[nfbwatlk] Yes, I’m blind. No, I don’t need help crossing the street., The Washington Post, January 21 2016

[Nightingale, Noel]

Link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/21/yes-im-blind-no-i-dont-need-help-crossing-the-street/

Text:
Yes, I’m blind. No, I don’t need help crossing the street.
Well-meaning strangers often don't realize that the blind are perfectly capable of navigating the world.
By Daniel J. Solomon
January 21 2016
Daniel J. Solomon is a senior at Harvard and a writer living in Massachusetts.

I am sitting in the local Dunkin Donuts, working through a thesis reading, when the manager poses a question: “What happened to your eyes?” I’m legally blind, and it’s obvious. I squint at signs and lean into books. I look different, too, with a right eye blood-shot red with the remnants of a cyst removed in the sixth grade.

I can’t go a month without strangers reminding me of this. I’ve been offered help going up stairs and navigating the airport. Once in Jerusalem a woman insisted I take her hand to cross the road. Sometimes it’s more explicit and less considerate, like that manager’s demand for information. At a recent Sabbath dinner, a new acquaintance blurted out, “So you’re blind, right?” He then tried to serve me food.

I’ve gotten used to these episodes, but they’re still exasperating. Perhaps it’s the New Yorker in me, but I request assistance if I need it and I relish anonymity. I’ve ridden the trains alone since high school, when I commuted between Queens and Manhattan. I’ve mastered the streets of Cambridge, Mass., where I attend college, and the foreign capitals where I’ve spent summers. Google Maps deserves much of the credit, as does the mobility training I received as a child, which taught me to listen for the direction of traffic, note landmarks and memorize frequently traveled routes. I draw on those lessons particularly at night, when the vision I do have can fail me.

Not that this stops people from intruding, or from reaching conclusions about me. Some talk slowly. Others decide that their queries are best addressed to friends or relatives. I used to walk around in Harvard apparel to preempt that behavior.

I’ve long wondered what motivates the questions. One-fifth of Americans now label themselves disabled, but a woeful lack of awareness around disability-related issues persists. That extends even to groups with a strong anti-oppression focus. When I participated in Harvard’s First-Year Urban Program — a social justice-themed pre-orientation — there was no discussion of ability status.

Much of it also seems related to identity formation. Categories emerge in doubles, and “able-bodied” only makes sense when set against “disabled.” In questioning me, able-bodied people affirm themselves as such, with the associations that entails. This might coexist with genuine concern and goodwill — charity gives aid to the recipient at the same time as it articulates social hierarchies.

The strangers who reduce me to a stereotype and deny me agency are voicing sentiments deeply rooted in our culture. In the Gospels, Jesus heals the blind, leading them from sin to redemption. In “Oedipus the King,” the metaphor operates in reverse. Teiresias, an “offspring of endless Night,” predicts his ruler’s downfall. These dual tropes — the blind man who cannot “see,” and the blind man who can “see”— fill our language as well as our literature. One gains “enlightenment.” “Justice is blind,” according to the phrase.

Maybe the blind receive kinder coverage from the canon than some disabled groups do. We aren’t abandoned to the elements or shut up in attics. But these metaphors help establish us as an Other.

Particularly hurtful to me has been discovering these tropes in the music I love. Leonard Cohen is a trusted companion for hard times. “Suzanne” eases the pain of frustrated desire. When I’m depressed, I listen to “Bird on the Wire.” But one song complicates the well-earned affection I feel for the folkie and his repertoire: “Please Don’t Pass Me By.” Inspired by Cohen’s sidewalk encounter with a blind person and “curious mutilations of the human form,” it’s intended as an allegory on mankind’s brokenness. But I can never sing along to the tune — it reflects the gripes I have with how the able-bodied view people like me.

It’s difficult to live in a society that draws lines between the blind and sighted. Sometimes I think about buying sunglasses, but then figure I shouldn’t hide my eyes for the benefit of strangers. Other times I want to lash out at questioners, but then remember the burden of education falls to me, fairly or not.

This isn’t a call to turn away from others, especially if someone appears in imminent danger. Friends have prevented me from getting hit by a car and assisted me with tasks that require good hand-eye coordination. But they’ve pitched in without implying I’m deficient, and many have been self-critical about the biases they’ve absorbed from the culture. Striking that sort of balance in the wider world seems a worthy, if elusive, goal.

I can’t solve these dilemmas. I don’t speak for all blind or disabled people. But to riff on Cohen, here’s a plea to folks on the street and in the coffee shop: Please pass me by.