[blindkid] Those Amazing Inspiring Blind People

Wed May 29 04:44:36 UTC 2013

He could become a champion in the Braille challenge someday! The
Braille Challenge wasn't around in my day, but I know many children
who have won over the years. Reading Braille isn't impressive but
winning any kind of reading competition (Braille or print) is an
excellent thing!
Arielle

On 5/28/13, pburmahln at yahoo.com <pburmahln at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So true Arielle. Even at the tender age of 4 I can tell that Jack does not
> want a big deal to be made out of his blindness. In fact if you ask him, he
> will tell you that he isn't blind! We don't feel sorry for him. We know that
> even though he has LCA, he has and will have a privileged life that a lot of
> sighted kids will not have. Reading braille won't impress me, but if he is a
> Braille champion I might congratulate him, lol!!
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 28, 2013, at 8:22 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> On the NFB student list we have gotten into a discussion about how to
>> handle comments from the public about how amazing, inspiring, and
>> courageous we are for doing ordinary things. I shared some of my
>> experiences with this growing up and how it made me feel  about myself
>> and my abilities, and wanted to repost my remarks to this list as
>> well, since it might be informative for parents. I don't think my
>> parents realized how these kinds of well-intentioned comments affected
>> me.
>>
>> Hi all,
>> I think some great points have been made here. When someone tells me I
>> am amazing or inspiring or courageous or whatever, I don't like it
>> because it implies a lower standard. There's always part of that
>> compliment that goes unstated: "You're amazing......For a blind
>> person". It's really a backhanded insult to other blind people, even
>> though it may not be intended that way. Also, I don't like being told
>> that I must have overcome great obstacles or that I must have great
>> perseverance and passion to get to where I am today, because I don't
>> think that's true. My blindness hasn't interfered much with my
>> educational achievements and compared with many others my life has
>> been over-privileged. When people make these assumptions I feel they
>> are judging me based on blindness without knowing much else about me,
>> my upbringing or anything I've done.
>> I also think that the "amazing" comments are particularly tough on
>> blind youth who also happen to be high achievers. It's hard to know
>> how to interpret these comments and when we are truly amazing vs. just
>> exceeding people's low standards. And sometimes, being an inspiration
>> is just too much extra pressure when our lives are already filled with
>> a lot of internal and external demands.
>> When I was growing up, I got used to these accolades because my
>> parents had many friends who would marvel at my accomplishments. When
>> I was young I was often asked to show off my Braille reading for
>> company and this just completely blew people away. Then as I grew I
>> was a high achiever in school and won some awards for spelling bees
>> and things like that. They deserved recognition, but probably not to
>> the level that I got. One night when I was ten, I wrote down some
>> musings about how I felt about blindness and dealing with sighted
>> kids. My mother ran across my writing on the family computer and
>> through a random string of events, what I wrote got published in our
>> local paper. Then when I was eleven, a magazine editor read the
>> newspaper article and was so amazed and inspired that she asked me to
>> write a column for her magazine. This of course only compounded
>> people's awe and amazement in what I could do, since not only was I
>> blind but I was also famous. It took several years, but I eventually
>> realized that I wasn't an amazing writer. I was a decent writer, but
>> not particularly outstanding at it, and not good at fiction or poetry
>> at all. The only reason people were so impressed with my writing was
>> because I wrote about blindness and that was a topic that intrigued
>> people. I had to get a lot of painful criticism on my writing before I
>> eventually realized I wasn't as outstanding as those folks made me out
>> to be. Around the time I came to that epiphany, I also began to resent
>> all the accolades. I remember thinking, at the age of fifteen, that
>> "adults always treat me like I'm five and fifty at the same time. But
>> I just want to be a normal 15-year-old girl!" I felt like on one hand,
>> I was being held to an impossibly high standard--expected to be an
>> amazing writer, an inspiration to all--and on the other hand, held to
>> an extremely low standard--expected not to be capable of basic
>> independence. People would praise my writing but then worry about my
>> ability to walk across a room. I just wanted to blend into the crowd
>> of teenagers and gossip about boys and clothes (well, mostly just
>> boys) instead.
>> Then, at the end of ninth grade, I "accidentally on purpose" failed my
>> algebra final and earned my first B on my report card. There were some
>> problems on the final that were hard and I didn't feel like answering
>> on the last day of school, so I skipped them. I didn't intend to
>> fail--I think I just got a little overconfident about my ability to
>> earn straight A's. But I also wonder if on a less conscious level, I
>> bombed the test so I could prove to myself and others that I was a
>> human being and I was capable of screwing up--and not always an
>> inspiration. Just a week before that final exam, I remember my algebra
>> teacher admitting that he had doubted my ability to pass his class at
>> the beginning of the year, but that he was totally impressed with my
>> performance. I remember being angry at him for assuming I wouldn't
>> succeed in his class just because I was blind. And so perhaps,
>> ironically, I failed his test to try to show him I wasn't amazing, I
>> wasn't a superhero, I was just a normal teenager doing the best I
>> could to succeed in school.
>> OK, enough rambling about my childhood, but I do think that the
>> unnecessary recognition we get from the public can be just as damaging
>> as true discrimination, especially when we are young and trying to
>> figure out where our true talents are. None of us should be forced
>> into the position of inspiring others. As first-class citizens, we
>> have the right to achieve at the level we wish to achieve at, and we
>> have a right to accurate feedback about how well we're doing at
>> something. Fortunately, as others have stated, there are sighted folks
>> with high expectations who are willing to hold us up to rigorous
>> standards and to give us a true picture of our strengths and
>> weaknesses.
>> Best,
>> Arielle
>>
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