Tips for working with a blind colleague

Creative Commons image by Irish Typepad of Flickr.com

The other day someone asked me about working with a blind colleague in a professional setting. It brought me back to the days when I used to work in offices. Sometimes I hid the fact that I was nearly blind. In other situations, I cautiously let people know about it. Neither approach made the work environment very pleasant. Never did I work with people who asked how they could work with me--a legally blind person--more effectively or how we might increase our flow and productivity and ensure more good camaraderie and less stress in the office. I very much appreciate this question now. And being a lot wiser (and older) than  was in my office days, I actually have some answers. 

Here are a bunch of ways you can make working with a blind colleague a blast and get the most out of your talented team. 

Creative Commons image by Sonia Belviso

1. Tell the blind colleague who you are the first time you meet.
2. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you return from getting coffee. Say, “It’s (your name).” No explanations or embarrassment necessary.
3. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you return from getting something off the printer.
4. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you want to ask a question.
5. Tell the blind colleague who you are when need to borrow something.
6. If you borrow something, return it to the blind colleague's hands, not to the desk or shelf. There can be exceptions to this rule, if you have discussed the item specifically and there is a very precise (within four inches) designation of where the item belongs.
7. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you say good morning.
8. Have everyone say their name at the beginning of meetings. Every meeting! Even if your colleague “should” already know who the people are. Even if the blind colleague has learned to recognize every voice in the room, some people may not speak at all unless they are asked to say their name. In informal and repeated situations just going around and quickly saying names is enough and it usually takes no more than a few seconds if done without embarrassment and unnecessary argument.
9. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you ask if he/she wants to go to lunch with you and other colleagues.
10. Do ask your blind colleague to come to lunch or for other social engagements with colleagues.
11. Stop telling your blind colleague who you are if he/she tells you you can stop. Usually this means the person has learned to recognize your voice.
12. If possible, let your blind colleague have his/her own tools and utensils and don’t touch them without asking. Do not “put away” something that your blind colleague owns or uses. If you have to share certain things agree on an exact location where they will be kept.
13. A place for everything and everything in its place.
14. When someone who is less familiar comes in your office, let your blind colleague know, even if it is an informal visit and the blind colleague has met this person many times before. Say, “That’s (person entering’s name) coming in.”
15. In meetings, be aware that conversation flows primarily through eye contact and visual cues. Your blind colleague may either appear to be overbearing and interrupt others or may not engage in the meeting enough. This is largely because of the inability to see other people’s eyes. It is helpful if meetings are structured and someone is in charge of designating who will speak. In less formal meetings, it is good if the leader or facilitator is aware of the issue and watching for when the blind colleague is trying to work into the conversation.
16. When showing visual materials at a meeting, describe them briefly. Say something like, “This is a graph showing our results from the last quarter. It shows that…” or “This is the new logo for X. It’s an abstract shape in blue.”
17. Include important information from meetings in an accessible format—digital or Braille (if your colleague uses Braille. Not all do.)
18. If attending a conference or larger meeting together, you may want to let your blind colleague know who is speaking, read name tags or describe images presented.
19. If your colleague asks for help with physical navigation, you can help, but generally he/she won’t and physically getting around is not the issue. Helping in social situations is much more important.
20. Avoid touching your blind colleague without permission. Don’t gently touch your blind colleague’s shoulder to announce your presence. Use a soft voice and say “It’s (your name).”
21. With a blind colleague who is new to the office, “show” your colleague the locations of objects in one of two ways. Either 1. let the blind colleague sit at the desk and tell him/her where to reach to find certain objects. You can most easily do this by imagining that there is a large clock in the middle of the desk and imagining where the hour hand would be pointing toward each thing. Say, “the phone is at four o’clock. The keyboard is at 9 o’clock. The screen is at twelve o’clock,” and so forth. Or 2. allow your colleague to put his or her hands on the backs of your hands as you indicate items on a shelf. Allow enough time for the colleague to touch the objects and then return to placing his/her hands lightly over yours. People who have been blind for a time will usually be familiar with these techniques and you won’t have to explain. Avoid grabbing the blind colleague’s hand and forcing him/her to touch objects.
22. Many blind people are not totally blind. Legally blind people will often use a computer screen much as sighted people do, but they may have to look much closer to perceive what is on the screen. If you are teaching a blind or visually impaired colleague how to do something on a piece of equipment it is imperative that your colleague be seated in the position to do the task and that your colleague does the task with your instructions. There is no “showing” a visually impaired colleague something on a screen, even if you describe each step you are doing. It may seem to take longer to describe the actions necessary but it will never take longer than “showing” someone who cannot see your actions.
23. Be aware that visual impairments vary widely. Some legally blind people can see very well close up but little to nothing beyond six inches. Some blind people can see quite well in a very narrow field of vision, so that you may be surprised that your colleague can see some things at a distance but still not see you come into the room to his/her right. Try not to be judgmental of what you can’t understand and ask if your colleague wants to describe his/her vision to you and other colleagues at a meeting. It can help to know technically what your colleague’s vision is like.

When there is no face to put to a name

Navigating a social event while blind is tricky for reasons you probably never imagined.

As we approach the venue for a parents-with-children workshop, blossoms drip from the trees and land softly on my hands--so close I can make out their delicate pink color. My kids and I pause to breathe in the dizzying scent. The sun glitters through the branches, refracting sparks in my distorted vision. Birds twitter on every side. It’s an achingly beautiful May morning.

Creative Commons image by Mary of Flickr.com

“Oh, hi Arie!” A voice cuts across the bliss and I turn, constructing a delighted and eager smile. 

I have to correct for height in a split second. The woman is short and standing one curb down. I focus as hard as I can on the upper half of the pale, fuzzy oval that should be her face, judging by the sound of her voice. Somewhere in there are her eyes and like a foreigner in a land with strange but strict greeting customs, I have to struggle to simulate the correct visual communications etiquette. 

I’m pretending to make eye contact. But this woman doesn’t realize it. Unlike me, she isn’t thinking about eye contact. She’s simply getting the impression that I’m friendly… or not, depending on how successful my pantomime of eye contact is. 

I beam at her, projecting warmth—even though I don’t have the slightest clue who the woman is. I only know she is one of the people from the foster-and-adoptive-families support group and they are all wonderful people who I enjoy. She might be one of several who consider me to be a friend, who I’ve had intimate and intense conversations about parenting and society with and whose name I would instantly recognize, if it were offered. Or she might be one of several dozen parents in the group who know my name and expect me to know theirs, even though we aren’t all close. 

Creative Commons image by Carolinqua of Flickr.com

Recognizing people and connecting names to them is one of the most difficult things for visually impaired and blind people to do. When dealing with a large group of people who only see one another every few weeks or months it's downright impossible. Everyone knows everyone else and assumes you should, but you don’t hear the voices often enough to get a solid read on them.

In this case, it has been at least a year since I have seen the other support-group participants and their children. I can hear the footsteps and the breathing of a child beside this woman and I detect the fuzzy shape. I direct a smile and fake eye contact to where I guess the child’s eyes should be.

I do care. I know that eye contact is very important to people who can see well. It is hardwired into their brains and a child might be frightened of someone who didn't do it. Aside from that it's like good manners. If I came to a foreign country, I would make a valiant attempt to learn their words for "please" and "thank you." So, I try to fake eye contact for the benefit of sighted people. It isn't fake caring. It's just something I'm doing for them, rather than doing it automatically.

Still, I yearn for clues as to who this woman and child are. I get the feeling from the woman's tone that she probably isn’t one of those I’m closest with. I decide to take the plunge. My stomach twists with anxiety, but it must be done.

“It’s so good to see all of you again, but you know I have trouble recognizing people.” I raise my white cane and give it a gentle nod. Sometimes this doesn’t work. People often don’t take the hint and I don’t want to be rude. Sometimes they are even offended when they realize I’m asking for their name.

Creative Commons image by Shannon Kringen

Many of my acquaintances have scoffed in reply, “You have better hearing than other people. If you cared, you’d remember people’s names after three times.” Once a woman at our local community center told me directly that I wasn't welcome there because I didn't greet people I had already met on previous occasions with enough recognition. She said this while I was holding my white cane. 

That’s the reason for my sweaty palms and queasy stomach. Will this be another one of those blistering responses that make me feel like a dismal, anti-social failure? Or will she just ignore me, like most do, and let me continue to wander in anonymous confusion? I hold my breath.

“Of course, I’m sorry. I’m Zora,” she says. “We were in mommy-and-me swimming class with you about four years ago.” 

“Oh, yes, I remember, but haven’t you dyed your hair?” I say, automatically trying to make her feel comfortable and recognized. 

I am mostly guessing again, just like with the eye contact. I don’t remember her hair. When and if people were introduced at mommy-and-me swimming class it was in a huge echoing swimming hall. I rarely got the other women's names even once and if I did I had no image to go along with the name. But I do remember others calling out to Zora, so she was there and I can claim to remember it. 

The part about her hair popped out before I could think better of it. I'm grasping at straws and I can just make out the color of her hair. It's the type of dark blond that often results from dye. It’s a good bet and it works. She is pleased and believes that I truly remember her. 

“Yes, I love to dye my hair all the time. Matilda was smaller then, of course, but your kids too.” 

Okay, Zora and Matilda. I’ve got that now… until they take their jackets off and are dressed in different colors at least.

The problem is that I probably do remember Zora much better than this in another way. I probably had a wonderful conversation or two with her and felt a genuine connection to her. There have been many such conversations when I wished I knew who the delightful person I was speaking with was. But if so, I didn’t know her name was Zora when I had those conversations.

While she was nice enough to tell me now, almost no one does it consistently. I have no face to connect those conversations with either, so it is likely that I’ll never be able to truly reconnect. Each time I meet a person without a name it might as well be our first meeting. 

Still I’m grateful beyond words to this woman who took the hint well, was not offended that I couldn’t recognize her and provided her name this once. I want to plead with her and beg her to tell me her name on future occasions too. I want to assure her that I care and I want to be friendly. I am not aloof as many people often say of me. Far from it! I desperately want to know it is Zora the next time I have a great conversation with her around the break-time coffee table at a workshop. But if she doesn’t tell me again--even later today--it’s unlikely I will know it's her.

We enter the building and split up to circulate around the room. I’m boggled again. I didn’t manage to watch Zora and Matilda take their jackets off because I was dealing with my kids, so I can no longer recognize them. Still I repeat to myself silently, “Zora, dyed blond, brown jacket. Matilda, a bit taller than my daughter, blue jacket,” over and over, hoping to remember these little factoids in the barrage of similar small facts that I try to use to connect names to people.

Creative Commons image by Taston of Flickr.com

Here’s the thing. The human brain is hardwired to memorize human faces. Even though a face is more complex than the color of a jacket, it is much easier for most people to remember what Zora’s face looks like than that she has a brown jacket. Most people’s brains do it automatically and even when people do struggle to memorize names, they are memorizing the name, NOT the face. The face is quickly encoded in the brain as the fixed point to attach the name to. 

I have no such fixed point. I have only the two facts to memorize like vocabulary words in a foreign language, “Zora = brown jacket.” Two facts that will probably never be useful again because Zora will wear a different jacket next time and several other women here will have brown jackets too, but I’ll try because it’s all I’ve got. I can’t see any detail beyond the smudge of color.

I am relieved to find that I do recognize the voices of the three organizers who are at every one of these workshops. It has taken several workshops for me to know their voices instantly, but I’ve got them down now. Voices can be used like faces to identify people, but the imprint of it on the memory isn’t as quick, even with all my practice. It takes several exposures, and most importantly, it only helps if I actually know the name attached to the person when they speak. If I know who is speaking and hear them maybe four times, I will probably recognize their voice.

But four times of knowing their name! That isn’t likely to happen, unless the person is a workshop presenter who people call by name repeatedly. 

This is probably the single largest problem I encounter from blindness—not tripping on things, not losing my keys, not even the inability to drive. No, the worst is not being able to recognize people and all the consequences that go along with that. Many people will ask me solicitously over and over again if they can take my hand to help me walk down a slightly bumpy trail in a park, even though I show no signs of difficulty, but they almost never offer their name each time they approach me. Most don’t even take the hint and let me know their name without a fuss when I make the terrifying effort to ask.

Zora is above the curve. 

There has been only one person I’ve met in the past ten years who consistently told me her name every time I met her until I actually had to ask her to stop because I knew her voice so well I could have picked her out of a crowd on the street. This woman came to a meeting for foster and adoptive parents that I attended years ago and immediately after meeting me and seeing my cane, she went to the coffee table and then returned to the conversation. 

“It’s Blanka again,” she told me as she rejoined the circle where I was discussing something with others. A few of the others stopped speaking and seemed to be confused by her comment. My jaw dropped from the sheer newness of it, but I quickly caught myself and gave her a smile.

Creative Commons image by Shannon Kringe

Later she came over to where I was playing with my toddler to ask me where we lived because she had heard her home was close to mine. Again, she started the conversation by announcing, “Hi Arie, it’s Blanka.”

I thanked her briefly that time. 

Then at another meeting three months later, I saw her again… or heard her. I came to the door and was unloading my children from the stroller when I heard a voice raised from the far side of the crowded room, “Hi Arie, it’s Blanka!” 

I had to fight back tears. 

I told her later how much it meant to me and she seemed surprised. “Well, of course you can’t recognize people’s faces,” she said and moved on to another topic. 

I have now known Blanka for over five years and she no longer has to announce herself because I told her that I can recognize her voice now. We aren’t close friends because life hasn’t taken us that way and she's a busy foster parent, but I’m always overjoyed to meet her at support groups. I remember the things she has said, her interests and her parenting struggles. I truly know who she is and recognize her.. Many other people have attended the same groups with us for the same amount of time, and I cannot connect their names to their voices, stories, interests and identities. At this point, they would be utterly confused and offended if I admitted that I still don’t know their names after even five years of acquaintance in the group. 

Don’t get me wrong. I know them--the people. In some cases I can even recognize their voices. But I recognize them with labels like “the woman with three little boys all close to the same age” or “the woman with reddish frizzy hair” or “the man with the loud voice and bald head.” I have relationships with these identities because I don’t have their names and I have mostly stopped trying to hint and get them to tell me. The reactions are often too offended. 

I am curious about how others view this topic. Do most sighted people realize that visually impaired people can’t recognize faces and that voices are not that easy to recognize? Is there a way that I could ask more effectively for people to let me know their name? Don't be afraid to comment or to discuss your own difficulties. My page is always free of ridicule and judgement.

And even more urgently I wonder if other visually impaired people have any tips or ideas for how to improve my skill in recognizing people? Do most blind people learn to recognize voices after being introduced to a person only once or twice? How do other visually impaired people keep track of who is who in a crowd? Please feel free to comment below.

Being too different: Do some people just ask for it?

“You had to know it would be this way,” my friend says on the sunny veranda over glasses of refreshing elder flower lemonade. “You chose this.” 

Our two boys leap and roll on the trampoline. “Mama, watch me! Watch me!” They’re both five. 

Creative Commons image by Mizrak of Flickr.com

I am silent. I don’t want to argue with her. She means well and she is one of the few people in this small town who will do playdates with me and my kids. I can’t afford to say what I’m thinking. 

She means that when we adopted two Romani (Gypsy) kids and settled down in a small town in an Eastern European country, we must have known what we were getting into—that we must have chosen to do so because we were kind of picking a fight with society or... something.

The Roma are extremely unpopular here and the wildcat is out of the bag. A few mothers at my kids’ preschool are making a stink, saying my son should be committed for psychological treatment because he pushed another boy. 

But the thing is that it was an absolutely normal preschool altercation. No one can point out a pattern of problematic behavior--not the teachers, not the other parents and not my family. No, of course, he shouldn’t push and all little boys get in trouble for it sometimes. But my son can’t afford to make a normal childhood mistake. 

“You can’t expect people to change. It was your choice,” my friend says into the silence. 

“I didn’t set out to do it,” I finally answer. But the kids come running for pie and juice and I never get to explain. 

How can I explain anyway? What kind of choice? 

There were six years of infertility treatments. Four rounds of IVF. At least a dozen IUIs. A traumatic miscarriage. There was the reality of adoption in Europe today. The mothers who sobbed beside me in support group because they were thirty-five and had almost no chance of getting to the top of the waiting list for a baby before the age of forty, when the state system cuts women off from infant adoption. 

Uncomfortable fact 1: There is a shortage of healthy white babies needing adoption.

Uncomfortable fact 2: Systemic racism and discrimination makes families in marginalized groups more likely to crumble. 

Uncomfortable fact 3: There are a lot more Romani babies needing adoption than white babies. Widespread racism has it’s consequences. 

Creative Commons image by Monica Semergiu

Yes, I stood in the social work office and checked the box that says, “We’ll accept all ethnicities,” despite dire warnings by our case work That is the choice my friend means. 

I chose this.

My friend doesn’t even know about the African American friend who recently unfriended me when she found out my kids are trans-racially adopted. In America, it is often considered immoral—a stealing of a child’s culture because of an adult's selfish desire for a family. They call it “cultural genocide.” 

Yes, I ticked the box. I chose. 

But what was the alternative? 

I think back to the little boy in the sterile orphanage with toys displayed on high shelves on the walls. When they handed him to me the white nurse said with bit of a smirk, “Everyone here has a favorite kid, but he was no one’s favorite. Good luck.”

I noticed immediately that he had a strange low-pitched cry. He was lethargic. They had diagnosed him with “mild neurological delays.” He was ten months old.

It turned out he had been on a high dose of prescription sedatives since he was two months old. Nobody’s favorite and they didn’t want to hear him cry from the desperate loneliness of a baby never held. They didn’t give us any sedatives to wean him off the drugs, so he went off of them cold turkey. We didn’t know until the pediatrician explained it a few weeks later. 

But we knew that baby suddenly learned how to scream. He would scream the sharpest, loudest scream I’ve ever heard a child make every time I got more than ten feet away from him. He now had someone to hold and comfort him and he wasn’t about to let me get out of his sight. I had to stay with him every moment for a year and a half. I couldn’t carry him much. He was too big, even at ten months. It was like having a ball and chain. 

Yes, I chose that. I didn’t have to. I could have resigned myself to my own depression and left him there. It was a choice. 

Now at five years old, the teachers say the only difficulty they have with him is that when they speak sharply to him for some small infraction, he sometimes starts screaming in terror as if his whole world falling apart.

Otherwise he’s on track in all respects. He has good friends who he only fights with moderately--like all the other little boys. He has no neurological delays or other problems. Just about a textbook case for healthy child development. 

But I can’t tell the other mothers that history. I once made the mistake of telling one of the mothers about my daughter’s intense temperament. Now she uses that little tidbit to slander my children, telling other mothers that my kids are psychologically unhinged and genetically degenerate “Gypos.” If they knew about how hard my son’s start was, what more would they say?

My husband mildly chastises me for being open about our differences, for not trying harder to hide the children’s Romani background. I never actually told anyone, but the whole town knows. I didn’t go to great lengths to hide it and I do multicultural education classes as a volunteer at the preschool. My friend says that’s a dead giveaway. 

Supposedly I also chose to be open about difference. For thirty years, I hid the fact that I'm legally blind and didn’t carry a white cane. But the dangers of traffic and the misunderstandings grew unbearable, so now I carry the cane and don’t hide it. But technically it’s still a choice. 

Me and my borthers in the 1980s

My friend adds in a whisper before she leaves, “It doesn’t exactly help that you don’t wear makeup or dye your hair.”

Yet another choice. They reject me for the very things I am proud of--my children, the cultural background I embrace, our bilingualism. my environmentally friendly lifestyle, the disability I don't hide...

I chose to be an immigrant, I choose to raise my kids without a lot of junk food, I choose not to have a TV… I’ve chosen a lot of difference. And I like my choices. 

You could make a case that any resulting difficulties are really my fault. That is essentially what my friend is saying--you chose, so you shouldn't complain when people judge you.

But I know something that is strangely hard for most people to admit. For those of us with some unavoidable difference--a disability, a different language, race or culture or some odd life situation--the choice is an illusion. You can try to hide it but when you are different, you are different. You can obtain a rickety and temporary measure of social acceptance by covering up your differences. But you will never be treated entirely well socially and if you slip, you will pay a heavy price. 

I tried to fit in and be the same for thirty years. I tried desperately to learn how to make eye contact and smile as if I could recognize the blurry shapes of people. I tried to dress the way I thought I was supposed to and always failed miserably at the fashions. I detested fashion trends anyway.

I was really very bad at hiding my differences. And I was deeply depressed, almost suicidal at times. 

It was not until I was holding my infant daughter and looking down into her face that it finally clicked. I knew she could never hide her olive skin and non-European-looking blue eyes framed by dark lashes. I had never been able to hide my differences and neither would she. 

Something broke inside me. I don’t remember the exact moment, but I remember the year--that year with my first baby. I swore I would not put that burden on her. I would not doom her to a lifetime of trying and failing to be “normal” at all cost.

My children know their own roots. They know and love the Romani culture and people. They practice Romani dance and Romani vocabulary words. We go to every Romani cultural event we can find. They need close Romani friends, and that is a bit of a challenge, given the vast segregation of society here. But still they are proud of their heritage at this point. 

My seven-year-old daughter told her class she is Romani. I was nervous but the kids don’t know the word “Romani.” They’ve only ever heard the insulting word “Gypo,” so they don’t even know what she’s talking about… yet. 

The thing that I wish I could tell my quiet friend who always stays within the lines is this: I didn’t choose to be different. Neither did my children. But I do choose not to be ashamed. There are many things we don’t get to choose in life, but there is one thing we can always choose. 

I choose to be true.

Why are white people so often unaware of racism and white privilege?

Tackling an issue like this is like kicking a nest of rattlesnakes. I was recently asked this question in an on-line forum and Í am very unlikely to please everyone with my answer no matter what I say. However, I think it is an honest question that deserves a real answer. 

I can easily see how it seems preposterous to people of color that most white people in highly developed, multicultural societies in the twenty-first century remain almost entirely ignorant of and oblivious to racism and white privilege. I mean haven’t we just spent the better part of a century learning the hard way about these issues? The civil rights movement came and went and we learn about it in school. We work, study and live with people of color—well, many of us do—so why does it seem that we are no wiser than we were seventy years ago? 

Original creative commons image by jamesapfairlie of flickr.com

Are white people just self-centered and willfully ignorant? That’s the question I hear behind the confusion of people of color when they ask how it is possible that white people still don’t get it. 

So, here goes. I’m a white person. And I honestly agree that most white people—including myself for an embarrassing number of years—are unaware of both white privilege and most of what constitutes racism. That’s the sad truth. But the other side of it that I have to say is that it isn’t because we are self-centered or willfully ignorant. It has to do with lack of experience and perspective. It is an honest lack of understanding. 

Let me start by illustrating the problem on my own sorry self. When I was a college student in the 1990s I thought that African Americans were constantly going on and on about racism even though the worst of it had been left in the past. I had nothing against black people. I grew up in a very rural place and the only African American I saw growing up was my mother's friend from college who came to visit. 

And I was brought up in a very anti-racist family. My mother was the only white student made an honorary member of the Black Students Association at her college in Michigan. This was not because my mother was a great activist for civil rights or something of the sort. It was simply because as a young girl thrown out of her home at the age of seventeen (in 1968), she crossed a bridge between St. Joseph to Benton Harbor and got herself a room to rent. I have a hard time seeing my mother, who has never been a big risk taker, in this role, but that’s what happened. 

So, this was my claim to lack of racism when I was a young white liberal. My mother was open-minded at a time when very few white people were. I, on the other hand, grew up in a rural, even isolated, place in the mountains of Eastern Oregon. I was told that people of color are just as good as anyone and that racism is bad. And I learned the history of civil rights and all that came before. It was history. I thought it was quite interesting, but I also thought it was over.

Thus—as I said—in college myself in the 1990s, I silently thought my African American classmates were a bit obsessed with the issue. I never said anything. I tried to be supportive, but I didn't really understand. I thought it was because of past trauma, because so many white people wanted to whitewash the past. I had no idea how much of it was still happening. I had no idea of the white privilege all around me.

I could very well say that this is because I am actually physically blind. I am. I could not see people's facial expressions and so there are certain social things that go over my head at the best of times. And perhaps a white person with as much desire to understand as I had could have understood sooner, had they been visually observant. but I couldn't be visually observant and the fact is that most white people are not even if they can see well. It is not willful lack of seeing, however. It is truly lack of understanding. It took me many years and some hard knocks to get it--at least to the degree that I have "gotten it.”

One such hard knock was spending several months studying in Zimbabwe at a time when race was a very hot subject. I walked down the street and felt like I wasn't white but rather neon-colored. I was harassed doing nothing—going to a store, hanging out with my Zimbabwean journalist friends. I applied for an internship and was yelled at and demeaned by an editor over a tiny mistake in my application. I was not angry. It was a few months, not a lifetime. It was a small country, not a bastion of wealth and power like my homeland in America. I could walk away any time I wanted to and I came to understand the first bit about privilege. Privilege is not being harassed just for being, not being yelled at over a triviality. Privilege is being able to walk away from such a situation and go back to a life where that won’t happen.

Then I spent a year following children in a racially segregated school in Central Europe to make a documentary. I spent another few years writing about ethnic conflict in the Balkans. And then the one thing that I think can really change a person's understanding happened. My family became racially mixed. 

Now when I walk into a school with my children or just down the street, I am no longer a "normal" white person. It comes up in a myriad of ways—constantly. And it's exhausting. I know the difference because when I walk down the street alone, it is different. And I know that it isn't long dead history.

But it took all that. It took coming from a family that was open with parents who vehemently wanted me to understand, it took trying out being the only person of my color at a night club in a country with racial tension, it took studying racial and ethnic conflict intensively and in the end it took being part of a family that isn't all white in a country that thinks it isn't racist but is.

One little example. My son is five and in preschool. He has a best friend named Johnny and they are inseparable. But they also fight. And my son is slightly bigger, so when they push Johnny falls down. It has happened twice now in two years that Johnny has been physically hurt in one of these incidents. Once he had a goose egg on his forehead. This time, he had a raw pink scrape on his back from falling onto the Lego pile at preschool. Another boy who is quite trustworthy saw the incident. He said both boys were pulling at a toy and then my son pushed Johnny and Johnny fell on the Legos. There is no real controversy over what happened. I expressed sympathy and my son had no evening video for two days and lost his allowance for a week. And Johnny’s mother is up in arms. She sends me hate mail and detailed photos of her son’s scrape. She has been telling other parents that my son is evil and violent. She tells me that she teaches her son to hit back, so that he won’t become a victim. She is angry and I can’t possibly belittle it. I was bullied terribly as a child. I won’t ever turn my back on a situation that could possibly be bullying. 

But here’s the thing. My son is the only non-white kid in his class. The teachers say he is no more violent than any of the other kids. One boy is known for staying out of the scrapping. But both my son and Johnny are fighters and they tussle and push and sometimes someone gets hurt. The teachers insist that my son isn’t a problem and the boys still want to play together, even though Johnny’s mother has made the school separate them. 

She teaches her son to hit back, but I can’t afford to do that. I must teach my son to be careful and meek. I don’t even teach him to stand up for himself with loud words and a strong stance. I tell him strenuously that he must not push and shove at school. There are serious consequences both at home and at school. First off, he has lost the ability to play with his best friend. He’s five, so I don’t tell him what the consequences may be when he’s older. But I know. 

I know how many young men and boys of color are shot, arrested and jailed for the tiniest infractions. I know that society will not give him the same leeway it will give Johnny. I know that Johnny’s mother can scream and yell at me in the schoolyard and Johnny can watch and learn that this is how to solve conflicts. And when he grows up if he yells at another parent, nothing much will happen. But I cannot yell back even though it is well within my feisty temperament and it costs me a great deal to remain calm. Because my son cannot yell at another parent when he is older. CANNOT. Ever. 

I owe him this. I owe him a good role model because for a man of color to become loud in this society is hugely dangerous and would result in much greater response from authorities.

This is what I now know about white privilege. By becoming the parent of a non-white child, I lost a bit of that privilege. I lost the ability to respond in an argument with an aggressive parent without incurring significant consequences for my child. This is what parents of color know from the get-go that I had to learn. They must raise their children to be more careful, more courteous. It isn’t just a matter of manners. In many places it can significantly affect the chances of survival as a teenager. To be allowed to sometimes be vehement in a discussion with a rude person in public--that is white privilege. A little piece of it at least.

So, I am not as unaware as I once was. But I still have empathy for white people who don't understand this. That may piss you off, but I don't know how to explain it to other white people with words, not words I would have understood and taken under my skin twenty years ago. Many white people will read my description of the problem at my son’s preschool above and still be confused about why that was about white privilege. They’ll scratch their heads, even though I just put it as clearly as it can possibly be put. 

I cannot tell my former self these things in simple terms and if I couldn't hear it then, there are few people who can. I wanted to learn and to understand. I wanted to "see" in that way and I might as well have been physically blind twice over. I could not "see" without experience.

This is why white people are unaware. Because they lack experience. They lack understanding. They don't see the social cues going on around them because they are not exposed to the consequences of them. They take much of what is going on for granted. It is not their fault individually that they don't see these things. We are fallible and human and it would help move toward a less racist society if people of color could come to understand that these concepts are not simple for us—that many white people do try.

I try to educate people, to change things for the better. I now live in the Czech Republic. Here the group of color which is most feared and hated is the Roma. They have skin only a shade darker than most Central Europeans. Many Americans can’t tell any difference. But people here can. And that is the identity of my children.  In a few years, my children will be looked at with suspicion when they enter stores. They will be the first Romani students at their primary school because school desegregation is just beginning here. So, I do what I can to educate. 

I volunteered at my children's preschool the other day. Race and ethnicity is so controversial here that the preschool teachers would not let me do a craft and story session on Romani culture. Their faces go blank when I mention it. So, instead I did it on Zimbabwe. I read story books showing black children in nice city houses, playing with toys and making messes just as children do here. I gave them plastic containers and led them in a snappy African drumming session. And at the end I pulled out my red, yellow, white and black paints and mixed them up several batches of gradated brown paint to demonstrate that we are all brown, just different shades of brown. 

The teachers were stunned and excited with new understanding. They had never seen anything like this before. And yet I have no illusions that I have made a dent in racism with these volunteer classes. They are a tiny breath of fresh air against a tide of smog. I do it not because I think I can change other white people or turn around a racist society. I do it because my children are sitting in the class too and any bit of the endless explanation to white people that I can bear is a bit they won't have to. And they are my children and when you're a parent, you bear whatever you can to make the burden of your children lighter. I know about the huge burden of endless explaining to clueless white people that people of color bear. That's one of the things I know about now.

If you explain and try to help white people understand this, you give a gift to the children of your community. It is very hard to know where to begin and it is a very long road to mutual understanding. I hope it may be worth it to some to try.

Walls: A documentary of segregated schools

In 1999 and 2000, I worked with two film students Matthew McLean and Dantia MacDonald to make an independent documentary about the struggle of Romani children for equal education in the Czech Republic. It was one of those hidden stories journalists search for--a significant but largely unknown injustice. At the time, 70 percent of Romani (sometimes called Gypsy) children in the Czech Republic were channeled into special schools for the mentally disabled. Before our documentary only a handful of articles had been written about the problem in the English press. 

I was a young reporter working part time for The Prague Post and I was handed the thick government report on the special schools because no one else wanted to tackle it. But instead of feeling put upon, I saw in it one of the biggest stories of the decade. I spent the next several years writing about the Roma, often about the special schools. And I finished the documentary Walls.

The film was the kind of documentary I'd always dreamed about--raw, a real-life story with "plot" and fiercely rebelious. Public trains provided our film crew transportation and the kitchen floors of ghetto homes gave us our base camps. The result is an incredible story following nine-year-old Karel and fifteen-year-olds Anezka and Pepino as they grapple with the segregated schools and their own growing understanding of their desperate chances in a deeply racist society.

It's been sixteen years now, enough time for another generation to grow up and pass through the schools. Today desegregation is still the hot issue it was then. The names of institutions have been changed to muddy the picture, but much of the problem remains the same as it was then. 

The film remains relevant for all of those reasons, but the way I view it now is quite different. I am no longer a young, idealistic, foreign reporter. I have made this country my home. And I'm a parent of adopted Romani children. I too have been told to put my child in a special school. Now the line between journalist and everyday life has been blurred.

Smrak 3: Gender specific toys and media that promote either ditsy

When my daughter was a baby I thought it would be simple. I would scrimp and save and buy her the best and most beautiful dolls on the market--the big ones with all the accessories, the ones made of good quality materials and none of that cheap plastic that releases toxins. Then she would never want Barbies. End of problem.

Creative Commons image by Thomas Hawk

Right…

Where I live cheap Barbie knock-offs are the most common gift given to children, after candy with artificial coloring. My daughter was given one by the organizers of a nature walk we joined. She has been given these horrid bits of soft, easily breakable, toxic plastic with extreme body-image issues, by relatives and visitors to our home on a regular basis. 

And of course, her friends have real Barbies, which are slightly less likely to fill the house with carcinogenic clutter, but are no better for girls to play with. And that’s usually all they play with. 

Why do I have such an issue with Barbies? You might ask. My daughter is incredibly slim with a perfect figure. She’s not one of the girls in most danger of poor-body-image problems. She’s the type others will envy after all. 

My issue is only partly to do with ridiculously long, skinny legs and waists that look like a pulled taffy. Those are problematic. But the feet permanently bent into the shape of shoes that are harmful to kids’ feet and require women to tiptoe through the world are worse. The focus on clothes, clothes, clothes, shoes, shoes, shoes, makeup, makeup, makeup, hair, hair, hair is simply nauseating. Girls should have other interests as well. 

I know the company has made some Barbie firefighter outfits and other less impractical garb, but these outfits are invariably extra baggy and ridiculous looking. Face it. Anything that actually fits on that doll well wouldn't allow for much freedom of movement in real life. Little girls don’t actually use the firefighter outfits and the focus remains on clothing that obviously allows for no activities beyond primping and attracting sexual interest.

That’s my problem. I have given in to everything being pink. What I can’t abide is the fact that the girl’s section of any toy store is entirely focused on appearance and primping, as if that is the only thing girls can be interested in. Some girls resist it. But my daughter doesn’t. She has a natural knack for these things and I want her to have fun learning to do her hair and dress up. Who doesn’t? It’s fun. 

Creative Commons image by Fortune Cookie of Flickr.com

But I also want her to sometimes do other things. 

On top of toy stores, there are the girl-oriented TV shows. Disney has done a relatively good job with some of their princess movies, despite the close resemblance between Disney princesses and Barbie dolls. At least some of them do things other than primp and they usually use fairly normal voices. 

But these are never the videos my daughter and her friends want to watch most. I made the terrible mistake of buying a Lego Friends DVD to take overseas with us because it claimed to support “diversity” and “friendship.”  The videos make me nauseous. The “friendship” promoted is only that within one’s own little clique and is not open to others. The girls in the video are constantly focused on primping and will often dash back home in the middle of an “adventure” to change clothes or make sure they look dazzling. This is all spelled out in detail and presents such an unhealthy message that as far from English-language videos as we are, I’ve had to disappear it.

The worst part of the video and many others I’ve seen are the little vocalizations that the girl characters emit. There are constant “Ooo!” and “Eeeeh!” noises as if someone is making fun of the women of the 1950s. Except that this is done in all seriousness and presented as girls being pretty and attractive. My daughter now imitates these noises for hours on end.  

When you were refugees

Where I grew up in northeastern Oregon, you sometimes hear a lonely soul remember that our families were once refugees--long ago. There's a fugitive whisper of remembrance when the topic of conversation turns to immigration.

Creative Commons image by Bengin Ahmad

The images and stories of early American immigration are usually fairly heroic. There are the Pilgrims and then the Pioneers. They are portrayed as intrepid explorers facing terrible danger in order to ensure our future.  We read Little House on the Prairie with childlike delight, never noticing that the little girl Laura was an illegal alien because her family was squatting on land that had been guaranteed to Native Americans by law and treaty. We rarely acknowledge the twin forces of hope and need that drove her family to become migrants. 

Today, I live in Central Europe, a land so settled and stolid that you would think it quite understandable that people here have even less empathy for immigrants.

But wait... 

Have you forgotten so quickly? It may sound like ancient history, but it is only a single generation since the land where I stand sent refugees fleeing, risking their lives and the lives of their children--desperate escape.

Creative Commons image by André Hofmeister 

My husband is fifty and he grew up in a village just four miles from the Czech-Austrian border. He remembers well the soldiers who came into the border villages to train children, including him and his younger brother, to watch for possible defecters fleeing their totalitarian homeland. The children were issued binoculars and notebooks by the army and taught to record the license numbers of all strangers. 

Today the Czech Republic is among the most anti-refugee countries in Europe. From newspaper accounts, we have yet to accept one single refugee from Syria. And yet we've had demonstrations condemning the refugees... preventatively. "They are different," the Czechs say. "They are not like us and they will change our culture."

And I fly back in memory.

I was a sixteen-year-old girl, barely old enough to understand and I was an exchange student in Germany just a few miles from the old Fulda Gap. The border was open then but it had only been that way for just three short years. And my best friend was an illegal migrant from Czechoslovakia. He played the guitar and spoke in a beautiful language I couldn't understand. He told stories of a hidden country the world knew little about. The German family where we lived kept him hidden in the basement--a debt paid to a family member left behind on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and still something to be ashamed of.

Uprchlíci

Stillking Films a režisér Martin Krejčí natočili pro UNHCR a agenturu Y&R spot Uprchlíci. Sami jsme byli uprchlíci.

Posted by BIO | OKO on Tuesday, February 23, 2016

(This is a powerful, short clip from a documentary about Czechoslovak refugees risking being shot to flee across the border into Austria in the 1980s. The quote in Czech in the video translates as, "It would be life or death, both or neither of us. That was all I could think of at the time.")

At my German school, I quickly learned not to speak about my friendship with the Czech. It was considered very odd that I would want to befriend such backward people. At home, the host family forbid the Czech man to speak his language to a Czech maid we knew. Everything from the east was considered less-than and possibly dangerous.

Today that man is a father of three with his own house and a teaching job. And he is afraid of refugees.

A cousin of my host family also came around sometimes, a guy from East Germany with intense fierce eyes. It was the family secret that his mother had been accidentally left behind, when the family fled from the east twenty-five years earlier. I thought he hated me because I was an American--the way is eyes would bore into me. 

Creative Commons image by Freedom House of Flickr.com

He wouldn't talk about it, but the others said he had fled over the Czechoslovak-Austrian border before it was open. He had escaped through that net of children with binoculars and soldiers with automatic weapons to join his aunt's family in the west. He had risked his life when he was little older than me--still a kid--because it was the only hope he could see in the world.

I will never forget the look in his eyes. I have seen it now many times over and I know now that he did not hate me. It was just fear, desperation, confusion and the expectation that I would hate him. You see the same look in the eyes of refugees today, people who have been forced to run from their homes by war, starvation, imprisonment or oppression. They are not entirely without understanding. They know that many people where they are going will fear and despise them. And yet they have to go, and so their eyes come to have that look of intensity. 

Junk food and people who feed it to my kids: Smrak 2

One day in Oregon, my kindergartner got off the school bus all hyped up with excitement. Her teacher was sweet and my little girl rode the bus with her best friend. It was lovely to see her doing so well.

She told me they had eaten green Jello at the end of the day and she loved it. Then I was worried. She often has adverse reactions to food coloring. 

A half an hour later she was shaking all over and screaming desperately, “I can’t stop! I can’t stop!” I held her on my lap, cursing inside. It took three hours before she could stop shaking and sobbing.

"Candy!" - Creative Commons image by Jeff of Flickr.com

When I say my child has allergies to food coloring and preservatives, most other parents sniff and change the subject. It’s like ADHD. Parents supposedly make up food-coloring problems to cover for bad parenting… or so they say. If I protest, they demand a doctor’s note, knowing full well that the medical establishment doesn’t look into this type of issue. 

One parent I know does understand though. He has a child with even worse reactions to food additives. His daughter had debilitating eczema as an toddler and they had her tested for allergies but the tests came back negative. Doctors told them it wasn’t allergies and they wanted to proscribe a pharmacy full of random drugs that “might help.” But the parents started to notice a correlation between the child’s problems and packaged food. 

After a consultation with a naturopath, they cut out all processed food and all non-organic food from their family diet. They went extreme. They make their own cheese, bread, crackers, cereal, sweets… everything. They buy only organic raw materials. It’s a huge amount of work. 
And their daughter is free of eczema. 

Scientists know that pesticides, chemicals released from packaging, preservatives, additives and food dyes are not good for us, but they are only a “little bit” not good for us. We can supposedly handle a certain level of toxicity. But some children are like canaries in a coal mine. They fall first, showing us that the concentration of harmful substances is accumulating. Every chemical has it’s maximum safe limit of parts per million, but no one has studied the effect of the maximum “safe” level of a hundred different somewhat toxic chemicals at once. 

Add to that the fact that our bodies evolved over millennia in which simple carbohydrates were hard to come by and most people today naturally crave sweets and other simple carbohydrates. Sugar acts on the body much the same way as an addictive drug. 

Then we are asked by the modern parenting movement to engage in “child-led feeding” because that is supposedly the “humane” way to parent--leaving children on their own to deal with dozens of unseen toxic chemicals and carbohydrate cravings programmed into their DNA during the Stone Age.

I keep a pretty good kitchen, not spectacular but decent—tortillas, chili, enchiladas, soups galore, spaghetti, curry, lasagna, stir fry, pizza, stew, salads of every description, dumplings, gravy, potatoes, baked fish… And sweets? Famous chocolate cake, pies beyond count, cookies, muffins and even homemade ice cream. 

My kids complain of course. They don’t like food that isn’t beige or sweets that don’t come in a shiny package. Like every other kid. But they are used to the fact that I win in the end, so mostly they eat it—while putting their approved least-favorite foods (mushrooms, olives, eggplant) on the edge of their plates.

That is most of the time, when they haven’t recently been at a friend’s house or had a discussion with other kids at school about food. At those times they refuse to eat and then engage in screaming fits when they aren’t allowed desert after not eating dinner. 
The situation isn’t any better on the other side of the world where we now live in the Czech Republic than it is in Oregon. I put a lot of effort into obtaining and growing food that isn’t saturated in chemicals. Then my kids go to friends’ houses and return full of chips and candy. 

Another reason their friends don’t come to our house: cookies, hot chocolate, homemade ice cream and popcorn are “stupid” and “boring.” Oh, and they “don’t drink water or juice.” Ever. According to the neighborhood kids, the only liquid they consume is pop. 

Creative Commons image by Felix M of Flickr.com

I tried volunteering with the school to put together a play day for the kids. They wanted me to run the refreshment stand, which consisted of handing out the Czech equivalent of Twinkies to the kids. I suggested I could bake some brownies, but the others all frowned at me and shook their heads. One of the mothers lectured me, “The whole point is to have snacks that the kids will actually eat. We know they’ll eat these.” 

Despite this, many parents do actually talk about healthy food but their most common phrase about food is “just this once” and every day is an exception. Some parents strain the vegetables out of soup before even giving it to their kids. They have given up on any semblance of healthful meals, because that is the only way to avoid conflict.

I’m less judgmental about what others do than you might think, given that I really do care about the health and my daughter has sensitivities to some additives. The thing is that I know how much conflict it causes. Who wants all that conflict in their dinner table? 

But here’s my question. Why is there conflict? 

Kids will eat vegetables—and quite readily—if they are fresh and appetizing and the child hasn’t been surrounded by unhealthy peer pressure or addictive sugars. I had absolutely no problem with my kids eating until they started attending preschool and seeing more of other kids. Adults were usually astonished at how well they ate even as stubborn toddlers and the fact that they would ask for salad when they had the nibbles.

If kids are told that “vegetables” are overcooked lumps of broccoli and brussles sprouts, of course they won’t want to eat them no matter what their environment. But neither will anyone else. 

Even this past week my kids were sure they wouldn’t like beet salad with nuts, kale, tomatoes and feta cheese in it and there were plenty of other good things for them to eat, so we didn’t waste it on them. But after a weekend without anyone pushing junk food, they asked for the beet salad and ate it eagerly. (It really is a treat. Bake the beets in thin strips and add lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil. Yum.)

But when addictive foods and junk are too prevalent they will refuse even their favorite meals, like spaghetti. They are still children and it is hard enough for adults to stop and realize what your body really needs. Children are not magically “more in touch.” In fact, amid the frenzy of play and the confusion of learning the social world, the opposite is often true.

My son now likes to say that at least he can have food coloring, because he doesn’t have the same sensitivities as my daughter. I attempt to explain to them both that it isn’t a question of one kid who can have them and another who can’t. It’s harmful to both of them, but one has more immediate reactions. 

It’s more difficult when my kids ask why their friends can eat chips and candy for lunch and then have white noodles with ketchup washed down with pop for dinner and they can’t. I don’t like to be negative in front of my kids and I don’t think their friends' parents are “bad” which is how my kids would interpret the full explanation with their childish ideas of absolutes. But in the end I have to tell them that part of the job of being a mother is making sure they are protected from harmful things, even if others don’t do the same.