[nabs-l] Blindness and Race

Thu Jan 23 15:42:48 UTC 2014

I have been around many a blind person who are extremely racist; one of the
most craziest things I have ever seen. I have heard the slirs and
everything.  All of the racism I have seen is not through culture;
sometimes, it is straight hate. I can understand an individual preferring
certain cultures over others, but not disliking someone just do to a skin
color, especially if they have never really met the person, blind or
sighted.  I don't prefer everyone's culture, though I think they are all
necessary; However, I would always want to give a person a chance.  I can
move in and out of several cultures as a way of blending in, but that does
not mean I identify completely with said culture.  I could not see myself
deciding to dislike a man or woman because they were of a different race.  

-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Silveira
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 9:38 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Blindness and Race

This is a great story, Arielle.  Like you, I used to think that blind people
are "less" racist than sighted people.  I don't necessarily think this is
true.  I think that blind people may be less apt to understand why people
are judged by their skin color.  I think the racism that blind people
develop is more based on a cultural prejudice than one solely based on skin
color.  For example, a lot of black people have a certain way of speaking.
That accent and speech pattern is due to their cultural and educational
background, not to their skin color.  A blind person can often tell when a
person is black and develop a prejudice, but again, that is a cultural
prejudice, not one based on skin color.  I remember when I first learned
about the races in the first grade, I could not for the life of me
understand why people judged others based on their skin color.  I still have
a hard time grasping that fact.  I think we, as a society, pay too much
attention to what is on the outside and not enough attention to what is
inside of a person--what makes you Arielle or me Ryan.  I think that,
because we cannot see skin color, we are more apt to judge a person based on
their personality which is, in a way, somewhat less judgemental than someone
who simply looks at a person and judges them by their skin color.  That is
not to say that we don't have our prejudices, but we are somewhat less
judgemental because we can't see skin color or other physical traits.
Thanks for sharing your story; it makes for a great discussion.

Ryan

On 1/22/14, Elif Emir <filerime at gmail.com> wrote:
> I love reading your story. Thanks for sharing it.
> Elif
>
> 2014/1/22, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com>:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Since I'm blind and also a social psychologist, I think this is a 
>> fascinating topic. I am curious how other congenitally blind folks 
>> learned about race and in what context. The stories relayed in the 
>> article are tragic and show us just how far we still have to go as a 
>> society.
>> I will never forget the day in second grade when we watched a movie 
>> in school about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. 
>> They were talking about a time when a group called white people was 
>> treated better than a group called black people in certain parts of 
>> the country. I had never heard of white people or black people 
>> before. My parents never discussed race at home, partly because they 
>> were progressive and didn't think race was relevant, and partly 
>> because we lived in a very un-diverse neighborhood where practically 
>> everybody was white. I'd met a few black people by then, apparently, 
>> but didn't know the difference. Of course the movie never said 
>> anything about white and black people having different skin colors, 
>> since that was supposed to be obvious for sighted people. So I went 
>> through the lesson thinking the whole conflict and status difference 
>> between white and black people was completely arbitrary and very strange.
>> When I got home I told my family about the movie and asked them if I 
>> was a white person or a black person. I still remember my mother's 
>> hesitation and the surprised tone in her voice when she informed me 
>> that I was white. I also remember asking why the black people in the 
>> 1950's didn't just dress up like white people if they wanted to be 
>> treated better, to which my sister (who was ten, and sighted) 
>> responded with characteristic sarcasm, "Um, it would be a little hard 
>> for them to do that". I didn't understand why it would be hard for 
>> blacks to dress up like whites, but it was apparently obvious to 
>> everyone else in the world, so I didn't ask.
>> In the days and years thereafter, I would often overhear my mom 
>> telling this story to her friends and asserting that my blindness 
>> gave me a special gift of not being able to judge people by their 
>> appearance. I at first thought her hesitation in answering my 
>> question was because I had asked a stupid question. I eventually 
>> realized it was a kind of pride of my naivete. For many years I truly 
>> thought that my blindness protected me from  being racist. I held on 
>> to that because it made me feel like it made up for all the other 
>> ways in which people thought my blindness made me inferior.
>> Eventually, my view was challenged at an NFB convention, when I  told 
>> some of my scholarship committee mentors that I thought blind people 
>> must be less racist than sighted people. They argued that in their 
>> experience this wasn't the case, and that blind people can often 
>> differentiate race by listening. Today, I believe that blind people 
>> are just as capable of developing racist attitudes as sighted people 
>> are. Although being blind allowed me to stay naive longer, and 
>> although I can sometimes, but not always, guess the race of folks I 
>> meet, the main reason for my lack of racial prejudice was from my 
>> background rather than my blindness. My sister obviously figured out 
>> what race meant before I did, even though we grew up in the same 
>> environment. She might have figured it out visually, but she, too, 
>> grew up without having significant racial prejudices.
>> In some ways I am glad that my first exposure to race came from a 
>> lesson about MLK and civil rights. I am not sure how I would have 
>> discovered it otherwise. Perhaps a few years later, when I became 
>> best friends with a girl who lived in south Phoenix and complained 
>> about her black classmates calling her "white bread". Although, 
>> again, I would have just found the comment and the situation 
>> peculiar. Anyway, if I had been sighted, my first introduction to 
>> race might have been different, but probably not worse.
>>
>> Arielle
>>
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--
Ryan L. Silveira

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