person) language interchangeably, partly for the sake of
>> >> variety, and partly to resist the ideologues on both sides. I will
>> >> also vary my language to suit my audience. For example, if I’m talking
>> >> with people who prefer identity-first language, I will use it. If I am
>> >> talking to people who prefer person-first language, I will use it. If
>> >> I am talking to a mixed group, I will likely mix my terminology,”
>> >> Cohen-Rottenberg writes in an email. “I find that people’s feelings
>> >> can run so high regarding language that, even if I find person-first
>> >> language very problematic, I’ll use it with people who favor it so
>> >> that we don’t end up getting derailed into language discussions and
>> >> away from the issue at hand.”Editor’s note: First of a multipart
>> >> series.Part II: Person-first language: What it means to be a
>> >> “person”(www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4322).Part III:
>> >> Person-first language: Laudable cause, horrible
>> >> prose(www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4338).Facebook Google+
>> >> LinkedIn Reddit StumbleUpon TwitterWhat's this?Responses to this
>> >> articleMaria Z GittaDo we really need to ask 'to what effect'?CMAJ
>> >> published online November 7, 2012Full Text
>> >> ________________End of message________________
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