[rehab] article from Debra Kendrick

[Sherri]

Article from the INDEPENDENCE TODAY 
Newspaper<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = 
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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.

Governor Paterson clean shaven. A new image
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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