[nabs-l] Blindness and Race

Mon Jan 27 05:51:46 UTC 2014

Evening, Arielle,

         A misconception that it seems people maintain is that blind 
people don't have the very same kinds of judging and catagorizing by 
using personal caricturistics such as smell, voice, accent. It fries 
my ass to no end  when ol' Sighty is so consumed with information 
that is delivered via those ocular organs that, it is assumed that 
blind people's existences are absolutely void of the same things that 
for everyone else, is thought to lend lives meaning.  In fact, we 
have tendancies which are equally superficial as ones which ol' 
Sighty seems to cling too, though the one's blind people subscribe 
to, as you pointed out are ones that to us hold meaning as vivid as 
that which ol' Sighty has about skin color. It is true, we are apt to 
notice things like smell, any affects to voice, accents, a particular 
way of speaking. Equally superficial and judgmental, just as 
meaningless to say, a sighted person as skin color is to us.
Does this make sense?
for today, Car
408-209-3239

   At 05:01 PM 1/23/2014, Arielle Silverman wrote:
>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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