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From: David.Andrews@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (David Andrews)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Amusement Park Discrimination
Message-ID: <15661@handicap.news>
Date: 15 May 91 17:00:55 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

 GP>      How do you guys do this?  I mean, I've gone to amusement
 GP>      parks in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio and never had
 GP>  such stuff happen.

Gary,  Maybe I am reading to much into your question, but I suspect you are
saying, this stuff hasn't happened to me, so why does it seem to happen to you
guys, NFB members.  There are those who have accused us in the past of going out
and looking for problems to confront.  I certainly haven't and don't know of any
other Federationists who have!  Enough stuff comes up in the course of life.
I have one of a couple explanations, take your choice.  First, it could
completely be, and likely is just circumstantial.  You happened to go to parks
where there weren't any people who would hassle you, at least at those times,
and on those rides that you were on.  In some ways these kinds of problems are
worse then they were say 20 years ago.  There is much more attention on the
disabled and the need for accomodations, so more people are aware of what they
should do, or what they think they should do.  In some cases, this involves
protecting us from ourselves.
The second explanation is related to the first and relates to how an individual
or group considers and reacts to any given situation.  You can see the
continuoum of reactions on this Echo.  While some blind persons will go along
with whatever a sighted person suggests, "for their own good," others will fight
it to bring about change.  Of course most of us fall somewhere in the middle
most of the time.
The third explanation could be that you traveled to these amusement parks with
sighted persons and the park people assumed that they were "responsible for
you."  I believe that the Minnesota group was primarily, if not entirely made up
of blind persons.

... David Andrews

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