What Color Is The Sun?

What Color Is The Sun?

Future Reflections Summer 1990, Vol. 9 No. 2
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WHAT COLOR IS THE SUN?
by Lauren L. Eckery
Editor's Note: The following article is reprinted
from the December, 1989 Braille Monitor was
orginallypublished in the Fall, 1989 issue o/News From Blind Nebraskans, the newsletter of the
National Federation of the Blind of Nebraska.
The burning hot sun of midsummer is shining
brightly today as I sit out here on the patio beginning
to write. What color the sun is is not particularly
relevant to me at this moment. I know
that for some blind people the color of the sun
or, for that matter, what anything looks like
visually, seems irrelevant. I do not take this view,
however. I am highly interested in my world, including what things look like. There are those
who might insist that this could not be so.
Back in 1972, when I was nearing graduation
from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, a
sighted male friend and I were discussing my
future. This was a friend I very much liked and
trusted. However, he knew nothing about the
National Federation of the Blind and its positive
philosophy of blindness.
I had been approached by the Federation in 1971,
had been reading the Braille Monitor, but had
only begun to assimilate our philosophy on blindness.
Therefore, neither of us understood what
he was really saying when he remarked: "When
you get an apartment of your own, if you have
cockroaches, they won't bother you because you
won't see them, so you won't even know they are
there. Besides, if you don't know what they look
like, then you won't know how awful they are." I
thought this statement odd and rather gross, and
I laughed. I was not aware at that moment that he
had indeed epitomized the heartbreaking experience
of many of us.
As Pearl S. Buck has written: "There were many
ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of
hearts being broken by love, but what really
broke a heart was taking away its dream -- whatever that dream might be."
My dream, of course, was to be a normal, first
class citizen in our society. My dream, at that
particular time, might have included him in that
apartment of the future. He had obviously highly
respected me as a student, equal to himself, but
he really did not respect me as a blind person.
It was only recently, as I began formulating this
article, that I remembered his words of seventeen
years ago, realizing at once, with my Federation
training, what he had really said. I noticed quite
a number of attitudinal "cockroaches" in his
remarks.
Attitudes like those exemplified in this person's
remarks often bring about our being denied opportunities
for normal experiences in the world.
As far as visual cues are concerned, many such
cues about our world are kept from us. As an
example: what color something is or where something
is located. On the other hand, often we are
given far too many details about visual aspects of
our world -- an example being the clock method
on the dinner plate.
Behind all of this thinking are ingrained beliefs
similar to those espoused, by implication, by my
university friend of 1972. Evidently he assumed
that a blind person keeping an apartment by him
or herself would necessarily have cockroaches,
since blind people couldn't possibly keep the
place clean. (I may not be the best housekeeper,
but blindness is not the reason.) If we can see, we
automatically notice everything in the world
there is to see and we know more about our world
because we see it. If we cannot see, we know
nothing about the visual qualities of the things in
our world -- indeed, we know very nearly nothing
at all -- forget about the use of other senses, and,
of course, forget about our ability to reason.
Countless times in our lives we have heard such
expressions as: "Out of sight, out of mind,"
"Seeing is believing," "What you don't know (or
see) won't hurt you." These are all suggestions of
lack, loss, and inferior capacity for reasoning.
How misinformed was this fine young man, even
though he had known me for several years. How
misinformed was I to the extent that I was unable
to set him straight about blindness, resulting in
discouraging him from remaining in a prominent
place in my life.
On the other hand, as I began to grow in the
Federation, I learned from those who were willing
to teach me, and I have also learned from
experience (sometimes the hard way) some of
the realities of blindness --mainly attitude
problems and their impact on our lives and the
means for resolving such problems. I have also
learned (sometimes the hard way) that standing
up strongly against such attitudinal barriers, as a
unified collective body, will change these negative
attitudes once and for all. Shared individual
positive experiences can also help toward exterminating
such cockroaches from our lives.
Toward this end I relate the following experiences:
When
I entered into my course of study at the
University of Nebraska at Lincoln, I lived at
home. Later I moved to the dorm, thank goodness!
Everyday on the way to school we passed a
certain building. One day I asked my mother
what that particular building looked like. I was
startled by her honest answer: "Laurie, we drive
past that building every single day. I don't know
what it looks like. I haven't really looked at it."
Later, of course, she surveyed the building closely,
describing it in such detail that if another blind
person had asked me what this building looked
like, I could have given as accurate a description
of the building as my mother had given me.
This is, indeed, a lesson which many people
(blind or sighted) fail to learn about sight.
Sighted people do not necessarily know more
about our world than blind people do. They do
not have a constant edge on us simply because
they can see and we cannot. Neither are blind
people necessarily ignorant about their world
simply because they are blind. The blind people
I know who are less knowledgeable about their
world tend to be those who are bitter about their
blindness, refusing to concern themselves with
visual factors. This lack of concern may also be
noticed in blind people who have not had, or
taken, the opportunity to learn alternative techniques
of daily living. Or it may be simply that
some folks just don't care about those things.
Blindness itself does not shut us off from or out
of our world.
Another example of this lesson came to me
recently. Only several weeks ago my eight-year
old daughter, Lynden, asked: "Mommy, what
color is the sun?" She blinks and often sneezes
upon looking directly at the sun. Was it possible
that she never looked long enough to notice the
color of the sun? Was she testing me to see if I
knew the color of the sun? What answer did she
expect to get from me, the standard "yellow"?
I am totally blind since birth due to congenital
glaucoma. I have no vision in the left eye. Before
glaucoma took my right eye, I could see light,
dark, and blobs of color. I cried the evening
before the surgery, panicked a few times immediately
thereafter, and that was it. I was not bitter
about never seeing another sunset, because I
knew that in my mind's eye I could conjure one
up easily enough if I wanted to do so. Perhaps this
is similar to the manner in which Beethoven was
able to write some of his best music when he
could no longer hear--he had a good mind, and
he used it.
I told Lynden that in the middle of the day the
sun is said to be yellow, although it always looked
white to me. I explained that toward sunset the
color could change from a brighter yellow, becoming
more and more orange, sometimes setting
in a brilliant red-orange ball with other
colors around it (clouds, I surmised). When this
occurs, the bright fiery ball on the horizon looks as though it is resting on the ground, quite far
away. Eventually it disappears. Sometimes the
clouds hide this color. Often the sun does just the
opposite at sunrise. Sunrises and sunsets can
vary. Artists have painted them; writers have
described them in words. Some people often do
not notice them at all, but they are there.
"I've never seen the sun change color like that.
Why does it change color? Why does it look like
the sun is on the ground?" she asked, curiously.
Her questions were getting beyond me. I didn't
know enough about the physical properties of
light, color, refraction, and distance, plus the
rotation of the earth, etc., to explain it all to her.
Anxiously I said: "Ask your science teacher when
school starts again."
With a sigh of relief, I presumed the subject
closed, only to hear: "Mommy, could you see rays
coming out of the sun?" I told her I couldn't.
"Me neither," she replied. "Then why do people
make pictures of the sun with rays coming out all
around it?" she continued.
I thought: "Ask your art teacher when school
starts again." However, being somewhat more
artistic than scientific, I explained that maybe it
was an artistic way to show that light and heat
were coming from all directions from the yellow
circle which represented the sun in the pictures.
That was the end of the discussion for the time
being.
I believe that, due to stereotypical thinking, Lynden
was surprised by the answer she got from a
totally blind person. I was equally astonished that
a sighted child would bother to ask a totally blind
person to describe something visual, taking the
answer seriously. I believe we both learned something
extremely valuable from this experience.
The knowledge gained and the joy received from
this experience were made evident this past
weekend as we were riding the bus home from
Kansas City to Omaha. Lynden had been sleeping,
and I was listening to my Talkman. Suddenly
she shouted, with obvious delight, "Mommy, the
sun is orange and it is on the ground just like you
said." (It looked like it was on the ground.) "It is
red-orange, and it's pretty. I've never seen that
before."
I was aware that if I had believed all of the
stereotypes about blindness, that I would never
have done such a normal thing as to get married
and have a child -- one I was now sharing a sunset
with -- because I might have believed that a blind
person couldn't take care of a child independently.
I was thankful for this Federation-influenced
blessing. I was also aware at that moment
that this sunset might have gone unnoticed
by both of us had we not had our previous discussion.
Certainly it would not have been a life-or
death disaster to have missed the sunset, but
there was a particular joy in our sharing, "What
color is the sun?"
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