discrimination

I think that too often we forget that we
blind people are seen by the general public as Blind People, with
blindness being the only commonality, and then, rather than seeing an
individual, the blind person is seen through the overlay of the
stereotype in use at the time.    While this stereotype varies
somewhat over generations and from culture to culture, it does have
some basic negative features.  Since we live in a world where sight is
the dominant sense, we blind people are seen as inferior to the
sighted population, simply because we lack that most important sense.
Because we are so few in number, within the total population, and
since most sighted people do not have close relations with someone who
is blind, using the stereotype gives the public a point of reference.
We are seen as basically helpless, dependent upon sighted people for
our most basic needs, somewhat slow, and gentle natured.
We can be taught to play musical instruments, and under sighted
supervision we can be put to simple tasks such as broom winding or
weaving.
Blind people who become visible to the public, those who do hold
competitive jobs, attend colleges, marry and raise children, are seen
by the general public as, "Special" or, "Exceptional".  Simple, normal
acts by a blind person draw comments from sighted folks who are not
used to seeing blind people out and about.  At a bus stop one day, I
bent to tie a loose shoe string.  As I stood up, a woman standing
close by exclaimed, "You do so wonderfully well!"
Why would this woman feel called upon to say such a thing?  She would
never have said this to me if I were sighted.  And of course she could
see that I was blind because I was using a White Travel Cane.  Without
asking this woman, I am certain that she could not imagine tying her
own shoelace if she could not see it.  But the funny part, to me, was
that she did not mention that she thought I was amazing because I had
found the bus stop by myself.  Maybe she thought some sighted person
dropped me there?
My wife and I entered a restaurant.  My wife is fully sighted.  We sat
at a table for two, one across from the other.  We ordered our dinner
and we both ordered coffee.  The waitress brought a pot of coffee and
poured my wife's coffee.  She then turned to my cup, filling it and
saying, "Be careful, it's hot!"  I said, "Thank you, that's the way I
like it", and rather than letting it go, I looked at my wife, touched
her cup and said, "Be careful, yours is hot, too".
That was not nice of me to do that.  The waitress had only her
stereotypical image of blindness to guide her, and she was trying to
be helpful.  I might have been better to have said, "Thank you.
That's very helpful.  Very hot is the way I like my coffee."
Over the years that I've worked in the field of work with the blind, I
have met blind people who tell me that they never faced
discrimination.  But when we spend any time together, I come to
understand that activities I consider to be discriminatory, are seen
by them as activities extended to blind and sighted alike.
A fellow and I entered a coffee shop for a bite of lunch.  Two blind
men.  The young waitress rushed over and said "Right this way".  She
grabbed my cane and pulled me to the first table past the door.  I
said, "We'd like to sit further back, please".  "Ah," she stammered,
"The other tables are not cleared yet".  My friend said, "This will be
fine", and sat with his back to the exit door.  Each time a customer
left, the freezing wind blew onto us.  And other customers entered
behind us and were taken back to tables that we had been told were
dirty.
We blind people live in a sighted world and become used to little
discrimination's.  If we are aware, and if we are clever, we can often
use them to our advantage.  But we also need to be aware of much
bigger discrimination.  Employment is one place where discrimination
becomes a serious issue.  That is a subject for a long discussion by
itself.
Economics is another area.  The lower we are on the economic ladder,
the greater is the discrimination.  At the top extreme we met several
wealthy individuals.  In each of these cases we were informed that
there was really nothing we could do to assist them, unless we could
bring back their sight...and with the three men I have in mind, they
wanted their youth, too.  But in each case, they had hired help.  One
man had a "Man's Man" to lay out his clothes, assist him in showering,
dressing and grooming, and guiding from room to room when needed.  A
cook prepared his meals and served him.  A housekeeper came on a
regular schedule and so did the gardener.
At the other end of town, the other side of the tracks as they used to
say, we visited an elderly woman.  She had been legally blind her
entire life, and more recently she had lost almost all of her limited
sight.  She had worked for many years at the Seattle Light House for
the Blind, but age and health had forced her to retire.  She had
earned such low wages that she depended mostly upon SSI and Medicaid
for a very bare existence.  Still, this woman learned to use a White
cane well enough to get a couple of blocks to the super market.  There
she had to wait until a clerk or stocker had the time to walk around
the store and help her select her groceries.  She had never learned to
keep her money straight, so she simply opened her wallet and asked the
clerk to "help yourself".
At home she used a microwave for all of her hot meals.  She had burned
up a pot one day and the landlord shut off her cook stove, saying that
it was a wonder she hadn't burned the place down long before.  And
maybe he had a point!  The build up of grease on the stove was not
conducive to even wanting to touch it.  She had been receiving some
in-house assistance, some three hours three days per week, but that
had been cut back to two hours twice a week.  I could not tell what
the care worker did, since there was greasy residue on everything,
stuff strewn around, piles of stuff on every flat surface and crumbs
on the furniture.
Former VR Counselors told me that they had "given up" because she just
refused to take better care of herself.
And by the time she was referred to us, it was pretty much true.  We
tried teaching her to organize her apartment.  She said she was always
too tired, and besides, she was so nervous that she just lost her
temper if she tried.  We went through a long list of ADL(adult daily
living) skills.  She wanted none of them.
We provided this woman with an audio watch and put touch dots on her
microwave and washer and dryer, and closed her.
The System looks at people such as this woman as not being capable of
being rehabilitated.  But here's my question:  Is this woman any more
or any less capable than the wealthy man who hires everything done for
him?
In fact, could we make a case that the woman is living more
independently than the wealthy man?
Once we get past the fact that we would rather be in his place, when
we become old and blind, wouldn't you think him to be quite dependent,
if you worked for him?
Yet, the woman comes and goes to the store on her own.  She has
adapted to using her microwave, and she is not going hungry.  Sure,
she lives in a mess that none of us would want to live in, but it is,
after all, her mess.  And she knows her way around it all.
But when the sighted public sees the two of these people, the rich man
with his attendants, and the poor woman with her piles of stuff, which
one do you believe fits the public stereotype best?
My bet is that the public sees the old woman as the helpless, simple
minded, lazy, dependent person.
And there lies the real discrimination.  We Americans discriminate
according to wealth.  And we do it so naturally that we never even see
it for what it is.

Carl Jarvis