[nabs-l] Blindness and Race

Fri Jan 24 01:01:22 UTC 2014

Unfortunately, I think blind people can still form first impressions
and judge others based on superficial criteria. Accents, voice pitch,
firmness of a handshake, body odor, height or weight cues we might get
from hugging or brushing up against a person, etc. We may have less
superficial cues than sighted people have to judge by, but the
human-nature tendency to categorize or judge people based on immediate
first impressions isn't something we are immune to.

Arielle

On 1/23/14, justin williams <justin.williams2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>>
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>
>
> --
> Ryan L. Silveira
>
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