about segregation and the blind

 

Because this list focuses mostly on blind issues, we have become hung up on segregation of the blind in the work place.  What we are referring to as, "Sheltered work shops" or"Sweat Shops". 

So let's get real here.  Segregation is the way our society works. 

I spent 8 years working in a drapery factory in Seattle, that made most blind work shops look decent.  And who do you think worked there?   A cross section of America?  Golly no.  120 women and about 12 men.  And were these women a cross section of American women?  Golly no.  These were Low Income Women.  Mostly single, middle-aged women abandoned by their husbands, left with children to raise and debts run up by the now absent man.  They were paid wage minimum. 

Mostly middle-aged and unskilled in work outside the home. 

That, my friends is a segregated work place.  In fact, the office girls(note the reference to girls? Not my word, but the term used by the boss), who made barely more than the factory women, only associated with other office girls. 

The boys in the shipping room hung out with the boys in the shipping room. 

As an aside, the women in the factory called me, the boy.  "Where's that boy?  He's supposed to have my yardage up." 

I told them that if I ever hoped to be paid a man's wage I'd have to be referred to as a man.  They were in their fifties, mostly, and I was in my early twenties.  So they continued calling me boy until I began to refer to them as, "Old ladies", and, "Granny".  After a while they settled on calling me, Carl. 

But the point is, segregation is the way of the world in the work place.  And it's the way of our society in our neighborhoods.  No millionaire ever moved into my neighborhood.  And I certainly can't afford to buy in the wealthy, gated sections of Seattle. 

My people, the Working Class, lived in communities of small, mostly neat homes.  The majority of us walked to the bus stop and rode to work and back.  The folks over on Mercer Island jumped into their Caddies or expensive sports cars and drove to their private parking at their office building. 

Here on the Olympic Peninsula there is hardly a Black person to be found.  The Native Americans mostly live on the reservations

There are various Chinese and Mexican restaurants, but I have no idea where their owners live or shop.  We never run into them in the local stores. 

We live in a segregated society, and we just take most of it as the way things are, never wondering how it got this way.  Until it comes to the work shops for the blind. 

The segregated work shop is not the problem.  I repeat, the Blind Work Shops are not the problem.  The problem is that we blind people carry with us a negative stereotype that we are having a Hell of a time shaking.  Those attitudes have us segregated, whether we work together in one place or are spread out across the land.  We are the Blind.  That is what segregates us. 

 

Curious Carl