[real-eyes] Re: Fw: [nabs-l] article from Debra Kendrick
- From: "jose" <crunch1@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:34:23 -0600
I just herd the governors speech for MLK day. he sounds like a hoot. I have
also sent him an email via there web sight. I will let you all know what
happens.
----- Original Message -----
From: "jose" <crunch1@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 9:00 AM
Subject: [real-eyes] Re: Fw: [nabs-l] article from Debra Kendrick
>I almost never like to post a me too message on a list. however in this
>case
> i must applod this wrighter. I wonder if we could all reach out to him and
> se if we can somehow lend a hand. I hope he isn't too proud to get help.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kimberly A. Morrow" <morrowka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 7:32 AM
> Subject: [real-eyes] Re: Fw: [nabs-l] article from Debra Kendrick
>
>
>>I think deborah Kendrick is right on!!! I couldn't have articulated it
>> better myself.
>>
>> Kimberly
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Kimberly A. Morrow
>> Outreach Specialist - Unity.fm
>> Unity
>> 1901 NW Blue Parkway
>> Unity Village, MO 64065
>> 816-251-3588
>>
>> visit www.unityonline.org
>> visit www.dailyword.com
>> visit www.unity.fm
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> From: real-eyes-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:real-eyes-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of V Nork
>> Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 10:36 PM
>> To: real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [real-eyes] Fw: [nabs-l] article from Debra Kendrick
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jedi" <loneblindjedi@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> To: <nabs-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 12:57 PM
>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] article from Debra Kendrick
>>
>>
>> What do you foks think about this article?
>>
>> Respectfully,
>> Jedi
>>
>>
>> Original message:
>>
>>> Article from the INDEPENDENCE TODAY
>>> Newspaper<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
>>> "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
>>
>>> October 2009
>>
>>> N.Y. Governor Paterson
>>> Blind to Tools of Success
>>
>>> By Deborah Kendrick
>>
>>> Several years ago, when I received some
>>> mystifyingly bad treatment at the hands of other
>>> people who shared my disability, a friend who was
>>> both black and blind comforted me with her
>>> insight. "Blind people can sometimes be like a
>>> basket of crabs," she told me. "When one of them
>>> makes it to the top, the others scramble to pull
>>> him down." Folks I thought to be my peers, in
>>> other words, were attacking me out of envy.
>>
>>> I vowed I would never do that. I would fervently
>>> support anyone with any disability who achieved
>>> success in any field. We should all be one happy family, right?
>>
>>> Then, following the 2006 elections, alarms went
>>> off that challenged that personal pledge. The
>>> good news was that New York state had elected a
>>> lieutenant governor who was both black and blind.
>>> The more troubling news was that David Paterson,
>>> that newly elected official, by declaring that he
>>> didn't use any of those blindness tools -
>>> Braille, assistive technology, a white cane -
>>> indicated to those who don't have disabilities
>>> that he was too cool for all that nonsense. Those
>>> of us who proudly use the tools of blindness, who
>>> depend on them to give us a competitive edge in a
>>> host of professional and educational
>>> environments, tried to be tolerant. I wanted to
>>> be first and foremost proud. A blind guy - a sort
>>> of brother to me in the disability family - was
>>> rising to the top, and it was cause for serious celebration.
>>
>>> Governor Paterson clean shaven. A new image
>>> Of course, when Eliot Spitzer was caught with his
>>> pants down, so to speak, and Paterson rose to the
>>> very top of his state, sworn in as New York
>>> governor on March 17th, 2008, the media made even
>>> more noise about how this brilliant guy didn't
>>> need Braille or talking computers or any of that
>>> blind nonsense. He had a superhuman memory, we
>>> were told, and relied heavily on staff. His staff
>>> read important memos and documents into voicemail
>>> messages that he listened to at all hours.
>>
>>> Voicemail messages? What?
>>
>>> He's governor of one of our most important
>>> states, and he doesn't use a computer? Still, I
>>> reminded myself to be tolerant. Each of us has
>>> different techniques, different ways to
>>> accomplish the same goal. One deaf person reads
>>> lips. Another uses American Sign Language.
>>> Another uses Signed English. And on it goes. The
>>> man was governor, after all. He didn't have to do
>>> things the way other blind people do them to earn
>>> our support. He was one of us, and we should stand behind him.
>>
>>> Then Paterson started doing really dumb things.
>>> He didn't always know the facts. He made
>>> decisions and then, under pressure of one kind or
>>> another, reversed them. He appointed a lieutenant
>>> governor when nobody was sure he was even allowed
>>> to do that and who, to add insult to injury, had
>>> trampled with dirty boots on transportation
>>> prospects for New Yorkers with disabilities.
>>
>>> He seemed to "get it" when he responded with
>>> disdain to the "Saturday Night Live" skit that
>>> ridiculed his blindness. And yet, he didn't
>>> hesitate to grab a few laughs himself at the
>>> possible expense of people with disabilities when
>>> he appeared in a wheelchair for a charity gig.
>>
>>> More recently, he has vetoed one bill that would
>>> prevent discrimination against people with
>>> disabilities in public facilities in his state
>>> and another that would require all polling places
>>> to be made physically accessible.
>>
>>> OK, we could argue, just because he has a
>>> disability doesn't mean he has to always agree
>>> with us, supporting every bill that comes down
>>> the political pike to improve the quality of life
>>> for New Yorkers with disabilities. Shouldn't we
>>> still support him? He's both black and blind, after all.
>>
>>> The proverbial "last straw" in struggling to hang
>>> on as a cheerleader for this New York governor
>>> came when I started seeing references in the
>>> press linking his failures to his blindness. One
>>> New York state senator, Diane Savino, was widely
>>> quoted as saying, in effect, that hey, even
>>> though the guy is brilliant, he's blind, after
>>> all, and being blind means he can't use the same
>>> digital tools -- such as e-mail or a Blackberry -- as his peers.
>>
>>> Wait a New York minute! And let me do some deep
>>> breathing so as not to do anything undignified
>>> like spew bad words in my own e-mail or Smartphone messages!
>>
>>> One headline read: "It's not his race, it's his
>>> blindness." Let me set the record straight: "It"
>>> -- his failure to lead -- is not because of his
>>> race or his blindness. It's the man himself. But
>>> blindness is something I know well and know more
>>> than a little bit about with regard to tools and
>>> techniques, so let me tell you now what I was suppressing all along.
>>
>>> His avoidance - since childhood - of tools
>>> related to blindness, don't make him superior to
>>> other blind people, but rather inferior. He can't
>>> read print but refused to learn Braille. That's
>>> denial to the point of masochism. In other words,
>>> he's illiterate by choice! Why, I wonder, if he's
>>> so "brilliant" did it take him 12 years to get
>>> two advanced degrees, when lots of "ordinary"
>>> blind people have obtained those same two degrees
>>> in six? And even though the second of those two
>>> degrees is a law degree, he never went into
>>> practice as a lawyer because he couldn't pass the
>>> bar exam. Why was that? Was it because he
>>> couldn't read Braille or use a computer? Now, in
>>> all fairness, I don't know the answer to that
>>> question, but his explanation is that he didn't
>>> receive adequate accommodations. But what would
>>> those accommodations be, anyway, for a man who is
>>> blind but doesn't know how to use any of the
>>> tools that similarly educated blind people avail themselves of daily?
>>
>>> You could say it's not his fault. When he was a
>>> child, New York City schools couldn't promise
>>> that he wouldn't receive any special education,
>>> and his parents moved to a suburb where he could
>>> go to public school "unhindered" by special ed.
>>> Now, maybe that was a good thing. I wasn't there.
>>> But it sounds to me like being perceived as
>>> sighted was more important to the family than
>>> getting the best education possible.
>>
>>> And so, here we have a 21st-century governor -
>>> the first legally blind governor to serve in any
>>> state longer than 11 days - and he's using 1960s
>>> or '70s tools to do his job. Staffers read
>>> materials onto tapes and into voicemail for him.
>>> He has no means of prompting himself with notes,
>>> which would be effortless had he taken the time
>>> to learn to read and write Braille.
>>
>>> Had he been governor in 1975, the tools he now
>>> uses would have been adequate because sighted
>>> people at the time were using them at the same
>>> level of sophistication. But those tools now are inadequate.
>>
>>> Why doesn't Paterson use a computer with one of
>>> the popular screen-reading programs, such as JAWS
>>> or Window-Eyes or System Access? If he did, 99
>>> percent of all documents generated by other
>>> computers could then simply be e-mailed to him.
>>> If he wanted to travel light, he could carry a
>>> netbook (a small laptop computer) or a thumb
>>> drive, into which staffers could pop anything he
>>> needed to read. With practice, he could do what
>>> blind professionals all over the world do - crank
>>> their reading speed up to several hundred words a
>>> minute and get through material as quickly as any
>>> sighted politician. Add that to his amazing
>>> memory, and he could have been a governor to make us proud.
>>
>>> Why does he have staffers read newspapers to him?
>>> For free, he could sign up for the National
>>> Federation of the Blind's NEWSLINE, a telephone
>>> service that would enable him to read any of 220
>>> newspapers around the country, from any phone
>>> anywhere, at any speed he chose. He could zip
>>> through articles at his own speed as quickly or
>>> even quicker than his sighted peers.
>>
>>> Now, this "brilliant" guy is using tools that
>>> were state of the art when Jimmy Carter was
>>> president, has an approval rating that has
>>> dropped at a staggering rate, and against even
>>> the advice of President Obama, said he'll run
>>> again in 2010. It's pitiable, really, but I'm not
>>> feeling sorry for him. How can I when, along with
>>> his own failure, he's pulling the overall
>>> acceptance of and employment opportunities for
>>> other blind people down with him?
>>
>>> I'm not saying I could do his job. I don't think
>>> I could. But I am saying that lots of people who
>>> are blind could and do it brilliantly. He wanted
>>> so much to hide his blindness that now, in his
>>> appalling unpopularity, it's the one thing that
>>> outsiders are interpreting as his weakness. It
>>> hasn't been. His weakness has been his own
>>> arrogance and denial of reality. It's a shame.
>>> With proper training, he might have done a good job.
>>
>>> But he isn't doing one, and I'm OK with having
>>> broken my promise to myself. I know now that just
>>> because he has a disability doesn't mean I have
>>> to like him. And if he's going to fall headlong
>>> into the basket, I don't want him to kick the
>>> rest of us down to the bottom as well.
>>
>>> Deborah Kendrick is a newspaper columnist, editor
>>> and poet. She is currently working on a biography of Dr. Abraham
>> Nemeth.
>>
>>
>>
>>> ----------
>>
>>
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