[nabs-l] Blindness and Race

Sat Jan 25 03:47:52 UTC 2014

I have "Blue Eyes", and I'm NOT Ol'Whitey or Ol'Sighty. just sayin'
At 05:39 PM 1/23/2014, you wrote:
>Wow.  I agree with Ryan.  WE pay too much attention to the 
>outside.  We judge too much by the person's hair, eye color, and so 
>on.  I remember listening to a documentary in which a social worker 
>purposefully judged the person by his eye color.  She separated a 
>group of people by eye cfolor, and made the blue eyed people feel so 
>bad it turned into a nightmare.  Her exercise, she said, taught the 
>people about how discrimination works.
>Beth
>
>On 1/23/2014 7:37 AM, Ryan Silveira 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
>>>>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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