Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!89!William.Wilson
From: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (William Wilson)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Message-ID: <15750@handicap.news>
Date: 21 May 91 04:28:03 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

 GP> lives, flying in crashes doesn't take up even a goodly
 GP> percentage of that time.  Yet, ask people what issues come to
 GP> mind when discussing blind activists, and guess what you'll
 GP> hear.

Gary,
    Even fully conscious of the fact that the NFB members posting here
are going to interpret this as anti-NFB rhetoric coming from the monitor
of BlinkTalk, rather than a single individual's disagreement with
something the NFB just happens to have high on their list of priorties,
I have to comment on your above lines..

     EXCELLENT!!!  In those few words you managed to sort of sum this
whole thing up for me!  The typical sighted person out on the street, a
category to which I once belonged, hears all the media hype about blind
people wanting to sit in the exit row on airplanes, and says, "Why are
blind people making a big deal out of this?  Even if they can open the
door as quickly as I can, don't they have anything better to bitch
about?"
     Meanwhile, the NFB supposition, at least so far as I have been able
to determine, is, "If sighted people know we arn't allowed to sit in
exit rows, they will think we are less capable in general, and this will
cause them to discriminate against us in more ways, including employment
and other important ways!"
     Note: The first of these positions is not only mine, but most every
sighted person's I've ever spoken to about these things.  The second,
however, strikes me as being quite like Sigmund Freud's theories...even
though there is not one bit of statistical evidence to support the
claims, it sounds good, so why not accept it?

     All I can say is, as a nonaligned blind person, I hope to hell the
NFB finds a new key issue at this year's convention, maybe even one I
can agree with, so I can prove that my disagreement with this one is not
related to my opinion on the NFB, but rather just on this issue!
                                                        Willie

... BlinkTalk, Dr. Deb and Silver in Pittsburgh!

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