Miriam,
Despite whatever I say at any particular moment, I am, deep down
inside, an optimist...with a tinge of pessimism.
In some areas we humans have come a long way, making life longer,
safer and giving ourselves more options than at any other time in
history. That is, we in the more affluent countries have done so. In
those emerging nations, and those nations involved in war, it's
another story completely. But at another level, we have not advanced
much at all. We seem to be bossy at heart, possessive when it comes
to sharing our possessions and covetous of our neighbor's possessions.
If it turns out that this is part of the basic human nature, the same
nature that has been useful in developing our civilization, and we are
not able to alter it enough to learn to live together and work
together on the Species Threatening challenges facing us, then we will
become a failed experiment.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Your description of how the NFB functioned when you were first a member,
sounds like all of the descriptions I've read of how the Communist Party
functioned here and in other countries. And since, in those other countries,
there was always outside resistance from the western capitalist nations, the
Communist governments always had a rationale for why they had to imprison
political dissidents and disallow free elections. There are always outside
enemies and they are always the excuse for what governments do. I've just
begun reading another fiction book which takes place during the time when
Europeans were settling in what is now, North America. This is back in the
1600's when the Puritans had recently arrived in Massachusetts. It
describes an attack on a settlement by Native Americans. This, by the way,
is a book which is based on research, is sympathetic toward the Indians, and
a lot less so, toward the Puritan mentality. Anyway, it is quite a brutal
attack. Children are murdered without a thought. Some men are scalped. Some
people are taken by the Indians, as slaves. It is obvius from the story,
that the Indians see the white folks as rather unclean, (the settlers don't
believe in bathing during the cold weather), and basically uncivilized. In
order to turn them into useful slaves, the Indians have to teach them
appropriate behavior. They give orders, but the white people don't
understand what they're saying. So sometimes, they indicate with gestures,
what they want done. If the slaves are recalcitrant, they hit them with a
club until they behave. It all seems quite realistic to me. And it makes me
wonder about humanity. We attack people who get in our way and who are
different from us. Taking slaves after conquering another people, appears to
be rather natural. The Greeks did it. The Romans did it. The Africans did
it, etc. It is rather discouraging to those of us who used to believe that
human progress is possible.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2017 10:48 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: For White America, It's 'Happy Days' Again
Back in the days when I was a card carrying member of the NFB, my focus was
still on the concept that "education" would resolve all our prejudices.
This was a carry over from my college days, despite the fact that many of my
classmates were budding elitists, developing "intellectual" justification
for the prejudices they carried with them into college. Which is exactly
what I was doing, from my own upbringing. But one of Man's great abilities,
as well as one of Man's great disabilities, is the ability to
compartmentalize. Anyway, I bought Kenneth Jernigan's preaching about this
army of highly skilled, independent blind people going forth and spreading
the Word, and educating the entire nation of our equal status.
I closed my eyes...funny statement...to the obvious fact that the NFB was an
elitist organization from its inception, proclaiming that the Blind knew who
they were and they would never go back. "The blind leading the blind". But
just like the statement, "of the people, by the people and for the people",
no NFB member asked, "which blind people are leading the blind"? The fact
is that the organization was built upon a familiar model. We had our
all-knowing leader and his hand picked lieutenants and a select Board of
Directors, who all met and agreed upon the policies of the organization, and
then went forth and told the membership what to believe. I used to play the
presidential tapes at chapter meetings. Kenneth Jernigan explained to us
the important events of the month, calling upon us for certain actions and
for more fund raising. Jernigan and his Cabinet determined who our enemies
were...and they were numerous. We were told that we were surrounded on all
sides by self serving agencies bent on controlling our minds.
To some extent this position of the NFB leadership could be justified.
And to some degree the rank and file blind members needed to learn self
respect, and to demand equal treatment. But as the "Movement"
grew, the All Wise Leadership tightened control, rather than teaching the
rank and file members to take charge of their lives. Very much like what
happened in Labor Unions, where a handful of officers begin to tell members
how to think, and members began to let the officials run the show. Such
behavior looks efficient in the beginning of a Movement, but it is self
defeating, in the long run.
Anyway, despite its original lofty positions, the NFB has morphed into a
national agency for the blind, with headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. In
my personal opinion, rather than educating the sighted world, the NFB has
become "educated" in the ways of fitting in. The Movement has long since
turned into a self serving program. Sure, it has done some good, developing
some technology and supporting some discrimination cases, but the NFB is a
long way from living up to its original radical belief that it could
"educate" its way to equality.
But we blind are no different than our sighted neighbors. Despite the fact
that it has been 150 years since Honest Abe freed the Slaves, America is
just about as full of Racists and White Supremacists as ever. Despite all
the well intentioned legislation, attitudes are passed down the line from
parent to child. Latinos, Asians, Jews, Gays, all face the same deeply
ingrained contempt by the European White Men. And even that largest of all
minorities...the one that actually has more numbers than the White Male
Majority, Women, has never been able to overcome deep set prejudice. Of
course women have come a long way since the days of the skirts that swept
the floor, and the Black former Slaves have seen some of their children and
grand children move into a more comfortable life, even into the White House
and seats upon the Supreme Court. But under the surface there still exists
rage and hatred that does not exist toward other White Men.
Perhaps one fine day we blind will wake up to the realization that our
salvation can only come about when we turn our efforts toward improving
ourselves by teaching future generations how to think for themselves, and
how to take charge of their lives. And there I go again, putting my Faith
in education!
Carl Jarvis
On 4/28/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well, actually I do make judgments of sighted people in relation to
blind standards, or, you could say, my standards. Sighted people don't
pay attention to cues in the environment, at least, not at a conscious
level. I remember when I was in high school and my two friends and I
were on the school newspaper, and we were traveling on the subway to
an unfamiliar station for some project or other. I paid attention to
that subway station, and I knew how to get us back to the right track,
for the right train. They could see signs perfectly well, but they
were confused, standing there saying, which way? But I had partial
vision, couldn't see the signs, but had paid attention. And we pay
attention to spoken language. We know how to listen to directions, how to
hear what people are feeling, but not saying.
We even read more efficiently because we don't skim over material so
quickly that we lose important information in the process. That being
said, blindness is a severe disability. People are supposed to be able
to see. A fully sighted person who is less intelligent than a really
smart blind person, is able to function in situations in which a blind
person cannot.
This has to do with the fact that human beings are built in such a way
that a huge amount of information comes to them through sight. So yes,
blind people can be brainwashed into feeling incompetent in situations
in which they are quite capable. But the real world is made by and for
people without disabilities. And we are able to function in it, only
to the extent that we are taught to compensate for our incapacities
and because of the ways in which it has been made accessible to us.
Without the special training and without the special considerations,
we'd be pretty helpless. And that is why sighted people say, as they
watch us do things that they thought were impossible, that we are
wonderful. They know that if at that moment, their sight was gone,
they could not do what we can do and they cannot imagine how we can.
For as long as I can remember, blind people have been talking about
educating the sighted world. Perhaps blind people should pay more
attention to their own tendency to deny the impact of their blindness
on their lives and to comprehend the reasons for the reactions of
sighted people, rather than constantly trying to change them. It should be
obvious that the attempt hasn't worked.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 9:54 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: For White America, It's 'Happy Days'
Again
Lots of food for thought in this stream.
I do agree with Miriam that blind couples have a tougher time than do
either sighted couples or mixed blind and sighted. I say tougher
because our world is set up to accommodate sighted people. A blind
couple might be independent, but need sighted assistance for certain
basic tasks. Things such as how to get spots out of clothes when you
can't see them yourself.
Or stains on rugs or counters. Streaks on freshly washed windows.
Grocery shopping.
Even though sighted people also need assistance, it is in ways that
many sighted people need help. But because the sighted person uses
sight to accomplish a task which a blind person needs help doing, the
sighted person feels superior. Yet, that same blind person may be
highly skilled at tasks at which the sighted person is unskilled. Of
course the sighted person usually retreats to the old traditional
statement, "How marvelous. You do so amazingly well."
Both the blind person and the sighted person might be equally
independent, but the blind person is measured by how they function as
a sighted person, even though they are not. The blind person does not
judge the sighted person by blind standards, because as I said, the world
is set up for sight.
We blind people are certainly able to set conditions to allow
ourselves to live independently, especially if we have plenty of
money. Money is the great equalizer. But even so, a rich sighted
person, who employs help to do all their daily activities is seen as
Independent, while a rich blind person employing the same help is seen
as Dependent. So, even though I have felt most of my life as a blind
man, that I am able to function independently, I understand that this
is not the way sighted folks see me. It comes down to the fact that
perception separates us. And in that sense, no matter what my perception
is, I will always be measured by the sighted persons perception.
And no matter how we try to "educate" the world, it is, after all, the
world as created by sight. Therefore, how I see myself is the most
important opinion that matters. I strongly encourage support groups of
blind people.
We need to build upon our collective belief that we can live complete
lives.
Since, like our Mass Corporate Media, hammering the beliefs of the
Ruling Class down our throats, the sighted beliefs are pounded into
our heads, teaching us that we are unable to be as independent and as
successful as are sighted people.
For certain my life as a husband and father are different now that I
am blind. But I and my wife make trade-offs so that we share equally
as partners.
Just as in any endeavor, we need to assess our abilities, our
strengths and weaknesses. Knowing ourselves and learning to accept
ourselves is what independence is all about, to me.
Roger's comments brought to mind the years before TV. I had very
clear mental pictures of the people on the radio, disk jockeys,
announcers and the variety of actors. I don't think I ever came close
to accurately picturing people from just their voices. When I could
see, the most beautiful part of the girls I fell for was their eyes.
I really believed that I could tell what sort of a person they were by
looking into their eyes. After I became blind, I felt cheated. But I
soon learned to judge beauty by voice. I fell for several women on
the basis of their sound. Even when friends would describe some of
them as plain, or homely, or fat, or scruffy, if I was drawn to their
voice, then none of that mattered. So after divorcing my first wife,
I fell in love with the gentle, sweet voice of the woman who assisted me
in the Braille and Taping Service.
We dated, married and had two children. After 8 years, she had an
affair with a man where she
worked, and after some stormy months she ran off with her girl
friend.
Once again I learned life's lessons the hard way. Pretty eyes or soft
voices are not a good way to determine who will make a good mate. And
it is as foolish to seek approval from the guys at the local bar, or at
the gymn.
I think that our society leans far too heavily on sight, when it comes
to deciding who we will associate with. Looks tend to begin sagging
with stress and age. Once known as "the silver fox", my "silver hair"
has turned a whispy white, and my tight stomach seems to have
developed some blubber, and even the firm jaw line has developed a
wobble under the chin. Anyway, it's a good thing that Cathy loves the
"inner Carl". Because the wrapper is not holding up so well.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/28/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I remember that when blind young people, especially guys, became
interested in people of the opposite sex, they would ask people with
sight to describe them. I gather that they felt like they needed
sighted validation for their attraction. I think that's pretty sad.
It shows how dependent blind people are on the opinions and standrds
of sighted people. Those standards are visually relevant. I don't see
why they should be relevant to the blind unless it's a matter of
pride and wanting respect and adulation from the sighted world. I
also remember, from when I was young, although people on this list
have argued with me, that the tendency is for sighted women to go
with blind guys, but for very few sighted guys to be sexually
interested in blind women.
Often the sighted guys who became involved with blind women, had a
personality of physical disability.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 4:27 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: For White America, It's 'Happy Days'
Again
Here is something else you might wonder about in your choice of a wife.
Being one of those strange people who read textbooks for recreational
purposes I came across an experiment of interest in a psychology
textbook.
They allowed subjects to just sit down and talk a few minutes to a
number of members of the opposite sex one after another and then
asked the subjects to rate their conversation partners for
attractiveness.
Then they did the same thing again with a different set of members of
the opposite sex, but with the subject blindfolded. It turns out
that their assessments of the attractiveness of their conversation
partners were radically different when they were blindfolded. They
rated as attractive people whom they would have rated as unattractive
without their blindfolds. It makes me wonder about myself. Whenever I
meet someone new I always form a mental image of them. I don't have a
conscious basis for my mental images, but I think it may be based on
perceived similarities with others whom I met in my sighted days with
similar voices or personalities.
Undoubtedly my mental images are all wrong. I noticed that when I was
first becoming blind. I was hospitalized for eye surgery and I would
ask the nurses to describe themselves to me. Then the bandages would
come off and I could see that they gave me accurate descriptions,
even good enough to have picked them out in a crowd, but they still
looked nothing like I had them pictured.
Also I know that it is very common for sighted people to hear a radio
personality and hen see the person in a picture or in person and be
shocked that he or she looked nothing like one expected. All of this
leaves me wondering. There are so many women I have met after losing
my eyesight who strike me as highly attractive. I just wonder if I
would recoil in revulsion if I could see them. I think that might be
the case because I think I identified such a case once. There was a
certain female bartender who did strike me as attractive. Then I got
into a conversation with a man in that bar and the small talk turned
to a bit of guy talk and he said that he did not consider the
bartender to be attractive at all and then he described her. It had
not been all that long at the time since I had lost my eyesight and I
recognized the description as matching that of a bartender I had seen
around before I became blind. Indeed, I did not consider her to be in
the least attractive. So, Carl, I think that it is a pretty good bet
that both of us have entirely different standards for female beauty
than we did when we were sighted.
On 4/28/2017 12:52 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Interesting how so many of us blind men, and some blind women wind
up marrying sighted partners. Of course we might conclude that this
is so because there are so many sighted candidates as opposed to
blind ones, but I think that this is only part of the answer. After
my divorce from my first wife, whom I'd married as a sighted man, I
dated several women, some sighted and some blind. I came close to
becoming serious with two blind women, one who has remained a close
friend for nearly 50 years, and the other who was far to smart to
get serious over me. But then along came a young woman, a sighted
woman, who worked as my secretary in the Braille and Taping Service,
and I gravitated toward her, and subsequently married her. Looking
back, there were compelling reasons that I did not even think about
at the time. While I have blind friends who are married to other
blind partners, and they lead successful lives, nonetheless, the
lack of sight does create challenges that are not part of a
sighted/sighted, or a sighted/blind partnership. At the time,
choosing between two women, I would have said it was strictly a
matter of love. But looking back, did I fool myself? Probably.
After all, sighted for nearly 30 years, carrying the unspoken
stereotypes about blindness, still uncertain if I could carry my own
weight, live independently, be attractive to sighted women. Lots of
social and cultural issues that lurked just below the surface, ignored
by me at the time.
The example you gave about the man, blind from birth, building his
mental image of Black people through the often unspoken inferences
of people around him, with no understanding of how deep prejudice
toward Black people is, he most likely felt he had a true mental
picture, without his being prejudiced.
No one ever sat me down and said, "Blindness will make you
inferior", but that is what I knew, down in my heart. No one told
me that Gay men were not real men, but that is what my view had been
as a young man. But I did receive enough conversation at home to
help me avoid being racially prejudiced. In fact, what finally
helped me understand prejudice, was the constant drilling by my
parents that each person is unique, and we accept or reject them
based upon the sort of values, the sort of person that they are.
This finally got through to me regarding my youthful prejudice
toward Gays. While many of my school chums judged people through
stereotypes, I saw each person as just one more human being, and
accepted them, or rejected them on an individual basis.
Sure, in all of that I had my prejudices, learned through living in
the neighborhood I grew up in. And I am still a work in progress,
learning new stuff about what jerks my chain or rings my bell. In
fact, I would like to be in the process of altering my belief on
some matter, the moment I leave this life behind.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/27/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I may have mentioned this before. When I was in college, in my
senior year, I took an honors seminar in the Social Sciences, and I
think it was for the final, I had to organize a sociological study,
perform it, and write up the results. At the time, I had a
part-time job in the Lighthouse recreation program, teaching guitar
and autoharp to people of various ages. I decided to study the
racial attitudes of the teenagers with whom I worked. I composed a
set of questions which I asked them in order to elicit their racial
attitudes. There was one boy, just a few years younger than I,
who'd been totally blind since birth. What stands out clearly in my
memory was that He described what he believed, black people looked
like.
His description included every stereotype you've ever heard. He'd
learned what black people look like from the culture which
surrounded him. He had no visual knowledge which might correct his
beliefs. Interestingly, he became a social worker, ended up working
for our county hospital, eventually became president of the Nassau
County Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. He
married a sighted woman, and was also President of our local
chapter of NFB.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl
Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2017 9:32 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: For White America, It's 'Happy Days'
Again
"It ain't easy being Green", or Black or Brown or Female or Gay.
One solution would be to provide every person with sleep shades,
and force the to be worn at all times. But then, I know some very
prejudiced totally blind people...
Carl Jarvis
On 4/13/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage
non-federal law enforcement agencies," Jeff Sessions wrote in a
memo last week. (photo: Michael B. Thomas/Getty)
For White America, It's 'Happy Days' Again
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
13 April 17
Jeff Sessions rolls the clock back on civil rights enforcement
Two recent news stories crossed like ships in the night, without
much public discussion of how they were related.
Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a review of all
agreements between the Justice Department and local police
departments around the country. Sessions wrote that "it is not the
responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law
enforcement agencies," and said the DOJ might "pull back" on
federal oversight responsibilities under Donald Trump.
The news came after the revelation by the New York Daily News that
Daniel Pantaleo - the officer who used a chokehold in the killing
of Eric Garner - had repeatedly been disciplined by the Civilian
Complaint Review Board
(CCRB) prior to the Garner case. New York City had fought like a
tiger to keep this information out of the public eye, and when it
finally was released, it was only through an anonymous leak.
The story about Pantaleo shows why the Sessions story is so
unsettling.
People laughed when Donald Trump had to get Scott Baio to serve as
an opening-day speaker at the Republican National Convention. But
the Happy Days symbolism officially takes a darker turn with this
Sessions news. What Sessions is suggesting means literally going
back to a Fifties-era conception of the Justice Department's role
in preventing local police abuse.
If Sessions has his way, he will holster the most powerful weapon
the government has in addressing tragedies like the Garner incident:
federal civil rights laws.
The key statute is 18 USC 242, which gives the federal government
the right to intervene if a person has been harmed by a
"deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or
protected by the Constitution."
An example of when this law comes into play would be a police
murder in which the officer is acquitted in a sham trial by an
unabashedly corrupt local government. The federal government is
supposed to then use its powers to step in and file charges for
civil rights violations, correcting the local wrong.
It took decades of hard-fought legal battles to get the government
to actually use this tool.
Back in 1959, during the days that Donald Trump once recalled
fondly to Michele Bachmann as the time when "even my Jews would
say Merry Christmas,"
a deputy attorney general named William Rogers wrote a memo very
similar in tone to the one Sessions just wrote. He declared that
the federal government should not intervene in local controversies
and file civil rights charges absent "compelling circumstances."
In practice, the Rogers memo meant that, provided there had been
some kind of local due process, no matter how flawed, the feds
wouldn't step in and take a second whack at an offender in a race
killing or a police brutality case.
This prohibition against "dual prosecutions" was the law of the
land for nearly 20 years. It didn't change until after an
egregious incident involving an unarmed African-American man named
Carnell Russ.
In 1971, Russ was shot in the head by a policeman named Charles
Lee Ratliff at point-blank range in Star City, Arkansas, after
being pulled over for speeding.
Ratliff was acquitted in a joke of a trial in which an all-white
jury in Star City took less than 15 minutes to deliberate. Years
later, the NAACP sued the federal government - specifically the
attorney general under Gerald Ford, Edward Levi - for failing to
use its civil rights authority to investigate the obvious problems
in the Russ case.
The case went before a Nixon-appointed judge named Barrington
Parker, who would later become famous as the judge in the trial of
would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley. Parker was African-American.
He ruled in the NAACP's favor. Although the federal government
appealed, a deal was later struck between the NAACP and Jimmy
Carter's attorney general, Griffin Bell, whereupon the federal
government would look at "each and every allegation of a violation
of the civil rights laws ...
on its own merits."
The 1977 Bell memo gave birth to the modern civil rights
investigation.
That
means it took until the late Seventies, over 110 years after the
Civil War, for the government to finally accept its responsibility
to police local police. That the federal government still needs to
use those powers is self-evident. Just look at the Garner case and
countless others like it, where local governments routinely fail
to investigate and/or secure indictments against brutal cops.
After the Garner case, three out of four Americans believed there
should be charges for Pantaleo. There were protests around the
country, and the onslaught of high-profile brutality cases that
followed - from Michael Brown in Ferguson to Tamir Rice in
Cleveland to Walter Scott in North Charleston to Freddie Gray in
Baltimore to Sandra Bland to Dajerria Becton, the 15 year-old girl
in a bathing suit thrown to the ground by police in McKinney,
Texas
- led some people to hope that there would finally be some kind of
national discussion on the issue that would result in positive
changes.
With the Sessions news of last week, things have officially gone
the other way. The Trump administration is pushing for steep cuts
to the Justice Department budget, including the outright
elimination of funding for the Legal Services Corporation and
Violence Against Women grants, as well as slashing up to a third
of the Civil Rights Division's budget.
Sessions has already hinted that he will stop investigating local
police departments. Coupled with the budget cuts, we can probably
expect the feds to get out of the business of policing cops entirely.
Add cuts to legal services, and what we get is a clear message
from the people who elected
Trump: Their response to all of these awful films of local police
beating or strangling or shooting unarmed black people is to worry
that there's too much federal oversight of police, and too much
advocacy for people who come in contact with police.
The facile conclusion to all of this is that white America wants
to go back to the Fifties. But it's worse, and weirder, than that.
Seventy years ago, affluent white people could huddle in the
suburbs, watch Leave It to Beaver, and pretend that cops weren't
beating the crap out of people in East St. Louis or Watts or
wherever the nearest black neighborhood was. But these days, the
whole country regularly gawks at brutal cases of police violence
on the Internet. Nobody can pretend it's not going on, but
millions of people clearly don't want to do anything about it -
just the opposite, in fact. They want more.
Is this a twisted country, or what?
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