Even I

Even I

My opening article in book fifteen is called "Even I." Here
it is:

EVEN I

Words play a more important part in our daily lives than we sometimes
think. They allow us to communicate with each other with wonderful precision, and they are
one of the principal features that distinguish humans from animals. It is not that words
make us human but that they enhance our humanity.

For the blind, certain words have a special meaning. As an example,
when I was a boy growing up on the farm in Tennessee, I learned early on of the
significance of the words "Even I" used by my family and sighted neighbors.

As a case in point, consider the game of checkers. In those days (when
none of us in that part of the country had either telephones or radios and when books and
magazines were not part of the daily routine), the men and boys often entertained
themselves by playing checkers. I wanted to play, too, but one or another of my family
would invariably explain to me that I had to understand my limitations as a blind person.
Eventually they would get around to saying something like this, "Even I find it
difficult to play checkers."

The implication was that because they could see and I couldn’t, I
was obviously at a disadvantage, not only in checkers but in everything else. This, of
course, was just plain foolishness. All I needed was some way to feel the squares on the
checkerboard, a problem I solved by stretching a string across the squares and tacking it
down at both ends. The job took only a few minutes, and my checker playing was not
impaired by my blindness. However, in the face of all of the negatives, it took me a while
to put the system into place. The "Even I" was a definite drawback.

And this attitude of believing that sight is always the deciding factor
is not just a matter of fifty years ago or some isolated corner of rural America. In the
1950’s when I was a teacher at the California Training Center for the Blind, we had a
student who had always been an outdoorsman. He was now in his forties, had just become
blind, and had come to us for training.

One day a number of us went to a wooded area for an overnight camping
trip, and while we were there, the new student (feeling energetic in the fresh air)
decided to climb a tree. He went up the tree with ease. A passing tourist stopped and
marveled.

"That is amazing," he said. "Even I would have trouble
climbing that tree, and I can see."

As best I could determine, the tourist was probably in his late
sixties, and he was extremely overweight. I doubt that he could have climbed the tree if
his life had depended on it, but he thought only in terms of sight and blindness. Of
course, in the circumstances, blindness had nothing to do with the matter. The "Even
I" was totally irrelevant.

Later, when I was director of programs for the blind in the state of
Iowa, I was traveling to one of our district offices and stopped at a service station to
get a Coca-Cola. While I was drinking it, a man who had just come in said:

"I can understand some of your problems, for I am handicapped,
too. My handicap is not as bad as yours, but even I have trouble getting along."

After I left the service station and was continuing my trip, I thought
about what he had said. So far as I could tell, he had at least three handicaps that would
limit him in the competition of daily life. He had a speech impediment, which I think was
what he was talking about when he said he had a handicap; he had a very limited education;
and his intelligence did not appear to be very high.

I think his speech impediment was the least of his handicaps, but I am
sure that he didn’t see it that way. I suspect that I was much more employable than
he and much better able to participate in the rough and tumble of the competitive world.
But to him, because he could see and I could not, the edge was all in his favor. As he
said, "Even I have trouble getting along."

In the early 1980’s I appeared one night on the "Larry
King" program. In those days it was entirely radio, and the studio was about nineteen
floors up from street level in a downtown Washington, D.C., building. It was a lively
program, and when we finished at midnight, my driver and I went out into the hall to take
the elevator to ground level.

The problem was that the elevator wouldn’t come. This seemed
mightily upsetting both to Larry King and his assistant. I pointed out to them that there
was a fire stair immediately next to the elevator and that there would be no problem in
simply walking down to the street. It is no exaggeration to say that Larry King’s
assistant was shocked. Apparently it had never occurred to him that a blind person might
take the stairs.

"Even I would not like to walk down those nineteen flights,"
he said, "and I am sighted."

What sight had to do with it was more than I could understand, but
after a few minutes of trying to soothe him down and of waiting for an elevator that
persistently refused to come, we took the stairs over his protest and walked without
incident to the street.

This sort of thing happens every day, but it is not limited to the
sighted. Let me go back to my teaching experience at the training center in California. In
those days (1953 to 1958) I had not learned to sign my name. My students told me that I
was creating a bad image of blindness because of this shortcoming and that I should get
with it and learn to make a readable signature.

I argued that I rarely needed to sign my name, that I didn’t need
to learn how in order to improve my self-esteem, and that I could and would take an hour
or two and learn to sign my name if the time came when I thought it would be useful to do
so.

In fact, when I became director of Iowa’s programs for the blind
in 1958, I did just that. One evening as we were driving across the country from
California to Iowa, my sighted wife worked with me for an hour, and I learned to sign my
name. It is not the most elegant signature in the world, but it is legible and serves my
purposes. Incidentally, as director of the Iowa programs for the blind, I did not sign my
name as often as I thought I would, delegating routine paperwork and signatures to a
deputy. However, the fact remains that I learned to sign my name in an evening and that I
now do it without thought whenever I need to.

Yet, that does not end the matter. As I have thought about it through
the years, my students were right, and I was wrong. I, who was teaching them that
blindness need not mean inferiority, was not proving up. As later events would show, it
would have been a simple matter to learn to sign my name.

So why didn’t I do it? Reluctantly I conclude that it probably had
to do with "Even I." From childhood I had been told in hundreds of ways every
day that sight meant superiority. In the circumstances it would have been surprising if I
had not absorbed and been affected by some of the mistaken notions.

Therefore, when I am tempted to be impatient or annoyed with sighted
people who say "Even I," let me remember my own experience in learning to sign
my name. What we need is not bad temper or blame but understanding and education.

This brings me to the National Federation of the Blind, the
organization which has done more than any other single thing to make life better for blind
people during the past century. The National Federation of the Blind has local chapters in
every state and almost every community of any size. These state and local chapters come
together to make up the national body.

Although we have sighted members, most of us in the Federation are
blind. We give our time and devotion because we have seen what the National Federation of
the Blind does in helping blind people lead normal, regular lives. Through its work with
parents of blind children, with seniors, with blind college students, and with blind
persons seeking employment, the National Federation of the Blind touches every aspect of
the daily lives of the blind of the nation.

We in the Federation believe that we should stand on our own feet and
do for ourselves before asking others for assistance, but we also know that our road to
independence cannot successfully be traveled without help from our sighted friends and
associates. And we have faith that this help will be forthcoming if it is reasonably
requested and wisely used.

In fact, the future looks bright for those of us who are blind. We go
into the new century with hope and confidence, and an ever-growing number of the sighted
are moving with us as part of our cause. "Even I" is still one of our greatest
problems-but that, too, is diminishing and fading into the past.

There you have the introductions and opening articles of this
year’s Kernel Books. When the National Federation of the Blind came into being in
1940, the problems we faced were overwhelming, but the most urgent and pressing of them
was to find a way to relieve the immediate distress of poverty faced by most of the blind.
After that (and it took years) we turned our attention to rehabilitation and jobs. Then,
it was a question of dignity and civil rights-and although all three of those problems are
still to some extent with us, we have now moved to a fourth stage of emphasis, that of
public education.

For ultimately confrontation and legislation will not solve our
problems. To some extent both confrontation and legislation will always be necessary, and
we must certainly not forget how to do either. But in the final analysis, we cannot force
people to accept us as equals, and I think we don’t need to if we give them the
facts. As somebody once said: It is not necessary to be loved, but it is extremely
desirable not to be hated-and an overdose of confrontation and legislation can create
backlash and hatred.

On the other hand, education properly done brings only good will and
support. This is why we continue to invest the time and resources to produce and
distribute the Kernel Books, and the results have richly justified our faith. We know that
we are capable of living on terms of equality with the sighted and that the sighted are
capable of accepting us as such-and for the most part they want to. All we need to do is
present the facts in understandable terms.

Of course, the Kernel Books are no magic bullet. They will not solve
all of our problems, and nobody thinks that they will. Certainly I don’t. As I have
already said, we must retain the option of confrontation and legislation, but these should
be used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. The better and more productive road
is education.

As we move toward the next century, we as a movement are stronger and
more confident than we have ever been. We choose peace and harmony if we can have it, but
we will do what we have to do to go the rest of the way to equality. I have said it to you
on previous occasions, and I will say it again now. The future is ours. We know who we
are, and we will never go back.

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