Blind Courtesy

At the 2024 convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland, former affiliate presidents were invited to share reflections, and Marc Maurer, a past president, chose courtesy as his subject. Small changes, he says, can make deep differences, and the Federation opens opportunity for Blind people in part by teaching courtesy. To him, courtesy means giving someone else something you would want yourself, whether your time, your skill or your concern, and feeling good about it.

Courtesy, Maurer writes, is as much a habit of mind as a skill. When only one thing can be done, the courteous person lets it be what someone else wants. Society often assumes that Blind people have nothing to give and casts them as objects of charity, people who only take what others offer. That kind of exchange rarely builds friendship, because friendship rests on each person seeing the value the other brings.

He names two common ideas that work against courtesy from Blind people. The first holds that if Blind people have nothing to give, they cannot be courteous at all and can be written off. The second tells them again and again that they are entitled. Maurer has spent much of his career describing what Blind people are entitled to, yet he says entitlement makes sense only alongside a willingness to give.

Giving is part of equality. When Blind people accept courtesy without ever returning it, Maurer writes, they settle into an inferior place in the culture, one that blocks equality and independence. Holding a door for sighted people at the entrance to a building is a small start, even when the courtesy is hard to get accepted. Most people are paid for what they give to others, and courtesy is where that giving begins.

The habit of courtesy, Maurer says, builds an independence that makes the future bright with promise.

Read the Full Article: Blind Courtesy.
By: Marc Maurer