During the course of the week, I began to doubt the social model of disability and its positive connotations. More and more I came under this thought that society is the key factor in creating barriers, and more importantly, attitudes toward disabled people. It is not just any attitude though; it is one that is only describable as pure, paternalistic sympathy. For example a man, who had a walking stick and was blind, was crossing the street on the corner of Tremont and Boylston. I just happened to be exiting the Ansin Building and walked over to the corner of the street, and he was standing right there next to me and a couple other college students. Now, just in my own mind I thought ‘here was a man who looked as if he’d definitely had crossed the street on his own plenty of times before’, which is fine. But I also could see the others around me, and I could guess at what they were thinking. When the light turned, a pair of kids took one glance at him and crossed the street, no second thought whatsoever. But then some guy we were standing with actually asked the man if he needed some help getting across to the other side, which logically seems like the right thing to ask. But it was in the way the guy asked the blind man if he needed help that rang of uncaring empathy and almost paternalistic fashion. What surprised me was the blind man simply said nothing. There was no recognition that help was even offered to the blind man: he just crossed the street and made it to the other side with no problem at all. I feel like this example is a kind of commentary on our varied approaches to disability and what doesn’t work. It’s almost as if society thinks of disability as a problem that needs charitable attention on our parts, which is not often the case. Even though this man was blind, he needed no accommodations, because to me, this speaks wonders of how that blind man perceives himself as an “able-bodied” member of society—and not disabled.
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