Rights, Life, and Peanut and Jelly Sandwiches

Rights, Life, and Peanut and Jelly Sandwiches

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The Braille Monitor – February, 2001 Edition

Rights, Life, and Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

by Seth Leblond

Seth Leblond

From the

Editor: Seth Leblond is a freshman at Goucher College. He was a 2000 NFB Scholarship

winner, and he is the son of longtime Federation leaders Connie and Bob Leblond.

At the parents seminar last summer in Atlanta Seth took part in a panel presentation

by blind young people of various ages. His remarks were very much to the point

and contained excellent advice for all parents, but particularly for the parents

of blind children. This is what he said:

Freedom, Rights, Responsibilities: these are three concepts with which all
children must inevitably become familiar before they may properly enter the
world of adulthood as contributing members of society. It is natural for anybody
to assume that, since parents are the primary caregivers to their children,
parents should be responsible for teaching their children about these basic
concepts. But we live in a world in which a good many professionals in the field
of work with the blind believe that, since they have been "specially trained"
to work with blind children, they are better equipped to raise them than their
own parents. Many of them are kind, compassionate, intelligent individuals.
Nearly all of them mean well. But all of the courses they may have taken, all
of the books they may have read, and all of the warmth they may feel are no
substitute for parenting.

Several years ago I attended a seminar for parents of blind children in Massachusetts.
During the course of the meeting, a panel of parents and a professional or two
in the field of work with the blind assembled to discuss raising blind children.
After the members of the panel had made brief speeches, the members of the audience
began asking questions. One woman raised her hand and asked in a somewhat frightened
voice, "Who's going to teach my son how to make a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich?"

I had consciously to keep myself from laughing as I recalled my own first
foray into the world of culinary arts, which was, coincidentally, the making
of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I could practically see my mother hovering
over my shoulder, watching as I flailed my knife around, trying to transfer
the sticky peanut butter from the dull blade onto the bread. I remembered her
calm voice, filled with amusement, telling me that I would have to clean up
the enormous mess I had managed to make all over the counters and cupboards
of the kitchen. I remembered painstakingly cleaning up that mess. I remembered
how good my peanut butter and jelly sandwich tasted when I finally seated myself
and began to eat. I fairly beamed with pride when my mother calmly informed
the scared mother at the seminar that she should be the one to teach her son
how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

As I got older, I came to realize that life itself is really much like cooking.
Nobody in this world lives a perfect life. People, by their very nature, make
mistakes, regardless of their background or circumstances. Sometimes we even
make enormous messes of things. But it is the way we as individuals deal with
our mistakes and clean up our messes that defines us as human beings.

In my experience people often exhibit a strong tendency to make mistakes and
then try to place as much blame on factors outside their control as possible,
thus diminishing or eliminating the blame due themselves. Since a good portion
of the public does not understand blindness in and of itself, it is often extremely
easy for us to blame certain of our errors or objectionable actions on our lack
of eyesight.

In the spring of 1997 I received a letter from a friend that illustrates the
tendency of many sighted members of the public to allow us to do just that.
The person who wrote the letter, having been stopped by some friends in the
hall of her school, arrived a few minutes late for a class. Ordinarily, this
would have been an offense warranting detention at the school in question. However,
the teacher informed my friend that she would not, in fact, have to spend any
of her time staying after school. Since she was blind, he told her, he could
understand why she might be late for class as a matter of course. He would simply
overlook the incident. Being a responsible individual, however, my friend told
him that she wanted to serve her detention because that is exactly what was
expected of her peers. The teacher couldn't understand, but he let her stay
after school at her insistence.

I keep the letter describing this anecdote where I can easily find and read
it. It serves as a reminder to me that the blind of the world may never receive
equal treatment in society unless we also accept equal responsibility in society.
It also serves as a reminder to me that I have at least one truly great and
responsible friend.

The question some might ask is, "What's in it for us?" We as blind
citizens clearly have certain responsibilities in society, but what are all
these rights I mention? Perhaps Jefferson said it most succinctly at the beginning
of the Declaration of Independence when he wrote that "All men are created
equal" and are endowed with certain rights such as life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Most of us are all too familiar with the stories of blind
people denied employment solely because of blindness. We have seen agencies
for the blind deliberately try to keep blind clients from choosing their own
destiny. The more responsibilities we take, the more quickly will we, the blind
of America and of the world, achieve true equality in society. The more we do
to help ourselves, the more clearly will the public recognize our potential.
As we assert our voices, those few who still seek to repress us will realize
that we are not wrong when we say that we are their equals.

So what of your children? What can you tell them? Tell them that they are responsible
for dealing with their own mistakes as best they can. Tell them that, whenever
they can, they ought to take the responsibility to educate the public about
the true abilities of the blind. Tell them to share what they learn about doing
this with their colleagues and their children. And, when they make their first
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, make sure they clean up the mess.

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