THE BRAILLE MONITOR Kenneth Jernigan, Editor Barbara Pierce, Associate Editor Published in inkprint, Braille, on talking-book disc, and cassette by THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT National Office 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 * * * * Letters to the President, address changes, subscription requests, orders for NFB literature, articles for the Monitor, and letters to the Editor should be sent to the National Office. * * * * Monitor subscriptions cost the Federation about twenty-five dollars per year. Members are invited, and non-members are requested, to cover the subscription cost. Donations should be made payable to National Federation of the Blind and sent to: National Federation of the Blind 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 * * * * THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES ISSN 0006-8829 THE BRAILLE MONITOR A PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND CONTENTS MARCH, 1993 MAKING HAY by Kenneth Jernigan NATION'S TOP DISABILITY ADMINISTRATOR TAKES MISSISSIPPI JOB THE MAKING OF AN ENGINEER by John Miller HAVE CIVIL RIGHTS BECOME GROUP RIGHTS? by Evan Kemp, Jr. TOWARD A MORE TOLERANT WORLD: THE PRICE OF DISCRIMINATION by Jillian Brooks MOBILITY: WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT? by Gary Wunder WHAT DO EMPLOYERS LOOK FOR? A SUCCESSFUL JOB SEARCH IN THE GROVES OF ACADEME by Adrienne Asch NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND 1993 LEGISLATIVE MEMORANDUM AND FACT SHEETS ALL IS NOT BLISS AT TELESENSORY by Kenneth Jernigan BLIND PEOPLE AND GUNS REMAINING VIGILANT: BILL ISAACS TAKES UP HIS PEN A CHOICE FOR A LIFETIME by Richard Hassig BOOK REVIEW by Lorraine Rovig LIKE A DIFFERENT COUNTRY by Norma Crosby RECIPES MONITOR MINIATURES Copyright National Federation of the Blind, Inc., 1993 [LEAD PHOTO/CAPTION: In 1944 Kenneth Jernigan (right) spent the summer making furniture for sale in his community. It was an ambitious and lucrative summer job. He is pictured here with a friend, surrounded by a number of the occasional tables which were the backbone of his business.] MAKING HAY by Kenneth Jernigan As a blind child growing up on a farm in the hills of Middle Tennessee in the late 1920's and early 1930's, I did a lot of thinking. This is not surprising since there wasn't much else to do. We lived in a four-room house on a gravel road, and I doubt that an automobile a week passed our door. We had no radio, no telephone, no newspaper, no magazines, and no books except the Bible and the textbooks my brother (four years older than I) brought home from school. The world of the late '20's and early '30's in rural Tennessee was a totally different place from what we know today. Nobody thought about atom bombs, pollution, or jet planes. About the hottest topic I heard discussed by my elders was whether it was a sin for a woman to bob her hair and what the likelihood was that you would go to hell if you played cards. I had better explain that last remark. I am not referring to playing cards for money, just ordinary games around the family table. And while we are on the subject, there was no question at all about whether you would go to hell if you danced or played pool. You would. The difference between the world of then and there and the one of here and now was not limited to the rural areas. Let me give you an example. When I went off to the Tennessee School for the Blind in Nashville at the age of six (that would have been January of 1933), one of the more charming customs of the place was a Saturday morning ritual involving the Scriptures. Shortly after breakfast the small boys (I don't know what happened to the girls since there was strict segregation) were plopped down on a bench and given the task of memorizing a chapter from the Bible. It didn't do any good to protest, object, or try to resist. You sat there until you memorized it, after which you were free to go play. One's religion had nothing to do with it, nor did one's interest or aptitude. When you got the task done, you could (within limits) go where you pleased and do what you liked. Meanwhile you couldn't. And whatever time you spent trying to beat the system was just that much of the morning gone. I suppose I need not tell you that I quickly concluded to learn my chapter with minimum delay, which I religiously (no play on words intended) did. As a result, I have been a devout Bible quoter ever since--and much, I might add, to my benefit and long-range satisfaction. Ah, well, children are not always in the best position to know what will stand them in good stead. I don't want to leave you with the impression that everything in that Tennessee world of the '20's and '30's concerned the Bible or religious matters. It didn't. We popped corn in a pan of bacon grease on the wood stove in the kitchen or in a long-handled popper at the fireplace in one or the other of the two bedrooms. (The house had a kitchen, a dining room, and two bedrooms.) We visited our neighbors and relatives, either walking or (if the distance was too far) riding in a wagon drawn by two mules; we gathered hickory nuts and walnuts; and now and again the family sang songs or listened to a neighbor play a banjo. At Christmas time there was a great deal of cooking, but no convenience foods, of course, and as little as possible bought from the store. For instance, we didn't make fruitcake. That would have cost too much. Instead, we made jam cake. The black walnuts, the homemade blackberry jam, and most of the other ingredients came from our farm and required no outlay of cash. As to my personal situation, it was (if you want to be high-toned about it) what you might call anomalous. Nobody in the neighborhood had ever known a blind person, so there was no one to give advice. My parents loved me, but they didn't know what to do. This led to some strange inconsistencies. For instance, my mother and dad didn't want me to carry wood for the fireplace or stove or water from the spring, which was only a few feet from the house. They didn't want me to play in the yard or go any farther than the porch. They were afraid I might get hurt. Yet, they had no objection at all to my shooting firecrackers at Christmas time. It was regarded as a natural thing for boys in that part of the country to shoot firecrackers, and I suppose my parents just never thought about it. One of my earliest memories is of me standing on the front porch with a match and a firecracker in my hand and of my father, saying as he went past me into the house, "You'd better be careful, or you'll blow your hand off with that thing." Young as I was, I knew that he was right and that nobody would stop me if I was careless--so I wasn't careless. I developed a technique of holding the match just below the head and pressing the firecracker fuse against it. Match and fuse were held between my thumb and index finger, so there was no possibility of the firecracker's exploding in my hand since my fingers were between it and the flame. Never once did I get hurt, and I think the experience helped me learn something about risk taking and proper caution. As I have already said, I did a lot of thinking as I was growing up. I also did a lot of planning, for I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in close confinement in that four-room house on the farm. As I reasoned it, I needed to read all the books I could, and I needed to go to college. Therefore, as Braille and recorded books became available to me through the books for the blind program of the Library of Congress, I followed through on the matter and crammed my head as full of book learning as I could. Later I went to college and put the limited environment of the farm behind me. Meanwhile, I wanted to do productive work and make some money. This wasn't easy since my family (though loving me) thought I was virtually helpless. My first effort (caning chairs at the School for the Blind) brought more labor than cash, but I had to start where I could. Also, we had cows on the farm, and we sold their milk to a nearby cheese factory. During summer vacations I milked cows night and morning and got ten cents a week for it. At the time I was probably eleven or twelve. During the first part of the Second World War (I would have been fourteen or fifteen), I made a little money collecting peach seeds. I sold them to a man who came by twice a week in a truck. I was told that the kernels were used for filters in gas masks, but I don't know whether that was true or not. What I do know is that I got a penny a pound for them and that there were a tremendous number of peaches eaten in the neighborhood. Then, there was the NYA (the National Youth Administration), one of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Beginning in 1943 I washed windows, scrubbed floors, shined the small boys' shoes, and did other chores at the School for the Blind for three dollars a month--fifteen hours at twenty cents an hour. I thought I was rich. And there was even an extra dividend. I was not the only boy at the School for the Blind who got three dollars a month for working for the NYA. There were quite a number, which meant that we now had a cash economy, with more money in circulation than the boys at the School for the Blind had ever known. It stimulated business. I was one of those who profited. I established a relationship with a local wholesale house and walked there once or twice a week to carry large boxes of candy and chewing gum back to the School. I bought the candy for three cents a bar and sold it for a nickel. Going for the candy was not only good exercise but also good profit. My roommate and I did a thriving business. It helped me get some of the money to start to college. There was also my broom-making project. A neighbor in the country raised broom corn, and I took it with me to the School for the Blind and made it into brooms. (All blind boys in those days were taught chair caning and broom making regardless of their aptitudes or wishes, and I think I could still do a creditable job at either task.) My neighbor supplied the broom corn, and I made and sold the brooms. We split the profits. During the latter part of the Second World War (by this time I was sixteen or seventeen) I got a chance during the school year to make some money by sorting aircraft rivets. The Vultee Aircraft Company established a plant near Nashville to make dive bombers, and there were many thousands of rivets in each plane. The workers would drop rivets on the floor; and when the dirt, cigarette stubs, and other leavings were swept up, the assorted mixture was brought to the students at the School for the Blind for sorting. We separated the rivets from the trash, sorted them into sizes and types, discarded any with rough spots on them, and sent them back to the aircraft plant. It was a messy job, but it was a way to make some money. I think I got two and a half cents a pound for it. But all of these various jobs were preliminary to my first truly big opportunity. It happened like this: In the summer of 1944 (I was seventeen) I wanted to expand my horizons. Farm laborers in our neighborhood made $1.25 per day, working from sunrise to sunset, and I wanted to join their ranks. The pivotal event occurred when they began making hay. We had no power machinery. There was a mule-drawn mower, and after the hay was cut, there was a mule-drawn rake. The men would follow the rake with pitchforks, putting the hay into shocks and then tossing it into the mule-drawn wagon. Then it would be taken to the barn and put into the loft. I tried to get my dad and the other decision makers to let me try my hand at making hay. They were not only unwilling but didn't even want to talk about it. In fact when I insisted, they indicated to me that they were busy and had work to do and that I should stop bothering them. Since I was unwilling to spend the summer doing nothing, I looked around for other opportunities. It occurred to me that I might try my hand at making furniture. Lumber was cheap in those days, and I also had the idea of using spools. At that time thread was wound on wooden spools, plastic not yet having come into use, and almost everybody sewed. Spools were throw-aways, and I got all my relatives, plus department stores in surrounding towns, to save them for me. I got them in every conceivable size and then sorted them and strung them on iron rods to make table legs. The design was simple, but the product was both durable and graceful. I could make a table in a day and could sell it for $10. It cost me $1.75 in materials, so I had a profit of $8.25. My rejection became a triumph. While the men did back-breaking labor in the hay fields for $1.25 a day, I stayed in my workshop, listened to recorded books, and produced tables for a profit of $8.25. No matter how fast I made them, I could never keep up with demand. It was as regular as clock work--$8.25 net profit day after day, not the $1.25 I would have made in the hay field. I also designed and made floor lamps from spools. The lamp had an old steering wheel for a base with a pipe running up the center, surrounded by four columns of spools, with a fixture and shade on top. I could make it in a day, and I sold it for $25, with a cost for materials of a little over $8. This was twice as much profit as I made from a table. The trouble was that the lamps were harder to sell, so I got relatively few orders. By the end of the summer I had more money than I had ever seen, and I did it again the following year. I went to college in 1945 and never returned to the furniture business, but it taught me a valuable lesson, as did the other jobs I have described. There are many ways to make hay, and if you lose $1.25, you may make $8.25 if you put your mind to it. As I have already said, the world of fifty years ago was a different place from the world of today--but many of the lessons still hold. They probably always will, and one of them is that making hay is a lifelong process. [PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Nell C. Carney, former commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration.] NATION'S TOP DISABILITY ADMINISTRATOR TAKES MISSISSIPPI JOB This article appeared in the January 20, 1993, Clarion- Ledger. Written by Butch John, it tells of the appointment of Nell Carney as Director of Mississippi's Department of Rehabilitation Services. Here it is: Nell C. Carney, who has headed the nation's agency for disabled Americans since July, 1989, on Tuesday accepted the helm of the state's Department of Rehabilitation Services. "It is my full intention to make the rehabilitation program in Mississippi a national model," Carney said in an interview from her Washington office. "Leadership is what's missing. There's a great opportunity there." Carney replaces John Cook as executive director of an agency that serves more than 100,000 Mississippians. Cook left the $73,258-a-year position in December. Carney, who is visually impaired, said she plans to begin work in Jackson Monday. She said she turned down one other job offer and entertained several feelers after President Bush failed to win re-election November 3. Carney won unanimous approval in Tuesday's meeting of the 1,700-employee state agency's governing board. As commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration in the U.S. Department of Education, she was the obvious pick from about a dozen candidates, board members said. "She has just impeccable credentials. When you review a resume of a person with such a background, you can't help but be awed. It's difficult to perceive of an individual more qualified," said Dr. Ed Thompson, interim head of the state Department of Health and one of the five state agency heads on the board. Andy Taggert, chief of staff for Governor Kirk Fordice, called Carney's hiring a triumph for Mississippi. Carney, who holds a master's degree from Vanderbilt University and more than 90 hours of additional management training at other schools, began her career as an instructor at Middle Tennessee State University in 1974. She held several counseling and administrative jobs in Washington state and Virginia before accepting the federal position. "Having worked 3-1/2 years as a federal administrator, I see coming back to a state program as a good experience," she said. "I think Mississippi probably misses a lot of grant money. I'm the one who knows where to find it." Evelyn Williams, who heads a parents' program to make Jackson public schools more accessible to disabled children, applauded the change. A former client of the state agency, and a harsh critic of its administration in recent years, Williams said Carney's reputation and experience seemed to promise a service-oriented system the state had lacked. [PHOTO: John Miller speaks with microphone in hand. CAPTION: John Miller addresses the Job Opportunities for the Blind seminar at the 1992 convention of the National Federation of the Blind.] THE MAKING OF AN ENGINEER by John Miller From the Associate Editor: At the 1993 Job Opportunities for the Blind (JOB) national seminar, conducted the day before the NFB convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, seminar participants heard John Miller, a 1988 NFB scholarship winner, describe his recent successful search for a job as a systems engineer. He told the group how important it is for the blind job-seeker to build and exude self-confidence. He said that one must be able to discuss blindness knowledgeably and briefly in an interview and that this can be done only if one has read and studied the articles in the Braille Monitor. He went on to suggest that every job applicant among his hearers concentrate on compiling a strong resume and references who will be prepared to speak enthusiastically and precisely about his or her skills and abilities. Finally he warned his listeners that they had to be prepared to demonstrate creativity and flexibility. An interviewer must be left with the impression that it would be interesting and stimulating to have a blind employee. That was in July. By November John had moved to San Diego, California, and had begun work with his new company. He came to the convention of the National Federation of the Blind of California and reported on how he had actually gotten his job and how it was going. Here is what he had to say: I am a systems engineer at Quacom Incorporated in San Diego. Just last spring I graduated from Stanford University with both a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering. This year has been exciting for me. Four weeks ago today was my wedding. I welcome my wife Valerie to the Federation fold for many years to come. We look forward to seeing all of you in Dallas this summer. What I am here to talk about, of course, is employment. During my four years at Stanford one of the most important things I gained was speaking with many of my disabled friends. In one of our talks we posed a question to each other, "Would you, if you could, take a pill that would make you a non-disabled person?" A number of us concluded "No, we are proud of our identity as disabled persons. We do not need to be like other people." As a matter of fact, it's this kind of strength and independence that we have in the National Federation of the Blind. We can respect ourselves as blind people and take pride in being blind. This is what we need to convey to our employers. The employment process has two steps: The first is to get the job, and the second is to make our employers and co-workers comfortable with our disabilities. Last winter and spring I interviewed with twenty-three different companies. From that I obtained four second-round opportunities to demonstrate my strength again on plant trips and received three job offers at the end of that rather harrowing experience. At my many first company interviews I did encounter discrimination. One thing I knew at the beginning was that other candidates interview the recruiter. Recruiters interview about ten different people. Some of them they remember favorably, others negatively, others not at all. As blind people we are excluded from the not-at-all category. They will either remember us favorably or negatively. We can use this to our advantage. We will leave them with an impression. Which one that will be is the challenge we face. In the beginning I thought my Quacom first-round interview went quite well. We struck up a good camaraderie, discussed a number of different interests, classes, and some professors that the interviewer had known at Stanford. Then it occurred to me that he was telling me about his interests more than telling me anything to do with the Quacom position or asking me about my past experience. I asked him if he intended to raise any technical questions. He responded, "It's not that I feel you are unqualified; it's rather that I am unqualified to ask you, a blind person, technical engineering questions." I responded, "It's only fair that you ask technical questions both to me and to others that you interview today. I am a teaching assistant of electrical engineering students. We often deal with electrical engineering issues. If you need to draw to ask the question, do so and describe to me what you're drawing as you go along, and I will give you my answer as well as I can." So a half-hour into the interview I learned that for others it had been a technical interview from the beginning. I had ten minutes left in which to prove my merit. When I was done with the interview, I expected that I wouldn't be hearing from Quacom. But they did invite me down to the plant. I had four interviews there that morning, and then we were taken out to lunch--wined and dined--and told we would have another interview that day only if we hadn't found a good match with one of our previous interviewers. I was secure in the knowledge that I had found a match, went ahead to eat a large dessert, and felt very sleepy afterwards. I came back and went on a tour of the plant. Then they informed me that the vice president of engineering wanted to interview me at five o'clock. All I could think of was, "I shouldn't have had that dessert." I was so sleepy! I recognized that this was an opportunity because clearly it was not that I hadn't had good interviews, but that the vice president of engineering wanted to have a close look at a blind person they might consider hiring. I took advantage of the opportunity as Rami Rabbi recommends in his book, Take Charge. (Any of you who are looking for a job please follow the road map that Rami lays out; it helped me through the job-search experience.) I explained that I thought to do good engineering work I would like to work with readers ten hours a week and pay them $7.50 an hour. This would be $3250 a year. I would be willing to pay it out of my salary; or, if he thought Quacom could afford it, they could supply the funds in addition to my salary. He said he would take that into consideration and wrote it into the offer letter I received several weeks later. Now I had a job; I moved down to San Diego and went to work my first day. I knew that securing the job was just the beginning. I needed to make my co-workers comfortable with my disability. Two weeks later I presented a lecture about disability, the National Federation of the Blind, and positive attitudes to a hundred engineers. I explained to them that I was now in their midst and would be asking questions in meetings when they said, "This line implies..." or "As you can see from this curve...." So they could expect interruptions any time they made a presentation and would now know how best to work with me. I told them that I was proud to be blind and happy to discuss blindness. I also told them that role models in the National Federation of the Blind had taught me that blind people can do anything they put their minds and talents to. I was not a freak or an incredible blind person; I was an average blind person doing an average engineering job. Before I close, I invite anyone to call me who has questions about how a blind person can do electrical engineering, how a blind person can secure Braille text with less than four months to get the print copy transcribed into Braille, and how a blind person can read in Braille actual handouts with less than a week's turnaround by working with volunteer Braille transcribers. My home number is (619) 587-3975. Thank you very much. [PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Evan J. Kemp, Jr.] HAVE CIVIL RIGHTS BECOME GROUP RIGHTS? by Evan Kemp, Jr. From the Editor: At the time of this writing (early February, 1993) Evan Kemp is still Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Whether the Clinton Administration will ask him to continue in office (and they probably won't), he has definitely made his mark on the federal government and taken definite and clear-cut stands. As an example, he thought that the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy campaign was demeaning to the disabled--and he said so. He did it knowing that his views were controversial, and he refused to back down when he was pressured. He thought special awards for handicapped government employees were insulting, not complimentary--and he made an issue out of it, advocating that such awards be abolished. Again he refused to keep silent or retract. More recently Mr. Kemp has made public pronouncements on the touchy subject of civil rights as opposed to group entitlement. As with his other hot-potato subjects, he has refused to say that he didn't mean it and shows no sign of waffling. He expressed his views on the topic in a speech delivered at the National Press Club in Washington on November 24, 1992; and whether one agrees or disagrees, all who give even a moment's thought to the matter must applaud the behavior of this different breed of federal bureaucrat. He takes a position; he lays it out; you can understand it; and when the heat turns on, he doesn't deny that he said it or claim that he really didn't mean it or was misunderstood. You can like it or dislike it, but there it is without apology or equivocation. Ah, that we had more like him! His statements at the National Press Club did not, of course, go unchallenged. Five days after they were made (on November 29, 1992), the Washington Post took him to task in an editorial. As in the other cases I have mentioned, he didn't wilt in the heat. Quite the contrary. On December 8, 1992, he counterattacked. I think Monitor readers will find this exchange not only interesting but thought-provoking. The questions raised and the opinions expressed are worth pondering. Here are the November 24 remarks at the National Press Club, the November 29 Washington Post editorial, and the December 8 Kemp response: Have Civil Rights Become Group Rights? by Evan J. Kemp, Jr. It's a pleasure to be here at the National Press Club. Most of you probably watched President-elect Clinton's first press conference. There the Governor pledged to the nation that his administration would look like America, that it would reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of our country. Yet during the campaign candidate Clinton had made vehement statements opposing quotas, opposing group preferences. That the President-elect used the term "diversity" is not surprising. Though diversity used to bring to mind the image of the melting pot, the richness of America, today diversity is a code word to many for group entitlement, preferences, division-- the very quotas candidate Clinton said he opposed, the very quotas the American people oppose. I have faced this dilemma as Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as did Eleanor Holmes Norton and Clarence Thomas before me. And it is the dilemma that the new Chairman of the EEOC will face. I have felt, as will my successor, the pressure to use our employment discrimination laws to turn the goal of diversity into a prescription for group entitlement. President-elect Clinton's promotion of diversity and opposition to group entitlement must be reconciled. And I can tell you from experience that this is nearly an impossible job-- nearly impossible because we have not told the truth about what's really happening in universities, in the work force, in our cities. We have not told the truth about what words such as "diversity" and "affirmative action" have come to mean. I am glad to have the opportunity to be here today, as my time as Chairman draws to a close, to reflect on this dilemma, as well as on what the future may hold. Twenty-eight years ago Americans confronted the unequal status of blacks in this country. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin, and gender in public accommodations and employment. Later Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. And in 1990, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the EEOC, Congress made illegal discrimination on the basis of disability. These laws, based on a strong consensus, a firm belief in equal opportunity for all, and on the primacy of individual rights, have brought about unprecedented change. America is far better for honoring our commitment to the fundamental principle that all are created equal, that everyone is entitled to the opportunity to compete for jobs for which they qualify, to gain those qualifications through education, to travel, to use public accommodations, and to live wherever they can afford. I believe that the civil rights movement of the 1960's succeeded because we were forced to acknowledge that one group of Americans had been excluded from these entitlements. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made us acknowledge that the great American melting pot had grudgingly, but unfailingly, absorbed refugees from Europe and Asia but had miserably failed to do the same for blacks. King's simple but eloquent message stirred and unified the nation. But while King suffered insult, even imprisonment, because of his race, he did not ask for reparations or for special privileges. His dream was for a nation where his children--where all children--would be judged by the content of their characters, not by the color of their skins. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 realized King's dream of inclusion. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave every American the right to be judged by what they can do, not by someone else's stereotypes. Most recently Americans with disabilities demanded and won this right. Tragically for us all Dr. King's assassination robbed the civil rights movement of his leadership and his vision. Others have used his dream of equality to gain power through group entitlement, promoting distrust and resentment among racial and ethnic groups. Notions of individual responsibility and the duties of citizenship have been subsumed by assertions of rights by virtue of victim status. As author Shelby Steele explains: "We have taken our power from our history of victimization, which gave us an enormous moral authority and brought social reforms, to the neglect of self-reliance and individual initiative." Once group entitlement became the driving force, the consensus of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 began to erode. Politicians bowed to the politics of pigmentation. The policies of pigmentation were sold as equal justice for all. Employers installed quotas and called them "goals and timetables," colleges lowered entrance standards in the pursuit of fairness, and "race norming" was used to achieve a balanced work force. This was the well from which animosity among groups began to spring. This animosity can be seen in the charges brought to the EEOC, in the news from Los Angeles to Crown Heights. What part did actual or perceived preferences play in the Los Angeles riots? People are frightened by what columnist William Raspberry has described as "an increase in disputes, claims and counter- claims across ethnic, geographical, gender, and economic lines." The best advice I can offer my successor is not to give in to those who would carve up American society along ethnic, racial, and gender lines. Because if we do, we will tragically shortchange minority youths by assuming that, because they do not do as well on a group basis as others, they will never do as well. We have already lowered standards and expectations. The individual who does succeed is stigmatized. The others are told that they cannot hope to compete as individuals, only as members of a subgroup. Still others get the message, "Don't even try to compete; success is beyond your reach." The focus on groups over individuals has translated into favoritism toward one group at the expense of another, creating division and resentment. This country is home to some 150 ethnic and racial groups. How do we divide the pie? Indeed, what exactly do we mean by affirmative action? Because if affirmative action is going to be based on group entitlement and proportional representation, an impossible task lies ahead for President-elect Clinton, for the new Chairman of the EEOC, for the entire nation. And why are we suddenly hearing about "diversity"? I'm afraid that the term "diversity" is an effort to make permanent what we had before been assured by the U.S. Supreme Court was temporary. I remember remarking to a friend how impressed I had been by a recent article by Thomas Sowell that examined the use of group preferences in other countries. I told her, "Now here's a guy who really understands disability!" Sowell never mentioned disability in his article. But he talked about the fact that in Sri Lanka, in India, or wherever preferential treatment has been tried, those who needed it the least got all the benefits. That is the reality of preferences with respect to disability as well. Entitlements in the guise of quotas have always benefited those persons with the least severe disabilities, or with what I like to call the three H's: hemorrhoids, hangnails, and halitosis. Employers will do the minimum necessary to comply with the law to meet their quotas. And those with the most serious disabilities are never used to fill a quota. Moreover, preferential treatment for persons with disabilities raises other questions. How would it apply to the hundreds of subgroups of disabilities? Should the blind be favored over the deaf? Does hiring one person in a wheelchair excuse a company from considering a qualified applicant with a learning disability? These were among the questions debated in the twelve years leading up to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I was a part of that process, and I can tell you that it wasn't easy, that not everyone liked the answers. But the debate was an honest examination of the fears of employers and the desires of Americans with disabilities. And when we were finished, we had a strong consensus that the entire nation would benefit from including Americans with disabilities in the American dream. I believe the ADA can and should be a paradigm for the future of civil rights because it is based on individual rights. The ADA charges employers to look at an individual's abilities, rather than disabilities. But, most important, under the ADA employers are not required to hire an unqualified applicant simply because that applicant has a disability. The Act ensures that persons with disabilities who are qualified to do a job will no longer be locked out by discrimination. But it does not mandate that employers use statistics and other group-based numbers to make hiring decisions. Would that were true under the Civil Rights Act of 1991. That legislation certainly was hard fought. Unfortunately, most of that fight took place behind closed doors, where the politics of pigmentation could be openly pursued. During the private debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1991, so-called civil rights leaders went so far as to plead with the White House for one more generation of quotas for blacks. And yet publicly they proclaimed, "This is not a quota bill." The fight was over the theory of disparate impact. That theory came from a highly ambiguous 1971 Supreme Court decision in Griggs vs. Duke Power Co. It had come to be understood to mean that neutral employment practices that did not involve intentional discrimination but disproportionately operated to exclude blacks would nevertheless be found to violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, unless they were justified by "business necessity." Never mind that the 1964 Act had rejected this theory. As a result employers came to understand that one way to avoid lawsuits over whether their hiring practices operated in this manner was to hire by group preferences, and colleges and universities changed their admissions policies to do the same. Civil rights leaders also became quite attached to this system. But the rhetoric of civil rights has never reflected that reality. That was my great frustration during debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1991. No one involved in those debates should claim this law was passed with a broad consensus, other than the stated desire of politicians to "get the quota issue behind us." But did we get it behind us? Absolutely not. Executive Order 11246, which is the father of quotas and group preferences, was never even discussed in the two years of debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1990 and 1991. Some readers of the Act, like the worried business leaders who have embraced quotas and preferences to avoid lawsuits and Fred Barnes of the New Republic, believe it protects them. The EEOC eventually will have to address this issue, and the Supreme Court ultimately will decide it. We need an honest examination of the policies championed by those well-meaning do-gooders who would protect and patronize the victim, who would base our civil rights laws on the very stereotypes they were meant to dispel. We need to get back to discussions of individual ability and merit versus group stereotypes and entitlement. We must stop viewing our civil rights laws as the solutions to educational and economic disparity. And we must return to merit, to values. Values, that much maligned concept from the recent election. People poked a lot of fun at the discussion about values. Yet our values have eroded to the point where studies show that children are cheating more and more in school and thinking that they are doing nothing wrong. How can we instill the importance of merit and respect for individuals if we ignore our values? We must begin honest debate about these issues. The Washington Post took a step in that direction a few months ago in a provocative series on race. The newspaper sponsored two focus groups: one all-black and one all-white. The groups then mixed for a frank discussion about blacks' perceptions of whites and whites' perceptions of blacks. That discussion became explosive at times, just as there will be animosity as we focus on topics that many are afraid to discuss, except among members of their own group. Senate Democrats were afraid to initiate discussion of these topics when Clarence Thomas was considered for the Supreme Court. It is time to ask: What does affirmative action mean today? Is it more than the removal of unlawful or artificial barriers? Do we owe something special to present-day African-Americans--as opposed to Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Hispanic- Americans, Irish-Americans--because blacks have suffered a history of slavery and discrimination? And, even if we owe reparations, can that debt ever be repaid in the devalued coin of racial preferences? In fact, monetary reparations might be far less costly to society than racial preferences. It is time to ask: What does diversity mean today? Is it inclusion in that melting pot that made our nation great? Is it divisive preservation of ethnic or racial heritage to the exclusion of others? It is time to ask: Can we afford in today's highly competitive world to discount the importance of merit in the guise of fairness? This is the challenge we face in the years ahead: to heal a nation torn asunder by tension among groups. That healing can begin only when we face the reality of civil rights in America with honest debate and frank talk. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the debate in this most important of forums. That was what Evan Kemp had to say on November 24. Five days later the Washington Post responded with the following editorial: Looking Like America The Bush Administration's chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission thinks he's already caught Bill Clinton in a contradiction on civil rights. The President-elect has said he wants his Cabinet and Administration to "look like America," yet during the campaign he "made vehement statements opposing quotas, opposing group preferences." And there, in case you missed it, is the conflict, the whole awful thing, as the Bush Administration continues to view the world. The diversity that the Democratic victor seeks implies the use of precisely the "preferences" that he says he wants to avoid, EEOC Chairman Evan Kemp said in a swan song the other day. No way can the laudable goal be achieved except by suspect means, no matter how many eminently qualified blacks or women or Hispanics or members of other such groups you happen to have in your party or to know; the quota police know quotas when they see them. "President-elect Clinton's promotion of diversity and opposition to group entitlement must be reconciled, and I can tell you from experience that it is nearly an impossible job," Mr. Kemp said. He complained that increasingly, since the 1960's, politicians had abandoned the simple goal of non-discrimination in favor of a "Politics of pigmentation." In fact, the achievement of diversity in an administration or student body or faculty or work force does not require a resort to quotas. Even a Reagan-Bush Supreme Court continues to recognize that there is a middle ground. Mr. Kemp, of course, is right that a tension exists. Affirmative action does indeed encompass an inconsistency, as its critics never tire of pointing out. To overcome the effects of racial and other forbidden forms of discrimination from the past, precisely those forbidden factors are required to be taken into account in hiring, promotions, and admissions in the present; the cure becomes a reverse dose of the disease. The Bush Administration's position has been that the cure somehow constitutes the greater threat, that affirmative remedies go too far, entangle the courts, employers, and the like in precisely the kinds of racial and other offensive labeling that they are meant to eliminate, and that they ought to be replaced by a policy of strict neutrality--color-blindness, in the case of race. But it is government that is blinded and--conveniently from the standpoint of those who would prefer that it do less--too often neutralized by such a policy, no one else. Government is supposed to pretend that race or ethnic origin or sexual stereotypes are not a factor in situations where everyone else knows full well that they are. Mr. Kemp says that he felt, as will his successor, "the pressure to use our employment discrimination laws to turn the goal of diversity into a prescription for group entitlement." No doubt that's so, but the danger that a policy will be carried too far is hardly grounds for its abandonment. There's harm--though not to the same people--in doing too little as well. Mr. Clinton can have a diverse administration and the country still be safe from quotas. That was the response of the editors at the Washington Post, and on December 8 Evan Kemp commented as follows: Rights and Quotas, Theory and Practice by Evan J. Kemp, Jr. Finally, thanks to the Post's editorial "Looking Like America," the real debate on civil rights has begun. In my speech November 24 to the National Press Club--"Have Civil Rights Become Group Rights?"--I called for such a beginning, for an honest discussion of the state of civil rights. I emphasized we must examine the effects of policies--race norming, quotas, goals, timetables--designed to facilitate affirmative action but resulting in insidious and pervasive racial, ethnic and gender preferences. I asked that we take a hard look at what is producing tensions among groups and fostering division in our society. I have seen how the group approach feeds these tensions. As a leader of the disability rights movement, I fought for the guarantee of individual rights in the Americans With Disabilities Act. I knew group entitlement fails when applied to disability; employers do the minimum necessary under law to meet quotas and never fill a quota with individuals with serious disabilities. As chairman of the EEOC I have found protection on the basis of group status also fails when applied to race, ethnicity, and gender. President-elect Clinton has recognized these tensions and resentments, and has been widely praised for doing so. He courageously told whites and blacks that division is unhealthy and must be healed. But the challenge to the Clinton Administration will be to take the next step and examine whether the prescriptions to cure the disease of racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination are outdated, even producing a counter- reaction. According to the Post's editorial, President-elect Clinton "can have a diverse administration and the country still [my emphasis] be safe from quotas...[T]he achievement of diversity in an administration or student body or faculty or work force does not require a resort to quotas." In theory, no, but in practice, yes. Even after twelve years of Reagan-Bush policies, employers large and small, governments, universities, and nonprofit sector all labor under a regulatory regime that results in the widespread use of quotas. Here's how the system actually works: the Labor Department requires federal contractors to report the race, ethnic, and gender composition of its work force. Failure to reflect a "correct" composition risks loss of federal contracts. Employers also must grapple with "business necessity" and the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures--the government regulation that requires businesses to justify any selection procedure that has a "disparate impact." This means that, if your payroll doesn't meet the government's prescription for racial, ethnic, or gender mix, you may be sued. Thus the Uniform Guidelines have become the arbiter of individual merit in American employment. An employer who prefers high school graduates over non-graduates, for example, would risk a discrimination charge because of possible differences in graduation rates among different racial and ethnic groups. But even when an employer successfully defends the "business necessity" of employment decisions, the Uniform Guidelines burden the employer to continue to search for "alternative selection procedures" producing less of a disparate impact (i.e., producing equality of results when comparing groups). To avoid expensive litigation, prudent employers "hire by the numbers," ensuring that their work force's "bottom line" reflects the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of their labor market. More important, hiring by the numbers satisfies the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (and for that matter, EEOC field investigators), even though the Supreme Court has held Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects individuals, not groups. While hiring by the numbers has become de facto civil rights policy, it begs the question of whose numbers. According to historian Stephan Thernstrom of Harvard University, there are at least 106 ethnic groups in the American labor force. Here we get to the issue of diversity, which the media treat as the Holy Grail but which in practice has too often come to mean group entitlement in the workplace and in our universities. President-elect Clinton's desire to make his administration "look like America" is laudable. But how to get there? The Clinton administration can be expected to report this diversity in terms of the percentage of race, ethnicity, and gender for some, but not all, of these groups. Diversity, which used to bring to mind the image of the melting pot, is today a politically correct call for group entitlements--the very quotas a majority of Americans oppose. At no point in my November 24 speech did I claim or imply that "in no way can the laudable goal [of diversity] be achieved except by suspect means, no matter how many eminently qualified blacks or women or Hispanics or members of other such groups you happen to have in your party or to know..." That's what the Post's editorial said, not what I said or meant. Recently I heard divergent definitions of affirmative action voiced by two journalists, one black and one white. The black journalist believed affirmative action means dismantling illegal barriers to equal opportunity. Her white colleague described affirmative action as preferential treatment. These insights were not the political hyperbole or euphemism of Bush-Reagan policy makers or, for that matter, Post editorial writers. These were citizens telling the truth as they saw it. And their truths reveal the lack of consensus, the myth of the middle ground that characterizes the debate about civil rights. Where is the middle ground for which the Post's editorial yearns? If by middle ground we mean consensus, that can only be reached by continuing to ask the tough questions--questions such as: In today's highly competitive world can we afford to discount the importance of merit in the guise of fairness? Do we owe something special to present-day African Americans--as opposed to Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Hispanic Americans, Irish Americans--because blacks have suffered a history of slavery and discrimination? And if the answer is yes, can that debt ever be repaid in the devalued coin of racial preference? We must not be satisfied with facile or simplistic answers that bear little relationship to the reality of the workplace, the universities, indeed, of society as a whole. The incoming administration, as well as the Post editorial page, must face that fact that, if diversity is used to mask a regime of quotas, we will tear the fabric of this nation along ethnic, racial, and gender lines. Surely none of us wants that. [PHOTO: Jillian Brooks stands outside with skis. CAPTION: Jillian Brooks is an avid skiier.] TOWARD A MORE TOLERANT WORLD: THE PRICE OF DISCRIMINATION by Jillian Brooks From the Associate Editor: The April, 1991, issue of the Braille Monitor included an article by Jillian Brooks of Redding, California, describing her struggle with Redding Radiation, a medical facility that had fired her because of her blindness. The resulting case has taken years to settle, but finally, in the spring of 1992, it was settled resoundingly in her favor. Jillian, who learned about the Federation in the course of fighting this battle and who has subsequently helped to organize and become the president of the Shasta County Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of California, told the entire story to the California affiliate at its 1992 convention last November. The following article is taken from her remarks. Here it is: In the sessions yesterday and today we have talked a lot about acquiring the alternative techniques that blind people need to succeed. In the student division meeting we talked about ways of getting grants and scholarships and discussed strategies for finding jobs. We've also talked about reasonable accommodation on the job and what you can do to make your job go better. But sometimes it doesn't go better; things go wrong, and you get fired. What do you do then? You have learned all the things you needed to; you have done everything right; you are a qualified employee. But you get fired because you're blind and for no other reason. We've all been discriminated against many times, but this is a big one. I have been fortunate because I have only been fired once. My poor sister has been fired eight or nine times because of vision. But the feelings I had when it happened to me were very similar to those I felt when I learned that my father had died and when my mother died. It was a horrible, horrible feeling, and it will never leave me. I certainly have empathy for anyone else who goes through it. I am an x-ray technologist, and I have worked in the field for a good twelve years. Several years ago I moved up to Redding, California, and bought a home. I got a job with Redding Radiology, and I worked there for all of four and a half days. Then I was fired because I was considered a safety hazard. When I was being interviewed for the job, I told them that I had a severe vision problem and that I would be using a magnifying glass. I think that's a pretty reasonable accommodation. I pulled it out to show the interviewer, and she said it was no problem. But she fired me the day she saw me use it. She just took me into her office and said, "There is no place in the medical profession for someone using a magnifying glass." I asked her to check with previous employers, who I knew would tell her that there was no problem, but she wasn't about to listen to me. I hadn't met the Federation yet, so I didn't know about the right to reasonable accommodation. I tried to tell her about my closed circuit television system that I could bring in to use if she didn't like the magnifying glass. Her response was, "I'm sorry about your magnifying glass and your reading machine, but I just don't think that our doctors would be accommodating to that idea." I felt humiliated and helpless. I had just come to Redding and bought a home, and Redding Radiology was the only game in town in x-ray work. I felt panicky and desperate; I wanted to beg for my job. I started to cry, and she just turned around and walked out of her office. That was the end of that, so I walked home. This is where my story really starts. I got home and called my sister who lives in New York. She told me that she had a co- worker and good friend named Rami Rabby. She remembered that he was a member of an organization of blind people. She couldn't quite come up with the name, but she came close enough for me to call telephone information and get the listing for the National Federation of the Blind of California. When I called, the first person I spoke to was Linda Milliner. To talk with someone who understood, who knew what I was feeling, who had been there made all the difference in the world to me. No one in Redding understood. Then, after talking with Linda, I met Sharon Gold, President of the NFB of California. After that it was look out world! The first thing I noticed in talking with Sharon was that she wasn't mad at my employer. She explained that most people are afraid of blindness, and often a little education will bring them around to rational behavior. She seemed to think that, if we could begin a dialogue and allay their fears, we could straighten out the problem. She was prepared to approach them in a very reasonable, adult way. She didn't come storming out, making accusations. But the staff wouldn't even return her calls. Can you imagine not returning Sharon's phone calls? And of course they wouldn't talk to me; I had been terminated, and that was that. On the day I was fired I had been warned by a co-worker not to take any action against Redding Radiology because they were so powerful. She said, "If you do, I guarantee that you will never work in this town again." That really scared me. I had bills and a new house, and I was devastated. Sharon and I began working together. She wrote letters on my behalf. You have read Sharon's letters; they are impressive, darned impressive, and I think the Redding people decided that this just might be someone they would have to take seriously. I have to say that we went through hell together. I couldn't sleep at night, and she was on the phone with me at all hours. She stuck with me the whole way. There were a few funny things that happened. The first time we met face-to-face with representatives from Redding Radiology, we got there before any of them were in the room. Sharon, Sheryl Pickering, and I came in, and Sharon is such a take-charge woman that she sat down at the head of the table in their own conference room and made them sit along the sides. I filed complaints with the California Fair Employment Practices Commission and the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights. This was before enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but Redding Radiology had received Medicare and MediCal funds, so it was bound to comply with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. We kept trying to resolve the problems, but they weren't interested in negotiating. To hear them talk, you would never have known that I had been doing this work for fifteen years. Finally, on the day before the statute of limitations was to expire, we filed a lawsuit. No one could accuse us of having jumped at the chance to sue these people. We tried everything to get my job back. They offered me a job in a darkroom, developing film at half my normal wages. Then they offered me $10,000 to drop the suit, but they wouldn't give me my job back. Never during the negotiations did they explore the question of how I might do my job. To this very day they have never checked my references or talked with anyone from my past jobs about how I do my work. They had made their decision, and they had no intention of reconsidering it. So, as I say, we were forced to sue. We filed suits against Redding Radiology, both the partnership and the corporation, and against each of the thirteen doctors individually. We sued in the federal court and in the state court. Those suits were a positive action, but there were negative things going on at the same time. I was unemployed. There was no money coming in, and I was ashamed. I don't know why; they were the ones who should have been ashamed, but they made me feel like a bumbling Mr. Magoo. And all I wanted to do was to earn my living in the field I had worked in for so long. In preparing our case, I learned early on that it was very important for me to attend as many of the depositions as possible. I discovered that people actually lie in depositions! I was shocked to discover that. So I figured that, if they were going to lie, they would have to do it to my face. And that's what I did: I made them look me in the eye while they were telling lies about what had happened. During this time I tried hard to be positive. I concentrated, for example, on the Dress for Success principle. One day I appeared at a deposition wearing a black linen suit with immaculate white cuffs. I looked very chic and professional. I walked into the attorney's office where one of the doctors was being deposed. I had worked for this doctor, so he had known me although it had been a year. When I came in, the doctor jumped up and walked over to me holding out his hand and said, "Hello, you must be Miss Brooks's attorney." I shook his hand and said, "No way, Dr. Stephens, I'm Jillian Brooks." He stood there shaking my hand, and I could just see the fear on that man's face. Then he took his glasses out of his pocket and put them on saying, "Oh I'm sorry; I didn't have my glasses on." I said, "Better watch out, Dr. Stephens; you could lose your job for something like that." You can see that during this time I had my little victories. I had never been deposed before, but in this case I was deposed for more than sixteen hours. I must say that I enjoyed the fact that at the end of each day of my deposition it was the attorney and not me that was sweating. They kept trying to find some indication of things that I couldn't see, that I couldn't do; but they couldn't. They even brought in an ophthalmologist at $500 an hour to testify against me. They would say to him, "Could she read the print on the cards, Doctor?" "Well she could, but she would have to use a magnifying glass to do so." "What size print could she read?" "She could read the very smallest print, but she read it haltingly." I guess I just hadn't read it fast enough for him. I was very depressed during this time although I did begin to make friends in the National Federation of the Blind. I started learning. I remember Sharon's telling me, "Jillian, your problem is that you don't yet know you are blind." And she was right; I didn't know I was blind, but slowly I began to learn that it is respectable to be blind, and I learned that we have power. It is the brotherhood and sisterhood of this organization that empower us. I like the idea that, if it is necessary, we can mobilize tens of thousands of people to make telephone calls. As I say, I was very depressed. I was told to keep looking for a job, but Redding Radiology was associated with every job in the town. I would respond to ads in the newspaper with my resume, and nobody would call me. Being unemployed got to be very demoralizing. As we got closer to the trial date, I got increasing pressure to settle. During the summary judgment trial I was declared a qualified handicapped employee. That was a very large victory because Redding Radiology was trying to make the case that I wasn't qualified to do the job or that I wasn't really blind or that I wasn't blind enough. But the closer we got to the trial, the more pressure I felt to settle, both from my attorney and from the other side. We were heading into federal court, where I was going to be facing a jury, which meant that I would have to convince every juror of the justice of my position. There was always the chance that one of those people would discriminate against me just as the people at Redding Radiology had done. But I wanted the trial because I wanted the written victory. I wanted a precedent that would convince people that they couldn't kick blind people around. The whole thing became more and more stressful. At about Christmas time they offered me $150,000 to settle the case. I thought about it and then turned them down because I was feeling a little bullied by them. But I agonized over my decision. Then, after the New Year, Redding Radiology's attorneys--which they kept hiring till you wouldn't believe how many there were-- decided that they had better do some depositions of their own. There had already been ten to fifteen depositions, but most of them were done by my attorney. Of course they had to depose Sharon, which was pretty interesting. They finally contacted my previous employer, my supervisor Yvonne in an urgent care clinic in the Bay area. I had also worked with her in the emergency room at Mills Hospital. Redding had been claiming that I was a safety hazard, that I couldn't perform in an emergency. My supervisor's testimony was that for seven years the only time she had worked with me had been in emergencies--five years of emergency room work and another two years in an urgent-care walk-in clinic. She assured them that I had functioned well. When asked how I did things, she said, "Well she'd look real close at them. She'd use her magnifying glass, but she did everything fine. I trusted her absolutely." The next day their attorneys offered me $180,000. I called Yvonne and said, "Thank you very much for your $30,000 deposition. I owe you lunch." We were now about three weeks from the trial date, and I was under incredible pressure. This had been going on for two years and a couple of months. I had had enough. I wanted it behind me. I needed to get on with my life. My brother-in-law, who is a physician in New York, said "You should move from state to state suing everybody who fires you." I don't want to do that. I don't ever, ever want to sue anybody again! So eventually we did settle for $180,000. Then they came and said, "You have to sign this gag order that says you can't talk about the case." And I said, "No way!" I really wanted to have my day to tell people what had happened as I am doing right now. I wanted to tell you guys this story. So Redding Radiology just threw up their hands and settled anyway, and here I am. I want to conclude by saying two more things: I love the National Federation of the Blind. I am now the president of a chapter. I am probably not the best president; I am something of a social butterfly, but let me tell you that I love you. I love what this organization stands for, I am here for the duration, and I care. The other thing I want to say is that three weeks ago on Friday I got a job doing x-ray work in Redding. [PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Gary Wunder.] MOBILITY: WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT? by Gary Wunder From the Associate Editor: Gary Wunder is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind and President of the NFB of Missouri. He is also a thoughtful and sensitive human being. He spoke at the 1992 Parents of Blind Children Seminar, which took place the day before the NFB convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Here is what he had to say as it appeared in the December, 1992, issue of Future Reflections, the magazine published by the Parents of Blind Children Division of the National Federation of the Blind: Priscilla Ferris was just talking about people misunderstanding what dog guides do. It strikes me that there is a theme here that is appropriate for the cane user as well: Any time a blind person is with somebody who is sighted, his or her mobility is considered by many people as necessarily the sighted person's responsibility. This poses a problem when one is, as I am, the blind parent of a sighted child. My daughter was four years old when we were out walking one day. There have been times when my daughter knew that I knew everything and times when she was sure I knew nothing. We were going through one of those "I don't think he knows very much" stages. Whether that happened because of something that somebody at preschool said to her about having a blind father, or because it just happens in the development of children, I don't know. But we were out walking one day. I've always walked with a cane, and I've always taken care of Missy--never had one accident whatsoever. But when we came to the curb, she said, "Stop, Daddy, stop!" I was surprised, and I said, "Missy, I know to stop." "How do you know?" said Missy. "My cane falls off the curb," I said. "Oh, yeah. Well, don't go, Daddy; don't go." "Missy, I'm not going to go." "Well, you can't see the light." "No, I can't see the light, but I can tell when to go by the traffic. Do you know what I mean?" "Huh-uh." "Well, when the parallel traffic is going, it's safe for me to go. When the perpendicular traffic is going, it's not safe. Do you know what I mean?" "No, what's perpendicular?" So I explained to her that parallel is that traffic moving on my right and perpendicular is those cars sitting out here in front of me. We waited a while, and Missy said, "Go, Daddy, go." I said, "Missy, the traffic in front of me is still going. It's not safe." She said, "I know. I just wanted to see did you know." So we crossed the street when both the light and the traffic changed. No sooner did we get across than this woman bent down and gave my daughter a hug. She said, "Oh, you do such a good job with him." So, again, it's the public misperception that it's the dog or the child with the blind person who knows everything, and it's the blind person who is necessarily dependent in travel. That is wrong. I can't overemphasize the importance of independence when it comes to having a positive self-concept. Whether that independence is used to go down to the store to get a loaf of bread or whether it lets you do something as trivial as getting up and walking off in a huff when you're having an argument, the ability to be mobile is terribly important. The difficult thing for blind people is that we learn dependence at a very early age, but we are not likely to grow out of it as other people do. Children at a year and a half or two years old are dependent, whether they are blind or sighted. Parents hold their hands every place they go. The trouble is that at six or eight years of age many of our blind children are still attached to their parents' hands when walking. And while on the one hand blind children resent that and wish for freedom, on the other hand they mostly come to think that this abnormal dependency is a pretty normal thing for blind kids. When I was growing up, you didn't get a cane when you were six or four or three years old. The cane was a thing that my parents put off for as long as they could, and they did it with the support of educators. For them the cane was a symbol. It transformed me from being their blind son--which was okay--to being somebody who might grow up to be a blind man. That wasn't okay. So I didn't see a cane until I was about eleven years old. When I was in elementary school, I was taught to read and write Braille efficiently, but my mobility was something else. I was one of the kids who formed a giant human train whenever we went anywhere. We all got into a big line, a line which was led by a sighted teacher. We all followed along. Because blind people were necessarily less mobile than everybody else, we got to go to lunch early. We were the first in line, the first out to recess, and the first back from recess. We were always in the train. Your blind children don't have to do that today because more and more people are accepting the fact that, if you give a blind child a cane, he or she can learn to move around independently. I thought it was a big deal when I invented a technique that would let me walk around the block. It was called "slide one foot along the curb." I understand now that I was not the first person to invent it, but at the time I thought about marketing it to other blind people. It seemed like a really good idea to me. It was a lot more fun than being hooked up to somebody else all the time. I remember in high school playing lots of tricks and using gimmicks because I didn't have mobility skills. I remember being told that, if you had to use a cane at all, you used it only when you were outside. If you used it inside, you'd be bound to trip your classmates. That would be a terrible thing to do; it would be irresponsible. Besides, who wanted to look any blinder than they had to? That was the line I was given and believed. So I remember in high school figuring out how long each period was and trying to arrange things so I could strike up a conversation with a fellow student just before the bell rang--especially if the student with whom I struck up the conversation happened to be going to the same class as I. Now it's fine to have interesting, stimulating conversations with fellow students; but it's not fine to believe that that's what you have to do to get from one class to the next. Again, the reason I did it was that it wasn't considered acceptable to use a cane indoors. A cane was an outside thing. At first I carried the cane with a certain growl, believing, like most people around me, that my mobility was really someone else's responsibility. Most of the time I could find somebody to hang on to. The cane was only there for times when I couldn't force that responsibility on somebody else. I got lots of support for this attitude. As I said earlier, for a long time my family resisted letting me get and use the cane. They always guided me from one place to another. It wasn't easy to change this when I got to be eleven and was finally introduced to a cane. My brothers and sisters just assumed that somebody in the family ought to have hold of me--if not one of them, then my mother or my father was supposed to hold onto me. We were taught that mobility was a very complex and highly scientific thing that had to be taught by the mobility professionals. If there were no mobility professionals around, well of course you had to hang on. What's worse is that we were taught that route travel (memorizing how to get from point A to point B) was the only form of independent travel a blind person could be taught. If ever points C and D were to be introduced into that route, the mobility specialist would have to be notified at least two or three weeks before the new route was needed. It didn't sound too exciting to me. I learned many things about mobility when I started meeting blind people who were independent travelers. I learned some of my best mobility tips from a blind guy who asked me at midnight if I knew how to get from building A to building B on the college campus. I said that I didn't, and the mobility instructor wasn't coming until the next Thursday. My blind friend said that he thought he could teach me how to get there now, so we went out and learned it. He showed me how to use things like trash cans and telephone poles as landmarks. (The mobility professionals had always taught me to avoid those things.) What amazed me most, however, about this experience was that I was being taught by someone who was blind. And he was teaching me that it wasn't so important to learn a slick routine to get from A to B, but that I should learn general skills that would let me travel safely. There's a tremendous difference between route travel and truly independent travel. It's strange that it took somebody who was blind to teach me that. But I'm glad, too, because I knew that the guy who was blind didn't have professional certification. He was just a blind man who was looking for something to do at midnight and figured he could help another guy. That was wonderful because, at that time in my life, I didn't believe that blind people could teach other blind people anything. I thought mobility was a highly technical skill, and it isn't. I remember going for my first job interview. I wanted a summer job, so I went to the Kansas City Association for the Blind, which is a sheltered workshop. That summer I put pins together and put washers on bolts and did all kinds of things that made me a decent little stash of money for a college student. My parents had never seen me travel without the benefit of a travel instructor, so my mother decided she was going to have me followed. She figured that I would catch her if she did it herself (I'm not sure why she thought this), so she asked my cousin to follow me. My cousin was about eighteen years old at the time and rather scatterbrained. She was a nice enough kid but couldn't stay on task (that's the term we use for it now). So I got on the city bus and rode from South Kansas City to Downtown Kansas City, and while she wasn't looking, I got up and off the bus. It wasn't until two or three blocks later that she realized I wasn't there anymore. She got off, and--not knowing where I was going, only that it had something to do with the blind--she went to a phone book. The first thing she saw was the Bureau for the Blind. She went over to that office, where she and a counselor discussed what a wonderful kid I was while I continued on my way- -unaccompanied--to the Kansas City Association for the Blind. So it didn't do my folks a lot of good to have me followed, but they tried. It took me years to come to see my cane as a symbol of independence. For a long time I regarded it as something to be used only when I couldn't foist my mobility off onto somebody else. I want to tell you the story of what broke me of that attitude. I started dating hot and heavy when I went to college. I enjoyed it immensely. One night I went out to dinner with a young woman. Because my date was sighted, I left my cane at home and went sighted guide. (I thought this was the way that the world worked if you were blind.) We had liver and onions, and as I was cutting my liver and engaging this woman in conversation (I was showing her how witty I was), the plate moved closer and closer to the edge of the table and suddenly plopped off into my lap. Well, I was in something of a bind, and I was terribly embarrassed. When my date asked if I wanted her to walk me home so I could change my clothes, I already felt bad enough without also accepting the humiliation of having her walk me home, so I said "No, I'll be fine." I had to walk six blocks home without a cane. There were several four-lane, lighted street crossings, and I didn't like that very much. After this experience it seemed to me that carrying a cane was probably a very good thing. (I also learned to be a little more careful in cutting liver.) For the first time I realized that I had to be responsible for my own mobility. I don't know why that was such a hard concept to understand. I guess that, after years of being taken care of by people--parents, sisters, brothers, friends, teachers, etc.--who had assumed that my mobility was their responsibility, I had come to consider that attitude just normal. Priscilla talked a lot about guide dogs and canes. I used a guide dog for a time when I went to college. I enjoyed using a dog, so I don't have a thing to say against using them. However, I want to give you a couple of precautions which I think Priscilla would go along with. When I got my guide dog, I did so because I had some trouble with orientation. I thought, somewhere deep down inside, that I would be able to give a dog the command, "Go to 3402 West 52nd Street," and the dog would figure out for me how many blocks south and west I wanted to go. This didn't happen. In fact, I would say that the dog often aggravated my orientation problems because I couldn't look for the landmarks which were so obvious to me with a cane. I had to keep track in my head of where we were. The dog didn't let me get close to the trash cans or the telephone poles because he knew that was the surest way to get a leash correction. But with a cane I could use these landmarks. In some respects with a dog I had to know more about my surroundings in order to travel. The second thing I thought the dog would solve for me was a certain tension I felt when traveling with a cane. It used to bother me to be clipping along, and suddenly the cane would hit something. I would have only half a step in which to react. With only that much distance, you better travel tense; you have to be on your guard and quick to react. It wasn't until I came to an NFB meeting and somebody said, "Your cane is a couple of feet too short," that I realized that I didn't have to react in half a step; that I didn't have to walk with my elbow locked and my arm straight--try holding your arm straight out in front of you for very long. This is what the specialists teach because they say that in order to be a courteous blind person you have to have a short cane that only comes up to your breast bone. Nonsense. Now I have a cane that comes up to my shoulder; sometimes I use one that comes up to the tip of my nose. The length of a cane has nothing to do with courtesy; it has to do with good use. I like traveling with a cane much better now that I get a step and a half or two of warning. I don't find travel to be the ordeal that I did before. With proper advice I wouldn't have had to go through any of that. There are a number of appropriate mobility techniques for blind people to use from time to time. Sometimes people frame mobility issues as, "I'm fer it or I'm agin it." Do you use a sighted guide or don't you? Do you use diagonal cane technique or don't you? Do you use the pencil grip or don't you? Do you use a collapsible cane or a straight, rigid one? There are times and places for all of these things. The issue is to figure out when you're using a technique because it truly is the most convenient and appropriate for what you are trying to do, and when you're using it as a cop-out. If I want to have a conversation with one of you and we are cutting through this convention crowd, it may be that I will take your arm or you will take mine--whether you're sighted or blind. We do that because it is convenient and appropriate for what we want to do--have a conversation and stay together in a crowd. So sometimes, yes, that means that I may use a person as a sighted guide. But do I give him or her responsibility for my mobility? Not anymore. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Pictured here (left to right) are Carl Jacobson, Joanne Wilson, and Ramona Walhof.] WHAT DO EMPLOYERS LOOK FOR? From the Associate Editor: With blind people in this country still facing a jobless rate of more than seventy percent, the Job Opportunities for the Blind (JOB) Program, which is conducted jointly by the National Federation of the Blind and the United States Department of Labor, continues to be a vital service to many, many blind people. Each year at our National Convention hundreds of people crowd into the meeting area assigned for the annual JOB seminar. One of the panels on the agenda of the 1992 seminar in Charlotte was a group of three employers who also happen to be blind themselves. They were Ramona Walhof, President of CMS, Inc., which does community outreach and fund-raising; Joanne Wilson, Executive Director of the Louisiana Center for the Blind, an adult rehabilitation center; and Carl Jacobson, the manager of a two-hundred-thirty-seat cafeteria in the state office building in New York City. They were asked to address the question, "What does the employer look for in a new employee?" Here is what they had to say: Ramona Walhof The previous three speakers were all NFB scholarship winners. The people I hire are not scholarship winners and are not likely to be. I say this not to downgrade my people--most of them are great people--but because so often we feature those who have succeeded in outstanding fields. But that doesn't mean that people aren't successful if they aren't top of the line--if they aren't A students through four or six or eight years of college. When I was interviewing for job after job after job, my perspective was somewhat different from what it is now that I am an employer. Job-seekers are often advised to do research on the companies they are interested in working for. That's not a bad idea; go do it. But some things are generally true about employers. You will hear some things today from all three of us that are quite similar. Obviously there are also differences. We run different kinds of businesses, and we have different personalities. Employers are all unique individuals. If you remember that and treat us like individuals, you will get much better mileage. If a person treats me courteously, I am much more likely to respond positively and warm up to him or her. Sometimes I hire one person out of twenty-five. That is tough competition. Personality will probably make the difference among the top few candidates. Sometimes I hire one person out of one: I am just hoping that a person comes along who can do the job. That is a different situation, but as a job applicant you won't necessarily know which is which. Let me say a word about the kinds of hiring I have done. I was the Director of the Idaho Commission for the Blind. I hired both blind and sighted people for clerical, counseling, teaching, and accounting positions. I have run a bakery, so I've hired in food service. I now run a fund-raising, community outreach, public relations business, and I have four offices and hire managers, secretaries, and telephone workers. I don't do all the hiring myself. Sometimes other people do it, and I am going to support the managers in the decisions they make. I tell you all this because my perspective has changed after doing so much hiring. Yet, except for the actual skills needed to do each job, I am mostly looking for the same characteristics in most of these people. Where do I look for employees? It partly depends on the position. I look in the newspaper; I run ads. The employer has to work the hardest when it's a newspaper ad. I have to answer the phone and schedule interviews. I try to weed people out on the phone if I can. When you run an ad, a lot of people come in who really aren't interested in the job or who don't qualify or who won't be reliable in coming to work. So if I can weed these people out, I will. On the other hand, if somebody is interested and wants an interview, I'm not going to refuse. However, I begin learning about the applicant immediately, while we are still on the phone. If the person doesn't want to do it the way I want it done, that's a negative. If they say, "I want to come in and fill out an application," I will say, "That's fine. Let me schedule an interview." "Oh no, I don't need an interview; I just want to fill out an application"--Bad! I will remember that person, and it won't help them. If I say that I can interview the applicant at 2:30 in the afternoon or 7:30 in the evening and ask if one of those times would be convenient, I do not want a big long speech about why neither time will work. I want a yes or a no. We're doing business. Treat me like a business person; I'll treat you the same. We look through Job Services, the regular employment office. Job Services sometimes doesn't think telemarketing provides wonderful jobs, but a lot of people like it. We don't get as many people as we would like through Job Services, but I am always glad when I get one. They generally know what to expect. Sometimes they want to tell me how to run the business (I won't hire them), but very often the people referred by Job Services are good. So if anyone is looking for the kind of jobs I am hiring for--bookkeeper, secretary, or telemarketer--I am likely to take that person seriously. Private agencies--employers can't afford to hire entry-level people through private agencies. I have hired through these services, and for some jobs it is a good way to go, but generally for the kind of people I'm hiring I can't afford it, and I can't find the kind of people who want to work for me. I recruit through people who work for me, people I know, friends of friends, people I have known before. There are lots of ways to get contacts on the job. What am I looking for? I want you to know what your goal on the job is. I may ask you what kinds of things are important to you in a job. If you haven't thought about it, shame on you! You've got to be able to tell me the atmosphere is most important or the skills are. As an employer I want you to like this job. I am prepared to invest a considerable amount of time in hiring and training you, so I want you to stick. If you haven't thought about that question, the chances are you will mess up the answer, and it won't help you. What kinds of things can you do? What have you done before? What are your skills? If I don't believe you, I will test you. In fact, I give a reading and writing test to every person I hire. I don't tell them that's what I'm doing, but I do. How? I ask them to fill out an application form. I get applications with misspelled words and illegible handwriting all the time. You tell me you are a blind person and you can't sit down and fill out an application form. But virtually every employer to whom you will apply has an application form for you to fill out. How are you going to do it? Figure it out. Before you pick it up, you had better know how you intend to complete it. Are you going to ask someone in the office to fill it out for you? That's okay; I would be glad to have someone help you fill it out if you come in the way we ask you to. Are you going to bring a reader? Are you going to take the form away with you? Frankly, I'll be more impressed if you can get it filled out on the spot, but I will let you do it that way. Above all, I want you to get it done and not whine and make me a speech about why you can't do it or why it should be done some other way or what the law requires. Just get it done! If you tell me you're not interested in pay, then I won't believe you. If I don't talk about it (I may forget), ask me about it in a straight, businesslike way. Don't tell me, "I need to make $6 an hour because I have three kids." I care about that, but as an employer I can't afford to take it into consideration. I want to know what you can do for the business, not what the business can do for you. I know what it can do for you; I've been hiring people for years, and I know how much we can do: we can pay you; we can give you a good solid job; we can supervise you; we can train you till your skills get better. I need to know what you can do for me; are you worth the money I will be paying you? So don't tell me, "I need to make this much money" because I'll probably tell you that this isn't the right job for you. I'll be gentle about it, but that's what I'll probably say. So be direct and factual, but express an interest in salary. I know you care, and if it isn't enough, say so. It's not my fault; maybe you qualify for a better job. Maybe you don't; it doesn't really matter. This isn't the right job for you. Dress appropriately for the job. You know what job you are applying for, so dress appropriately for that job. If you don't, I am likely to conclude that you will not do so when you are an employee. Your personality is important. I want some sparkle, some imagination. I don't want you to write me a novel during the interview, but come in with something to say. I ask almost every applicant I hire to tell me something about themselves--every employer does. Have something ready to say. If you say, "Well, what do you want to know?" you have wasted a good chance. I want to know what you think is important about you. I want to see some indication that you can think. You must be able to read and write, but you must also be able to respond to the questions I ask you in the interview. That doesn't mean that you can't ask me questions or volunteer information. But if I ask you how old you are and you tell me that your mother was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, it doesn't help. It doesn't mean you won't get another chance. People make this particular mistake all the time, but try to form the habit of answering the questions you are asked. I am out of time. Remember that employers are human. They will respond to you as human beings, blind or sighted. Blindness is important, but it is only one characteristic. Joanne Wilson I want to begin by telling you a story that I read in The Reader's Digest years ago when I was in high school. There was an elderly lady who was the envy of all her friends because somehow she always managed to hire the best cooks and maids and chauffeurs. Her friends demanded to know how she always found such good help. She told them that she employed the broom test. She explained, "I take a broom and lay it across my threshold. When the person I'm considering hiring walks in to the interview, if he steps over the broom, I won't hire him. But if he picks it up and props it in the corner, I'll hire him." That story had a great effect on me. It taught me that, although it is important for us as blind people to have the skills to do the job and also the work habits (Braille and computer literacy, for example) to put them into effect, it is even more important to remember the other factors that influence whether or not we get jobs, the more intangible things that employers look for. These are the things I want to talk about this afternoon because after I find out that an applicant is qualified and has the work habits I need, these are the things I look for. One of these is initiative, and that's what the broom story is talking about. The people who picked up the broom demonstrated that they could look ahead, see what needed to be done, and then do it. I look for that quality in employees. Another thing I look for is loyalty. I believe that if you are going to work for someone, you ought to have some respect for and loyalty to your employer. Otherwise the job isn't going to work out. I can tell you that people who come into an interview and begin complaining about their bosses and the people they work with don't get much of a chance with me. I am not interested in hiring someone who cannot come to an interview and demonstrate some loyalty to their current employer. I want to say something about dress. I have had people interview for the job of representing the Louisiana Center for the Blind with the public and potential employers, and they came in looking like slobs. We all know that appropriate dress is important, and a significant part of a person's appearance is body language. I have had people come in who are dressed properly, but they slouch in the chair or they fold their arms in tight and are closed in and nervous. I usually let applicants wait for a little while out in the lobby. During that time my office manager and other staff members are sizing them up and checking out their appearance, posture, and body language. All this is especially important for blind people because the general public doesn't think we have the capacity to take care of ourselves and make a good appearance. Another intangible thing I look for is common sense. Sometimes this is called good judgment. This is very important to me, but I haven't yet figured out how to teach it to my students. I test for this in job interviews by describing a situation and asking the person how he or she would deal with it. I can usually tell from what they say whether or not they have common sense and good judgment. I have had people come into an interview and listen to me spend fifteen minutes explaining how important it is that we not overprotect blind people and that we teach them independence. Then I say, "How would you handle this situation: You are standing out in the lobby, and one of the students comes along and says `Mabel, would you please take this fifty cents and get me a Coke from across the street?'" And if they tell me, after all my sermon, that they would go get that Coke, the interview is at an end. Mrs. Walhof said that she gives a little literacy test. I do too. I look very carefully at the resumes and applications of the people who come to us looking for jobs. If there is even one misspelled word on those documents, that applicant doesn't get the job, no matter what else that resume says. I figure that, if a person can't do a good job on a resume after weeks to prepare it, he or she is not going to do a good job for me. Another thing I look for is how applicants answer the questions I ask them. Do they have the answers. I once had a blind person interview for a job. He started worrying out loud about how he was going to manage to get to work. When I saw that I was going to have to work with him on that problem, I decided that I didn't want to hire him. Just the other day I had a sighted person who applied for a job. I told her she would have to come in promptly at 2:00. And immediately she began fretting about how she would get her lunch in, since she finished her other job at 1:45. I started helping her think about carrying a sandwich, and then I thought, "Wait! I shouldn't be doing this." That ended the interview. If you expect that the employer is going to take the time to convince you there's a way for you to do the job, you may as well forget it. I also look for a sense of humor in my employees. Humor is an extremely important part of the rehabilitation process. It is also an important part of getting along with fellow staff members and not taking ourselves too seriously. Work on developing your capacity to see the funny side of things. Laugh at your boss's jokes; it means a lot in an interview. One last point is references. Please don't just put down people's names as references without checking them out. I always check references. If I call to talk about an applicant and the reference sounds half dead and not at all enthusiastic, that tells me a lot. Make sure that the people you ask don't just agree to have you use their names but are people you can count on to say really peppy, enthusiastic things about you. I'd sum up what I have been saying with this: Not only do you have to have the skills, but you have to be likeable. And my last word to you is, just keep picking up those brooms. Carl Jacobson For those of you who don't know, BEP, the Business Enterprise Program, is commonly known as the vending program. Almost every state has one, and you have to be blind to get into it. It provides opportunities for blind people to make a living doing retail work in food service. I currently manage a cafeteria in the state building in New York City. My personal philosophy is that this program has provided me with the opportunity to work, so I have a responsibility to provide the opportunity if I can for other blind people to work as well. So you can see that as an employer the fact that an applicant is blind doesn't bother me; my concern is whether you can make money for me. The clear bottom line in American business is making money. If you can help me do that, I want you. If you can't, you're no use to me. This theme runs throughout American business. As Mrs. Walhof said, from our point of view the important thing is not what the employer can do for you. You have to convince us that you can do something for us. I also need to be convinced that you want the job and that you can do it. The up side of it is that, if you're working for me, I'm not as concerned about your reading skills. I am concerned about whether you can chop lettuce, wash some floors, scrub a lot of pots, and don't mind doing it. You can't feel that these things are beneath you because that's where you're going to start. I started by doing those things, and frankly, if it was good enough for me to start that way, it's good enough for the person who is going to work for me. You aren't going to come in making a lot of money; you'll start by making five or six dollars an hour. You'll look around at the chief cook, who is making twenty or thirty thousand a year and wish you had his money. But the way he got where he is was to stay around for a long time and do a lot of work. I am concerned about what you can do for the overall operation. If you have some experience in food, I need to know about it as part of our discussion. If you worked somewhere else and loved making salads, tell me about that because I have lots of people who hate making salads. I happen to have a crew right now in which each person likes doing a different thing: salads, stews, soups, and sandwiches. This one guy just loves doing the cold stuff--fruit salads, cole slaw, potato salad--you name it. I'm sick of making those things, but he loves doing it, and he puts it out, and it looks real nice. If it looks real nice, people are going to buy it. Therefore, he's worth money to me. If he can put something out there in a little tub that costs me thirty cents and I can sell it for a dollar, then that guy is helping not only to make his pay check, but mine too. So you have to prove your worth to me. We have talked here some about what not to do. There is a guy in the BEP Program in New York who just got his license. That means that sometime he will have a chance to operate his own facility. He went in to talk with our district supervisor, who supervises the southern region of New York State, and asked how long he had to be here to get a pension. You don't turn on an employer that way. Don't ask me on your first day about retirement benefits. He also wanted to know if he could wear shorts to work. My customers don't want to see your legs. Wear your shorts at home. He asked me some of these questions before he went to see the supervisor, and I gave him the answers, but he was still dumb enough to ask the questions again. I can predict his future. If you have dumb questions, try to ask them of a friend before you talk to the employer. The bottom line is that you have to sell yourself to the employer. You have heard things today about the importance of being clean and making a good appearance. A lot of folks are reluctant to tell you about your clothing because for some reason they think our feelings are fragile--that we'll be offended if we are told that our tie doesn't match or our shirt has a spot. Frankly, that is what most of the world is looking at. First impressions are important. Like it or not, that's the reality. Before I came down this morning I got my shirt and tie on, put on my jacket, and my wife said, "Are you going to go out looking like that?" I changed my shirt. If you can't count on hearing that from someone you trust, you are going to go out making a bad first impression sometimes. You need to have somebody to tell you those things. And if they do, don't get an attitude about it. If you do, you will turn off your prospective employer, and you will go around wondering why you didn't get a job. You may try chalking it up to discrimination, but it isn't always discrimination. Often it is either that you weren't qualified or you turned off somebody. During a brief discussion following the three presentations a question was asked about these employers' attitudes about hiring blind people. They said that they were prepared to provide tours of their facilities and information about their operations in order to insure that the blind applicant was familiar with the job and its expectations. Mrs. Walhof said that she would probably contrive a small test to assess a blind applicant's ability to learn and apply the information provided. If he or she could learn to operate a commercial dishwasher after fifteen minutes of instruction, for example, she would probably hire the person in food service. She went on to talk a little about accommodating blind people. Her business is very dependent on print. Blind people must be able to handle print, or they can't do the job. In her business she is predisposed to hire competent blind people, but if a blind applicant can't tell her how he or she intends to get the work done, if, as the employer, she is expected to work out all the details herself, she is less likely to look favorably on the application. She is committed to giving blind people an equal opportunity, but making all the arrangements for them is not equality. If the applicant can't get the necessary information onto paper in some efficient way, he or she can't do the job. A blind applicant must be able to type, write legibly, or use tape in a way that is easy for the secretary to transcribe the information for entry into the computer. Getting the telephone numbers in order to make the calls also requires creativity. The numbers can be recorded, but the blind person must be able to work from tape or transcribe them for personal use. Then the results must be displayed in such a way that it is accessible to the secretary. Braille will not do since the computer entry is done by a sighted person. A blind employee must be able to move around an office independently. She mentioned a volunteer who came in and could move well enough to do her work but who always asked staff members to get soft drinks for her from the kitchen. This young woman was sixteen. Mrs. Walhof said that she could have been trained to be completely independent, but at thirty she might well be too set in her ways to change. And staff members get bored quickly with taking care of incompetent co-workers. You have to know how to handle your blindness even in entry-level jobs if you want an employer to give you a chance. No employer can afford to teach blind workers the skills they need from scratch. They can afford to give you some training, and some of them will, but the major responsibility belongs to blind job- seekers. [PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Adrienne Asch.] A SUCCESSFUL JOB SEARCH IN THE GROVES OF ACADEME by Adrienne Asch From the Associate Editor: Adrienne Asch is a longtime Federationist. Because she did not have the luxury of working full-time on her Ph.D., it took her more years than she cares to count to achieve that prestigious goal. But last summer, in the midst of the 1992 NFB convention in Charlotte, Adrienne left North Carolina and flew to New York to defend her dissertation. She returned a day later as Dr. Adrienne Asch, a metamorphosis which many of her friends celebrated with her that evening. Dr. Asch had already obtained a position as associate professor of social work at Boston University for the coming fall and was preparing to move to Massachusetts within a few weeks. But she had no intention of missing the convention, whatever hardship it cost. Of such dedication is the Federation built. At the beginning of the week, Adrienne addressed the annual meeting of the National Association of Blind Educators. She talked about her job search and what techniques had worked best for her. Her remarks were printed in the Fall/Winter, 1992, issue of The Blind Educator, the publication of the National Association of Blind Educators. Here is what she had to say: Now that I shall be a full-time teacher, I expect to have more time to devote to this division. I look forward to working with you in the years ahead. Although I have done a lot of adjunct teaching, this will be my first full-time position. I shall start in the fall at Boston University's School of Social Work. Let me describe the way I got this job, tell you a little about the interview process, and outline the way I handled blindness and reasonable accommodation. I'll be teaching social workers, who can be about as difficult for the blind to deal with as rehabilitation counselors. Now I have the chance to educate a group of professionals who need to have their attitudes altered. I have done college teaching and lots of writing and publishing. Those of you who teach at the university level know that the way to get a college teaching job is not just to be a good teacher. In fact, universities often do not particularly care how good you are; they do care how many articles you have published, how many books you have written, and how many grants you have obtained. For many years I worked on my Ph.D., but I had written a number of articles, co-authored a book, and attended many professional meetings. All of these things helped me obtain good letters of reference. When I began my job search, I applied for jobs in various fields: psychology, social work, medical ethics, and women's studies. I would look through the advertisements for jobs in my field. Each ad I answered required a complicated cover letter. I would advertise myself as a medical ethics specialist one day and a social worker the next. It was amazing how I learned to package my skills. Of course, then I would have to make sure to pick out the appropriate reference letters in my collection to correspond to each application. The people who were writing these letters for me were colleagues, friends, and former advisors. It was somewhat unusual to have references from people who know me personally. I found out later that my friends had written fine letters of recommendation, and this was very helpful to me. These people could speak about the quality of my work and my views on various subjects. Networking is very important in finding a job at a university. For example, I saw an ad for the job I now have. I wrote a letter inquiring about it and then called a friend who is a sociologist at another university and asked if that person knew anyone on the faculty at Boston University. As it turned out, someone that person knew was on the search committee. This individual also turned out to be someone I knew indirectly. One of the first questions I was asked was whether I would be willing to move from New York to Boston. I said that I would go anywhere that a job was available. I ended up having four interviews by phone. I guess they liked what I said, the articles I sent them, and my letters of reference. Finally they invited me to Boston for an interview. This interview was a two-day affair. I had a chance to meet everyone with whom I would work. I was invited to give a talk about my research and to listen to descriptions of what others are doing. This was great fun; however, it did take a lot of energy. I had been sent samples of material which I would be expected to use in my teaching. Also I had material on my computer which I was taking to the interview and to which I absolutely had to have access in order to do what was expected of me. To make a long story short, I dropped the computer on the plane and broke it. With great luck and intensive use of the aircraft's telephone service, I located another computer and got to my interview within two hours of landing. I gave a talk followed by a discussion which I chaired. I told my audience that they could call my name and I would then invite them to speak one at a time in the same way I would in a class. At the end of the interview, the search committee asked what would lure me to Boston. I had been warned beforehand that I would have to negotiate the terms under which I would work. For example, I discussed salary, case load, conference travel money, and research assistants. Being a newcomer in the academic job market, I needed to know all these things. I did not mention any blindness-related job issues until after the job offer had been made. I had already asked if they had any questions about how blind persons did things, but they indicated that they felt no concern. They had observed me for two days and noticed that I used the skills of blindness but that the results were the same as theirs. I mentioned my blindness-connected needs during our general negotiations. Rather than give me a computer I did not want, they agreed to pay the service contract on my existing equipment. I asked for a research assistant for ten hours a week. Most professors get this anyway, so they did not consider this need unreasonable. It was clear from the beginning that they were sincerely interested in having me as a member of their faculty, so they were happy to provide secretarial time each day to help me sort my mail. Every human being has individual needs, and I hope that every employer in this country will begin to consider blindness as just one in a range of characteristics requiring a little modification of the job and workplace. As I said, what made it possible for me to get this job was going to professional meetings, building professional records, and doing the scholarly work people care about. I hope that other blind educators will consider a career at the university level. I shall be glad to assist anyone and will be back next summer with a year of experience under my belt. I have found my job, and there is one for each of you as well. [PHOTO/CAPTION: James Gashel, Director of Governmental Affairs for the National Federation of the Blind, orchestrates the legislative activities of the Washington Seminar. He is seated at one of the tables in the Mercury Room, headquarters for scheduling and reporting on congressional meetings.] NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND 1993 LEGISLATIVE MEMORANDUM AND FACT SHEETS Early each February members of the National Federation of the Blind gather in Washington, D.C., for our Washington Seminar. A complete report of this event will appear in the April Braille Monitor. As part of the seminar's activities, Federationists fan out across Capitol Hill to speak with members of Congress about matters of concern to the nation's blind. This year there were three issues of pressing importance: modifying or eliminating the limitation on earnings imposed by the retirement test and applying the modified exempt earnings policy to blind people of working age as well as to retirees; including people with severe disabilities among those covered by Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act; and preserving the bulk rate mailing privilege for nonprofit organizations, a policy which is under attack again this year. Here are the legislative memorandum and fact sheets Federationists discussed with their Senators and Representatives February 1 to 3: LEGISLATIVE AGENDA 1993 From: Members of the National Federation of the Blind To: Members of the 103rd Congress Re: People Who Are Blind: Legislative Priorities for the 103rd Congress, First Session Public policies and laws affecting people who are blind have a profound impact throughout our society. Most people know someone who is blind. It may be a friend, a family member, or a co-worker. The blind population in the U. S. is estimated to exceed 700,000. Fifty thousand Americans become blind each year. By themselves these numbers may not seem large, but the social and economic consequences of blindness directly touch the lives of millions. Less directly, blindness affects us all. People who are blind as a group share a unique struggle. More than being a matter of physical disability, the real problems of blindness are lack of good training, lack of opportunities, and lack of correct information about blindness among employers and members of the public at large. If a person who is blind has proper training and opportunity, the physical loss of eyesight itself can be reduced to the level of a mere nuisance. Public policies and laws that result from misconceptions about blindness or lack of information are often more limiting to people who are blind than loss of eyesight itself. This is why we have formed the National Federation of the Blind. The Federation is a private-sector resource of knowledge, encouragement, and support for people who are blind and for anyone (blind or not) who wants to join in the effort we are making to win understanding and opportunity. People who are blind are well-organized at the community and grassroots levels throughout the United States. Our policy positions are developed and determined by vote of the blind themselves. This is why the Federation is known by lawmakers and the public as the "voice of the nation's blind." Our priorities for the first session of the 103rd Congress express our assessment of issues requiring action by Congress on behalf of people who are blind this year. (1) Congress should amend title II of the Social Security Act to modify or eliminate the limitation on earnings imposed by the retirement test and apply the modified exempt earnings policy to persons of working age who are blind as well as to retirees. This proposal seeks to improve the work incentives provided to Social Security beneficiaries. Under a 1977 amendment to the Social Security Act, the same exempt earnings amount--$880.00 monthly, or $10,560.00 annually--is allowed for people of working age who are blind as well as for those who retire at age sixty- five. This proposal calls for increasing the exempt amount or eliminating the limitation on earnings altogether. People of working age who are blind must not be forgotten as Congress continues to debate whether changes should be made in the Social Security retirement test. A significant relaxation of the present earnings limitation would encourage thousands of beneficiaries to increase their work attempts. Those who successfully find full- or part-time work will pay taxes rather than simply drawing benefits. The results of their greater efforts to be productive will positively affect the Social Security system, as well as benefitting the individuals and families involved. A complete removal of the earnings limitation would provide beneficiaries with the maximum incentive to work. In any case, the statutory linkage which ties together the exempt earnings amounts for retirees and working age people who are blind should not be broken and must be kept in mind as the debate over the future of the earnings test for Social Security eligibility proceeds. For more details and an explanation of the need for this legislation, see the fact sheet entitled "HOW PERSONS OF WORKING AGE WHO ARE BLIND WOULD BE AFFECTED BY CHANGES IN THE SOCIAL SECURITY RETIREMENT EARNINGS TEST." (2) Congress should Enact the Americans With Disabilities Business Development Act. This proposal seeks amendments to the Small Business Act so that programs authorized to assist minority-owned small businesses, conducted under section 8(a) of the Act, will be open to persons with disabilities. The Section 8(a) program is designed to foster business ownership by individuals who are both socially and economically disadvantaged and to promote the competitive viability of businesses owned and operated by them. To achieve these goals, Section 8(a) authorizes the Small Business Administration (SBA) to enter into all types of contracts with government departments and agencies for supply, service, construction, and research and development. Small business concerns owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged persons can be eligible to receive subcontracts to fulfill SBA's procurement obligations. Technical assistance is also made available to minority small business concerns. This proposal is simply the recognition of disability as a condition of minority status for participation in SBA's targeted efforts to provide economic and technical assistance to members of minority groups. The social and economic disadvantages which accompany disabilities are well-known and beyond dispute. The problem for SBA has been to define disability and the extent of the class of individuals included. To resolve that issue, the Americans with Disabilities Business Development Act excludes minor or perceived disabilities from the term "disability" as it is defined in the bill. Another problem has been SBA's lack of legal authority to presume that people with disabilities are socially disadvantaged in the absence of a clear legislative mandate. The Americans with Disabilities Business Development Act will provide that mandate. For more details and an explanation of the need for this legislation, see the fact sheet entitled "AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT ACT: A PROPOSAL FOR BUSINESS OWNERSHIP AND JOBS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES." (3) Congress should control and stabilize postage rates for nonprofit organizations such as NFB. This request seeks sufficient appropriations and support for a permanent legislative remedy to meet the costs of the United States Postal Service for qualified free or reduced-rate mailings. Under existing law and appropriations levels, nonprofit postage rates could be increased from 11.1 cents per piece for items of letter size to more than 19 cents per piece. An increase of this magnitude would cost the National Federation of the Blind over $1 million in a single year. This cost could not be met by the Federation. Nothing can be more critical to a voluntary, private sector group of citizens than to have affordable, stable postage rates for mass communications. Paying the postal service's commercial rates for necessary use of the mails would force the National Federation of the Blind to dismantle many programs or to cease operations altogether. Survival for many other groups of importance in our society would also be threatened. If communications with persons who are blind and the public at large are cut, a time bomb is created, since fewer people will understand anything about blindness and even fewer will know of the continuing need to help. Then the downward spiral is in motion, with fewer people helped and even fewer people helping. Soon the benefits are gone. This does not overstate how vulnerable we are to the postal rate crisis if Congress fails to approve adequate funding. The fact sheet entitled "CRISIS IN NONPROFIT MAIL RATES MEANS SERIOUS HARM TO PEOPLE WHO ARE BLIND" explains the current situation and gives details on how members of the 103rd Congress can help. People who are blind are asking for your help in securing positive action by Congress in the areas outlined here. Legislative proposals will be offered to achieve each of our specific objectives. Many priorities confront this session of Congress, but the needs of the nation's people who are blind must not be overlooked. We of the National Federation of the Blind stand ready to assist our Representatives and Senators to understand our needs and to take meaningful action to address them. In partnership with the National Federation of the Blind, each member of Congress can help build better lives for people who are blind both today and in the years ahead. FACT SHEET How Persons of Working Age Who Are Blind Would Be Affected By Changes In The Social Security Retirement Earnings Test BACKGROUND: The Social Security retirement earnings test has been cited as a penalty imposed upon seniors by which their earnings are taxed to the point where they cannot afford to remain actively engaged in work. For this reason Congress has given serious consideration to repealing the retirement test altogether or perhaps to modifying it. As many as eighteen separate proposals for repeal or modification were offered in the 102nd Congress. The Senate and the House passed differing versions, but no change was enacted. Five bills for changing the retirement test are pending in the 103rd Congress, having over one hundred twenty-five cosponsors so far. The policy of allowed exempt earnings for people who are blind and receive Social Security Disability Insurance benefits is closely linked to the debate over the retirement test and is bound to be affected by the outcome. However, at this point the debate has focused largely on relaxing or eliminating the current limitation on earnings for retirees only. But a 1977 amendment to the Social Security Act clearly states that people who are blind and who receive disability insurance benefits are allowed to have earnings each month as long as the average earnings do not exceed the exempt amount provided for people who retire at age sixty- five. EXISTING LAW: Section 216(i) of the Social Security Act specifies what "blindness" means. The definition of blindness is clearly stated in medical terms. Therefore, blindness can be determined quite reliably on the basis of objective medical evidence. This unique feature of the Social Security Act makes blindness the only defined disability. All other disabilities are determined on the basis of an individual's "inability to engage in substantial gainful activity." This inability is actually hard to determine reliably in many cases. Although blindness is precisely defined, monthly disability insurance benefits are not paid to all persons who are blind. Under the law benefits are paid to only those people who are blind and who do not have substantial earnings. Wealth not resulting from current work activity does not count as earnings and has no effect on eligibility. Only work is penalized, just as with retirees. The amount of earnings considered to be "substantial" for working people who are blind is the same amount that senior citizen retirees may earn without having their Social Security benefits reduced due to excess earnings. This amount is currently $880.00 monthly or $10,560.00 annually. Precisely the same section of the Social Security Act--paragraph (D) of Section 203(f)(8)--is used to establish the respective exempt earnings standards for retirees and for persons of any age who are blind. PROPOSED LEGISLATION: Congress should amend title II of the Social Security Act to modify or eliminate the limitation on earnings imposed by the retirement test and apply the modified exempt earnings policy to persons of working age who are blind as well as to retirees. Although the substantial gainful activity earnings standard for people who are blind is currently linked by law to the retirement test exempt amount allowed for seniors, most of the proposals to modify the retirement test have specifically excluded people who are blind from the change. For example, an amendment passed by the House on April 9, 1992, called for raising the exempt earnings standard for retirees to approximately $20,000 per year to be phased in over five years. But the same amendment said that the change would not apply to people who are blind. Language designed to have a similar effect was also included in retirement test proposals considered in the last Congress by the Senate. However, Senator John McCain has stated his firm intention to offer amendments in the future which continue the statutory linkage between the exempt earnings provisions for retirees and for people who are blind and of working age as well. Technically, if the statutory cross-reference between sections that set forth provisions for people who are blind and retirees is not disturbed by a retirement test change, the change will also apply to people who are blind and of working age. Specific language would have to be included in order for the change not to apply. Also an amendment to repeal the retirement test would need to have specific language inserted to apply the repeal to working age people who are blind. NEED FOR LEGISLATION: Approximately 85,000 people who are blind now receive disability insurance benefits through the Social Security system. At present their earnings must be strictly limited to $880.00 per month. When earnings do exceed this exempt amount, the entire sum paid to a primary beneficiary and dependents is abruptly withdrawn after a trial work period. There is absolutely no assurance that earnings will replace the amount of lost disability benefits after taxes and work expenses are paid by the wage earner. Usually they do not. Therefore, few of the 85,000 beneficiaries can actually afford to attempt substantial work. Those who do will often sacrifice income and will certainly sacrifice the security they have from the automatic receipt of a monthly check. This group of beneficiaries--people of working age who are blind--must not be forgotten as the debate proceeds toward modifying or eliminating the Social Security retirement test. A significant relaxation in the present earnings limitation would encourage thousands of beneficiaries to increase their work attempts. Those who successf