[Nfbf-l] Here is an interesting Article about what I thought was a Blind Role Model

[repcodds at aol.com]

Article  from the INDEPENDENCE TODAY  Newspaper 
October  2009     
N.Y.  Governor Paterson 
Blind to Tools of Success  
By  Deborah Kendrick   
Several  years ago, when I received some mystifyingly bad treatment at the 
hands of  other people who shared my disability, a friend who was both black 
and  blind comforted me with her insight. “Blind people can sometimes be 
like a  basket of crabs,” she told me. “When one of them makes it to the top, 
the  others scramble to pull him down.” Folks I thought to be my peers, in  
other words, were attacking me out of envy.  
I  vowed I would never do that. I would fervently support anyone with any  
disability who achieved success in any field. We should all be one happy  
family, right?  
Then,  following the 2006 elections, alarms went off that challenged that  
personal pledge. The good news was that New York state had elected a  
lieutenant governor who was both black and blind. The more troubling news  was 
that David Paterson, that newly elected official, by declaring that he  didn’t 
use any of those blindness tools – Braille, assistive technology, a  white 
cane – indicated to those who don’t have disabilities that he was  too cool 
for all that nonsense. Those of us who proudly use the tools of  blindness, 
who depend on them to give us a competitive edge in a host of  professional 
and educational environments, tried to be tolerant. I wanted  to be first 
and foremost proud. A blind guy – a sort of brother to me in  the disability 
family – was rising to the top, and it was cause for  serious celebration.  
Of  course, when Eliot Spitzer was caught with his pants down, so to speak, 
 and Paterson rose to the very top of his state, sworn in as New York  
governor on March 17th, 2008, the media made even more noise about how  this 
brilliant guy didn’t need Braille or talking computers or any of that  blind 
nonsense. He had a superhuman memory, we were told, and relied  heavily on 
staff. His staff read important memos and documents into  voicemail messages 
that he listened to at all hours.   
Voicemail  messages? What?  
He’s  governor of one of our most important states, and he doesn’t use a  
computer? Still, I reminded myself to be tolerant. Each of us has  different 
techniques, different ways to accomplish the same goal. One deaf  person 
reads lips. Another uses American Sign Language. Another uses  Signed English. 
And on it goes. The man was governor, after all. He didn’t  have to do 
things the way other blind people do them to earn our support.  He was one of 
us, and we should stand behind him.  
Then  Paterson started doing really dumb things. He didn’t always know the  
facts. He made decisions and then, under pressure of one kind or another,  
reversed them. He appointed a lieutenant governor when nobody was sure he  
was even allowed to do that and who, to add insult to injury, had trampled  
with dirty boots on transportation prospects for New Yorkers with  
disabilities.  
He  seemed to “get it” when he responded with disdain to the "Saturday 
Night  Live" skit that ridiculed his blindness. And yet, he didn’t hesitate to  
grab a few laughs himself at the possible expense of people with  
disabilities when he appeared in a wheelchair for a charity gig.   
More  recently, he has vetoed one bill that would prevent discrimination 
against  people with disabilities in public facilities in his state and 
another  that would require all polling places to be made physically accessible.   
OK,  we could argue, just because he has a disability doesn’t mean he has 
to  always agree with us, supporting every bill that comes down the political 
 pike to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers with disabilities.  
Shouldn’t we still support him? He’s both black and blind, after all.   
The  proverbial “last straw” in struggling to hang on as a cheerleader for 
this  New York governor came when I started seeing references in the press  
linking his failures to his blindness. One New York state senator, Diane  
Savino, was widely quoted as saying, in effect, that hey, even though the  
guy is brilliant, he’s blind, after all, and being blind means he  can’t use 
the same digital tools -- such as e-mail or a Blackberry -- as  his peers.  
Wait  a New York minute! And let me do some deep breathing so as not to do  
anything undignified like spew bad words in my own e-mail or Smartphone  
messages!  
One  headline read: “It’s not his race, it’s his blindness.” Let me set 
the  record straight: “It” -- his failure to lead -- is not because of his 
race  or his blindness. It’s the man himself. But blindness is something I 
know  well and know more than a little bit about with regard to tools and  
techniques, so let me tell you now what I was suppressing all along.   
His  avoidance – since childhood – of tools related to blindness, don’t 
make  him superior to other blind people, but rather inferior. He can’t read  
print but refused to learn Braille. That’s denial to the point of  
masochism. In other words, he’s illiterate by choice! Why, I wonder, if  he’s so “
brilliant” did it take him 12 years to get two advanced degrees,  when lots of 
“ordinary” blind people have obtained those same two degrees  in six? And 
even though the second of those two degrees is a law degree,  he never went 
into practice as a lawyer because he couldn’t pass the bar  exam. Why was 
that? Was it because he couldn’t read Braille or use a  computer? Now, in all 
fairness, I don’t know the answer to that question,  but his explanation is 
that he didn’t receive adequate accommodations. But  what would those 
accommodations be, anyway, for a man who is blind but  doesn’t know how to use any 
of the tools that similarly educated blind  people avail themselves of 
daily?  
You  could say it’s not his fault. When he was a child, New York City 
schools  couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t receive any special education, and 
his  parents moved to a suburb where he could go to public school “unhindered”
  by special ed. Now, maybe that was a good thing. I wasn’t there. But it  
sounds to me like being perceived as sighted was more important to the  
family than getting the best education possible.  
And  so, here we have a 21st-century governor – the first legally  blind 
governor to serve in any state longer than 11 days – and he’s using  1960s or 
'70s tools to do his job. Staffers read materials onto tapes and  into 
voicemail for him. He has no means of prompting himself with notes,  which would 
be effortless had he taken the time to learn to read and write  Braille.  
Had  he been governor in 1975, the tools he now uses would have been 
adequate  because sighted people at the time were using them at the same level of  
sophistication. But those tools now are inadequate.  
Why  doesn’t Paterson use a computer with one of the popular screen-reading 
 programs, such as JAWS or Window-Eyes or System Access? If he did, 99  
percent of all documents generated by other computers could then simply be  
e-mailed to him. If he wanted to travel light, he could carry a netbook (a  
small laptop computer) or a thumb drive, into which staffers could pop  
anything he needed to read. With practice, he could do what blind  professionals 
all over the world do – crank their reading speed up to  several hundred words 
a minute and get through material as quickly as any  sighted politician. 
Add that to his amazing memory, and he could have been  a governor to make us 
proud.  
Why  does he have staffers read newspapers to him? For free, he could sign 
up  for the National Federation of the Blind's NEWSLINE, a telephone service 
 that would enable him to read any of 220 newspapers around the country,  
from any phone anywhere, at any speed he chose. He could zip through  
articles at his own speed as quickly or even quicker than his sighted  peers.  
Now,  this “brilliant” guy is using tools that were state of the art when 
Jimmy  Carter was president, has an approval rating that has dropped at a  
staggering rate, and against even the advice of President Obama, said  he’ll 
run again in 2010. It’s pitiable, really, but I’m not feeling sorry  for 
him. How can I when, along with his own failure, he’s pulling the  overall 
acceptance of and employment opportunities for other blind people  down with 
him?  
I’m  not saying I could do his job. I don’t think I could. But I am saying 
that  lots of people who are blind could and do it brilliantly. He wanted 
so  much to hide his blindness that now, in his appalling unpopularity, it’s  
the one thing that outsiders are interpreting as his weakness. It hasn’t  
been. His weakness has been his own arrogance and denial of reality. It’s  a 
shame. With proper training, he might have done a good job.   
But  he isn’t doing one, and I’m OK with having broken my promise to 
myself. I  know now that just because he has a disability doesn’t mean I have to 
like  him. And if he’s going to fall headlong into the basket, I don’t want 
him  to kick the rest of us down to the bottom as well.  
Deborah  Kendrick is a newspaper columnist, editor and poet. She is 
currently  working on a biography of Dr. Abraham Nemeth.  
  
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