deep seated attitudes

A recent newspaper article reported a story of a blind fellow about to board an airplane.  The flight attendant demanded his cane.  He refused and was told that if he did not surrender it they would call the police and have him removed.  He surrendered the cane but later filed a complaint. 

The reaction among the blind community was interesting.  Some folks were indignant, but more people wondered if there might not be more to the story.  They speculated whether the fellow was hostile or aggressive or rude.  They wanted to wait to hear the airlines side of the story. 

What does it say about a minority who fail to lift up one of their own?  The assumption that this fellow might have provoked such treatment tells us that blind people still question their own social status.  But that is not a surprise.  We blind folks are part of the same community that creates the blind stereotype. 

 

 

Years ago I had a young college student as my helper in the freight room at the drapery factory.  He was a football player at the local JC.  He was Black. 

On his first day I invited him to join me at the local cafe for coffee and pasteries.  Sort of an effort to let him know he was welcome and to introduce him to some of the other local workers. 

We hopped up at the counter in George's Cafe/Tavern.  George, an old Greek, came down the counter and, as he always did, said, "Okay boys, what'll it be?" 

I looked over at the stool my helper had been sitting on.  He was now standing in the middle of the room, fists up and crouched ready to fight.  "What did you call me?"  He demanded. 

Poor old George had the most startled look I'd ever seen on his face. 

"I'm a man!" my helper shouted.  "I'm not a boy". 

"Look around you", I told him.  The cafe was filled with big burley long shoremen and long haul truckers.  "We're all George's boys", I explained. 

The kid settled down long enough to drink his coffee and eat his doughnuts, but he never apologized for his out burst and he never went back to George's cafe. 

This young man's experiences and informal education had been very different than mine.  I understood why he had such a trigger reaction to being called "Boy".  Most of the guys at George's cafe, all white fellows, thought it was a hoot and a holler seeing my helper leap into the room ready to take them all on. 

"He should stay in his place," one big guy said.  "They're all that way," another quipped.

One of the reasons that I am still alive is that I never challenged those big guys.  Any one of them could mop up the floor with me, and would have done so if I'd suggested that they were biggots.  

So, back to the blind fellow boarding the airplane.  What if the thoughtless demand by the flight attendent had triggered an over reaction from him?  Do two wrongs make a right?  How do we begin changing attitudes so deeply ingrained that they are reduced to emotional reactions?  As I say, it's one huge problem.  

 

Curious Carl