[nfb-talk] FW: To Be or Not to Be, Irritated

[Rovig, Lorraine]

I came to believe a long time ago that the 80-20 rule applies to this
kind of prejudice too.  I believe there are 20 percent who cannot be
educated, they can only be coerced by civil rights laws so that they do
less damage.  Of the other 80 percent, I'd say 20 percent have figured
it out on their own and the other 40 percent are educable if they have
the right teacher.  Having read Jim Mark's essays on our listservs for
years, I know he is among our best at educating folks out of unthinking
prejudices toward blind persons.

Lorraine Rovig

-----Original Message-----
From: On Behalf Of Jim Marks
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 10:28 PM
To: 'NFB Talk Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] To Be or Not to Be, Irritated

Changing minds can be tough.  I recently had a negative experience that
still shakes me up today.

I am a director of a university disability service office.  This summer,
our receptionist resigned, and our first search to replace the
receptionist failed.  I then hired a temporary employee, a woman who
also happened to be blind.  She was fully qualified for the job and had
just returned home from one of our NFB training centers.

An office manager from another campus department that shares the
reception desk with my office immediately took issue with the idea of a
blind receptionist for a high-traffic university service area.  My mouth
dropped open in surprise when the office manager said that no blind
person could do the job.  She had not met the person I hired, and the
manager seemed stupidly ignorant of the fact that she was airing her
prejudices before another blind person.  I remember thinking, how dare
she judge this without any foundation other than ignorance!  I told the
manager to give me time to see whether it would work or not.  I figured
I could bully the prejudice into submission, but I wanted to win her
over by showing her how it would work.

First thing the blind receptionist and I did was to create a working
environment that could be handled with non-visual techniques.  The big
hurdle was having the receptionist respond to walk-in visitors since the
visitors often did not announce themselves.  To make it work, we needed
the collaboration of the co-workers.  Unfortunately, instead of getting
cooperation, we got the opposite.

The prejudiced office manager set out to do everything she could to
sabotage the confidence and reputation of the blind receptionist.  The
manager would leap up every time someone walked in and dramatically
intervene with her superior powers of vision.  She would reprimand the
blind receptionist with constant tiny and pointless corrections.  And
she encouraged others to join her in her hostility towards blindness.
It was clear that the manager saw blind people in extremes, either as
fools or super heroes.  She never even considered the possibility that a
blind person could be her peer.  

The blind receptionist held up well, but it was tough beyond belief.  It
helped that the president of the NFB of Montana works in our office.
Others joined in support of the blind receptionist, too.  Another office
manager, a sighted person, actually took time to sit beside the blind
receptionist when the going was painfully and obviously difficult.  At
one point, I lost my temper and told the prejudiced office manager, a
person I do not supervise, that she was to back off and stay out of it.
I knew there was zero chance for her support, and adjusted my
expectations from winning her over to simply getting her to stop her
outrageous behaviors.  unfortunately, she did not stop, and the
situation continued on.  Then, the blind receptionist asked for a
reasonable accommodation.  She asked that the interventions cease
through a formal request for reasonable accommodation.  The manager sort
of complied, and the drama lessened.  When it went to the level of civil
rights, the situation became marginally better.  But it was still a
hostile and ugly situation, and it was occurring in my shop under my
watch.
Attitudes were the problem, and, for the life of me, I knew no way to
deal with them in any effective way.  I still do not, except that it's
important to be relentless.  We can never give up, never.

The story ends badly.  When we re-opened the position, the blind
receptionist did not get the permanent job.  The pool contained
applicants who were more qualified than she was.  Had the blind
receptionist been in the pool during the first search, she would have
had the job.  But this pool was too strong.  The blind receptionist
handled herself very, very well all throughout the weeks she worked in
my office.  She's now going to school, and is doing great.  I will
likely hire her for work as a student employee in my office.  I decided
to sever my relationship with the prejudiced office manager.  We no
longer supervise people together because I will not work with someone
who is so bigoted.  I am polite, for I will not stoop to the same level
of bigotry, but damage was done, and it's irreversible insofar as I can
tell.  So, maybe in many ways the story ends better than I thought, but
it's hard to see the good of it.  Thing is, I am still shaking my head
over what happened.  

Those who think our battles are over are out of touch.  I am in it for
the long haul, and the NFB really does give us a vehicle for change that
we could not possibly accomplish on our own as lone wolves.  We hunt in
packs, and that's the way nature intended it.



-------
Jim Marks
blind.grizzly at gmail.com
 

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