Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 14, 1994 TAG: 9403160001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL LEE HARMON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Studies show that the meaning a civilization credits to the reason for a disability is related to the way in which a disabled person is treated in that society. If a physical disability is seen as something that can happen to anyone, a neutral phenomenon, the disabled person is less likely to be treated poorly.
In most Western societies, these studies indicate, people with handicaps are perceived as deviant, both in physical needs and other reactions. A disabled person is seen only as a disability and not as a person. And among physical disabilities, blindness always has been one of the most feared.
Physical abnormality is often associated with evil and sin in the religions that form the largest single basis for our culture. Christians and Jews usually feel themselves to be among the kindest and most accepting people in the world. This is what both groups learn from Leviticus 21: 17-23: "None ... who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. ... A man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face, or a limb too long, or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs, or crushed testicles ... may not profane my sanctuaries."
To this day, a man with any of the non-correctable problems mentioned in Leviticus cannot become a Catholic priest. Some obscure Christian groups designated the blind as "sin-eaters" who could take on the sin from the original sinner and leave him pure. This appears to trace back to the devout Greeks circa 600 B.C. When an area was experiencing a plague, starvation or some other curse, a disabled person was chosen to take upon himself the curse. He was beaten, burned to death, and his ashes were thrown into the sea. The curse was supposed to leave with the ashes. Hinduism teaches that everything that comes to us is a reward or punishment for what we have done in a former life. Therefore, disabled people were real stinkers in their last lives. Since they have brought it upon themselves, sympathy is not offered. No one wants to be around them because they are viewed as contaminated souls.
In our present-day America, there is a move toward advocacy for the handicapped, but the blind are still victims of social rejection. Blind people don't have to worry about being put to death, but they do have an unreasonably hard time being accepted as people. There is still the problem of being treated as a disability instead of a person.
Equal rights for the handicapped seems to be a novel idea to a lot of Americans, and one they don't really trust. Many people, despite having no claim to a Hindu upbringing, fault the blind person for bringing about his own problems in one way or another. These people show open hostility at times, and can be physically and emotionally abusive. A friend who is blind told me that most seeing people seem to be embarrassed or ill-at-ease around someone who cannot see. Conversations are short, strained and to the point. This effectively cuts blind people off from all the normal little interactions so important to human development.
In the popular culture of television, movies and books, Elizabeth J. Yerxa notes in her book "Human Interaction and Physical Differences," disabled people are regularly portrayed as pitiable, laughable, mean, untrustworthy and outcasts from normal life.
Dr. Robert Scott, in his book "The Making of Blind Men," discusses the commonly held view of blind people as being helpless, resigned to their fate, melancholy and sexually sterile. Instead of being merely resigned, I personally look forward to waking up each morning and anticipate what the future will bring and what I can accomplish with my life.
It is said that the mind is the most active sex organ, and blindness does not affect either the mind or the gonads. However, as the Rev. Thomas Carroll illustrates so well in his book "Blindness: What It Is, What It Does and How to Live With It," some people are so overcome by the thought of blind people being sexually active that they view it as immoral (and perhaps even perverse). Some seem to think blind people should confine themselves to pursuing other blind people. However, there's an old saw among blind people that it is "better to have windows on at least one side of the house." Others are horrified at the idea of two blind people getting together, and for years schools for the blind carried on an inner segregation of boys from girls to keep them from even knowing each other.
Yerxa offers the results of several studies on sexual perceptions of average people toward the disabled: In a 1946 study concerning attitudes about having a close personal relationship with a physically disabled person, 85 percent said they would not marry and 72 percent said they would not date a deaf or blind person. A similar study was done in 1992. Now, only 9 percent of a group of high school and college students said they would be willing to have sexual relations with a person who had any of these disabilities: amputation, skin disorder, deafness, paralysis, cerebral palsy, blindness, deformities or muscular dystrophy.
Attitudes such as this have a powerful impact on the self-esteem of the blind. In 1991, the Institute of Medicine defined disability as "the expression of a physical or mental limitation in a social context - the gap between a person's capabilities and the demands of the environment." Christina Wise-Mohr wrote in a story, "'Disabled' Label Can Limit Horizons," for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle: "Society, more than the afflicted individual, determines that transition (i.e. from physical limitation to disability). Others - family, friends, colleagues, supervisors, even strangers on the subway - can create 'disabled' people through their actions and expectations."
Many seeing people think blind people are weird because when the "normal" people watch them, they see various strange behaviors: peculiar posture, strangely gaited steps and inappropriate facial expressions. Rose Resnick, author of "Sun and Shadow," a novel about growing up blind in Brooklyn, recalls that blind children often rock back and forth and stick fingers in their eyes. Spacial relativity is difficult when one cannot see oneself in relation to everything else, and most people would walk with strangely gaited steps when they are using a cane and not sure what they are going to step into or off of next. It's hard to know how to hold one's face when one cannot see how other people hold theirs at different times. And, Resnick says, most of the rocking, head-rolling and eye-poking represents simple boredom among children who cannot watch everything else move for entertainment.
It is important to treat everyone with simple human courtesy. I, Michael Harmon, insist that most blind people hear just fine, so don't shout at them. Speak in a normal voice. When holding a conversation, speak into the blind person's face. We know when you are looking at the wall or peering over your own shoulder, and it is irritating. If there is more than one other person in the conversation, always address the blind person by name so that he knows it's his turn to talk.
If a blind person doesn't respond to your greeting, gently touch that person's shoulder, arm or leg. A blind person sometimes gets deeply into thought about a subject or concentrates hard on a sound far off in the distance. The physical touch will get his attention.
Don't make a big deal and draw attention to anyone's disabilities in public. Yelling for everybody to get out of the way of the blind person does a lot more harm than good. Don't scuttle out of the way when a blind person approaches. Just telling him that someone is there will keep him from walking on or sitting down on anyone. Blind people are people.
Michael Lee Harmon, who is blind, is a business-management student at New River Community College.
by CNB