[nfbmi-talk] regarding the commission board meeting

[Christine Boone]

Lydia, We appreciate you so much, and are proud to have you as our sister and our colleague in this movement.  I don't think that I would ever be offended by a "token sighted person" reference from you.  
You are indeed correct though about the incredible level of disrespect that is shown to blind people by many  folks on the commission staff.  You see, Pat Cannon himself has long set an example of disrespecting blind people by the comments that he is continually making about anyone whose name happens to come up in conversation, who happens to be blind.  When a sighted person is mentioned in passing, in his hearing, Pat generally does not comment about the person's character, history, background or anything else that is not directly relevant to the conversation.  When a blind person is named however, it is a different story.  Pat will launch into some kind of one-sided discussion about the person.  The talk usually begins with a snipe, or a backhanded compliment; something like:
XXXXXX is a really intelligent guy.  It is just too bad that he can't seem to find a way of using that intellect for good.  Or  he might run on like this:    XXXXX used to be a client of ours.  She has other issues you know, I think they might be symptoms of the same disease that caused her blindness.  Anyway, that has made life interesting.  She just doesn't seem to have any judgment, or, her mind doesn't work like yours or mine, or she has a really over-inflated opinion of her own talents...

And so you see, there is this terrible, disrespectful behavior being modeled all the time.  Pat's favorite venue for these delightful conversations will be a conference room, with a dozen or so people gathered and waiting for a meeting to start.  Given this, there is small wonder that the staff are often disrespectful to blind people.  I was pleased to see Larry stand up to Pat when that man interrupted  when he was speaking.   We would all do well to remember that   Pat Cannon works for us as tax payers, just as I did when I was privileged to serve the citizens of Pennsylvania.  
All for now.

CB
 
On Mar 20, 2011, at 6:11 PM, Lydia Schuck wrote:

> Hello list friends,  Just to let you know first off that I  get the
> digest format, so I only get all the emails together once a day or
> whenever the file gets to a certain size.  sometimes my replies seem out
> of sequence because of that.  Just can't quite get to email often enough
> to get the emails individually....
> 
> So by the time I wrote about Michael King, several others had.  In
> thinking about it today, when people are called up to talk to the
> commission board at the Victor Building, they do not sit near a door, and
> could never get away with strolling in an out and writing notes, etc.   I
> will try to use my eyeballs to notice at the beginning of the meeting
> next time, to ensure that the people called to the table to discuss do
> not have easy access to the door, or point it out right away next time. 
> As a sighted person, I am very annoyed with the disrespect shown to blind
> people when sighted attendees use body language like raised eyebrows to
> communicate on a separate channel.  I realized I did it with my sighted
> daughters while my blind daughter, who talks on and on because of her
> autism obsessions, didn't even know I had had a communication with one of
> her sisters while she rambled on.  Had to really work on stopping that,
> because it encouraged my sighted daughters in bad behavior.
> 
> I sometimes make comments about needing to be made useful as the "token
> sighted person".  I am teasing of course, sometimes in poor taste I
> guess.   You would need to tell me if I should stop it.  But I will use
> my token sightedness to try to keep that kind of bad behavior from
> happening at the board table.  Lydia
> 
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