[blindlaw] Our progress makes "first blind Governor" less certainly true a label

[Bruce E. Naccari]

 At eh risk of seeming perhaps excessively pedantic, I think it is interesting to observe that I’ll bet none of those journalists and others calling this gentleman the first blind governor has done the kind of detailed biographical research of all the many governors of New York that would be necessary to determine whether this is in fact true, using “blind” as we do nowadays. What I mean is that the NFB and its allies have been successful enough in de-stigmatizing the word “blind” and in urging persons to call themselves blind even if they can see if their sight is so inefficient that blind ways of doing things are more appropriate that it would take some digging to determine whether all of those past governors were in fact NOT “blind” as we now use the word. In 1790 or 1830 or 1890 or even 1960 the only persons generally who would call themselves  “blind” and  be called by others “blind” would have  been totally blind or nearly so.  Any governor with any appreciable vision would only have been called “blind” by those meaning to demean him.  A past Governor with as little sight as mr. Peterson would likely not have called himself “blind” nor been so labeled by friends or  the press and public; they would probably have used  phrases like “weak eyes” or “ extremely poor vision”, even if the Governor could not read with his eyes.  The likelihood  that  a blind Governor in the pre-NFB past might have  served without being called blind would be even greater if his blindness was adventitious, leaving some vision and/or age-related  blindness, as in the case of any elder Governor with late-and-slow RP or age-related macular degeneration or cataracts. And we know from the story of New York Governor and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt how a physical condition in the past might be concealed from the public to a large extent. So, without a lot of detailed biographical research about all the Governors, including the forgotten and immemorable ones, one can not easily say none were “
d” as we now use the word—and that inability to say mr. 
Peterson is the first wit true certainty without all that research is a good thing, because it shows how much progress we have made in destigmatizing blindness and the very word “blind”.