I had a conversation with a recent college graduate this week about some topics related to employment and blindness. The discussion led me to think about some experiences I had as a young person and what helped me to be encouraged, to believe in myself as a person with potential. It also led me to think about what didn’t work, what was short-sighted, and why I think the ways I do about mentorship programs now.
Before I go further, I will say that while this post relates to blindness, I think that these issues are fairly broad when it comes to discussing employment issues and people with disabilities. The aspects that are specific to blindness are the parts that have to do with how people perform specific job functions; and those are things I don’t discuss in great detail for the most part. The aspects of my discussions that relate to blindness can easily be shifted to meet other disability criteria. If this post is useful to you or someone you know, please share it.
When I was in my mid to late teens, I was involved with a mentoring program in Houston which gave teens who were blind the chance to meet adults who were employed in various professions. We had access to a directory with each adult’s contact information, biographical information, eye condition, employment background, and a listing of their general interests. The adults also came to activities where teens gathered together–some were social in nature, and others were designed to give teens information about careers and transition to adulthood. It was a great program; and I think that many teens became acquainted with blind adults who might not otherwise have done so.
One thing bothered me. Only one of the adults on the list was not employed in a traditional career. She was a stay-at-home mom. All of the adults had been employed since graduating from college or their trade schools. Even as a young person, I knew that none of these adults could answer the question I was most afraid to ask.
What happens if a person can’t find a job?
My parents, teachers, and those blind adults worked hard to convince me that I had the ability to do the things I set my mind to do. But other people in my life–sadly, including some of the rehabilitation professionals with whom I worked and, later, potential employers–tore away at that confidence. They not only questioned my ability to do things professionally; but they questioned the usefulness of the accommodations I proposed. Finally, I endured rejection after rejection after rejection–not for months but for years. I was fortunate: I was educated well and was skilled in a number of areas so that I was able to pick up occasional contract jobs to supplement my fixed-income lifestyle. Other people are not so fortunate. They have not been able to finish college for one reason or another and may never do so. Some are entering their 40s with no work history and no degree. In order for them to enter the work force, they will have to successfully field the question, “Why haven’t you been working?”
None of the mentors I met had overcome a hurdle like this. To this day, I have never met a person who has overcome an unemployment gap of years. No one has successfully modeled an answer to the question, “Why haven’t you been working?”
With 70 per cent of blind people unemployed, we need mentors who can model how to cope with extreme negative emotions associated with rejection and inability to provide for oneself and one’s family; live on extreme low budgets as the cost of living rises; search for work when family cannot shuttle them to hundreds of interviews around the country; cope with the stigma of chronic welfare dependency; and, ultimately, to cope with the fact that they may have never found employment in all their working lifetime despite all their efforts. In basic psychology classes, we learn that this failure to achieve self-actualization causes despair in the elderly. It is a serious mental health crisis that American society perpetuates on people with disabilities because we believe they should be taken care of rather than that they are able to contribute to the welfare of society or, worse, that it is worth spending the time or money that would enable them to take their places as contributing members of society.
If people were brave enough to answer the question honestly, they have not worked because they were not wanted. The child care centers believed that they had no awareness of what children were doing even though they explained their methods of monitoring children’s activities and were willing to spend days as volunteers. The office did not want to install software on the computer to allow them to read the screen because it was too expensive. The hiring manager did not believe they could navigate the building without help or move quickly enough to arrive at their post in a crisis. They were not even allowed into the building to interview and were told, “You have to be able to read to do this job.” The employer required a driver’s license in order to perform the job and chose not to continue the interview when learning that the applicant had none.
No one answers the question honestly. And so far, I still do not know anyone who has succeeded in beating the long-term unemployment hurdle. Likewise, mentoring programs continue to use employment as the criteria for success–unless one is a student. I submit that perhaps we need some additional criteria for defining who we are. Those of us who participate in long-term volunteer activity are certainly not idle. I wish that as a young person I had thought about my life in terms of goals other than “to be a [fill in the blank with career choice]. But it might be something like moving a mountain to change the way we think of ourselves…
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