I was just reading an article entitled The Nature of Independence by Kenneth Jernigan. In it, Jernigan replies to some students at a rehab centre and other people, asking him why he had been walking with a sighted person at an NFB convention. They said that it was wrong to “walk sighted guide”. To this, Jernigan replied with a lengthy outline of all his accomplishments, which made me feel as if the fact that he had good travel skills allows him to use a sighted guide. So if you just aren’t as super-capable as this man is, you should struggle to figure out everything by yourself as a means of “adjustment”? He further reinforced this idea by pointing out that students should always walk with canes, and specifying that these should be solid canes (as opposed to telescoping canes) for you can’t hide them. Jernigan went on to outline the three stages a rehab student goes through: fear and insecurity, rebellious independence, and normal independence. While I can agree with this - even though for me they aren’t quite stages, more states, since I’m alternating between all three depending on my mood -, the statement presupposes that all students entering a rehab centre believe they can’t be independent, and this further leads to the idea that all they need are high expectations and the obligations to be independent (doing everything on their own) all the time. I still don’t know what expectations do about a genuine skills deficit, and what needs to be done if a person is, like me, convinced that self-reliance and independence are possible, but doesn’t know how to achieve it herself, and hence feels like showing off her independence at quite a cost at times.
Jernigan, after having received a letter by a not-so-skilled woman who, through his writing lost her embarrassment with her deficiencies, contends that we shouldn’t be that rigid with regard to independence as to say that everyone needs to be completely self-reliant. It contradicts both his former statements and other NFB writings, but I’m willing to agree with Jernigan here. Independence, here, is defined as getting what you want with minimal inconvenience. This is an agreeable definition (I’m often making up my mind about these things, so I can’t say that I agree with it), but it still seems to me that it is by the grace of Jernigan’s overall independence that he is allowed to make exceptions, and that the message in general should be that one is to be completely self-reliant. This is also the message I tend to get reading other NFB materials, and Rebecca Kragnes, in her article Sighted Assistance vs. Blind Hindrance in the March, 2004 Braille Forum agrees with me. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that blind people should be taught the skills so that they can be self-reliant if it’s convenient to them - or if it’s inconvenient to seek assistance, of course. I think that’s one reason why the NFB keeps arguing for independence and self-reliance - because otherwise we may slip back into the old stereotypes, presuming that the blind can’t do anything for themselves. However not thinking it’s that black and white, I’m often feeling that NFB folk think it’s not shameful to be blind, if you possess certain “magical” skills that allow you to be completely self-reliant, and that if you don’t possess these skills, you should be embarrassed. Jernigan doesn’t seem to agree, although his assumptions about students in rehab programmes reinforce the idea - I assume those students chose to attend the programmes, so they probably went there to learn the skills they were lacking. Hmmm, maybe I’m the only blind person int he world who just wishes she could practise the philosophy of independence and be successful enough to fit the mold of self-reliance, so that I could allow myself to be conveniently independent and assisted by people at times, without having to prove my so-called independence all the time..
Astrid
