[nabs-l] Blindness and Race

[justin williams]

Your point is well taken.  However, not just racist to Blacks, I have also
seen it extend to Asian, Hispanic, and even south pacific islanders.  I've
heard the different racial slurs  to go along with it pertaining to the
Asian or Hispanic.  I have also met those black people who are blind, and
they are at times racist to those who are white.  It's strange to see a room
full of blind people divided among racial lines, yet in the sighted world,
both races would be shunned do to their being blind.  We would all be lumped
together due to our having a visually disability.  The blacks and whites
would miss out on the same job through discrimination due to vision, yet,
within the group, it is segregated due to race.  When traveling to the NFB
conventions, most of the black people are on one bus, and the white people
are on the other. Isn't that something?


-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lillie
Pennington
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 11:27 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Blindness and Race

I think racist blind people are probably associating blacks as a whole as
inferiority. They want to feel above And in control and better than other
people.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 23, 2014, at 9:37 AM, Ryan Silveira <ryan.l.silveira at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> 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

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