Amy Ruelle, who is quoted in the article, is a leader in the Boston vicug
and a list subscriber.  Thanks for enlightening the world on this
important topic.

kelly

the Wall Street Journal

   December 26, 2000 [WSJ.com -- Marketplace]
     _________________________________________________________________

Blind Workers Face Discrimination
In the Newly Tight Labor Market

   By JEFFREY A. TANNENBAUM
   Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

   ROMULUS, Mich. -- Using a deck of Braille tarot cards, Albert P.
   Griffith works as a psychic helping clients see their futures. But
   when he graduated from college in 1996, one future he surely didn't
   foresee was his own.

   Mr. Griffith, who lives with his wife and two cats in a tidy mobile
   home near the Detroit Metro airport, says he'll earn about $13,000
   this year from tarot readings, performed mostly in the back of a
   bookstore. After getting a degree in social work, he expected a job as
   a social worker, entering a career after long stretches of drug abuse
   and personal turmoil.

   Four years later, Mr. Griffith, now 47 years old, estimates he has
   sent out 250 resumes and recently went for his 100th job interview.
   Still no job -- not even an offer. "They are always very polite,
   saying they'll keep his resume on file," says his wife, Diane, 38.
   Adds Mr. Griffith: "It's called the circular file."

   He believes he is a victim of prejudice against the blind. That's far
   from certain: In some cases he may be overreaching for jobs. But his
   search highlights a glaring exception to the nation's tight labor
   market: stubbornly high rates of unemployment and underemployment for
   the blind. The nonprofit American Foundation for the Blind says the
   jobless rate is 58% for the legally blind of prime working age (18 to
   54). Of the employed blind, 35% feel underemployed.
   [blind hedcut]

   Charles Crawford, executive director of the nonprofit American Council
   of the Blind, cites "discrimination where we are seen as a charity
   population, lack of appropriate assistive technologies and training,
   and lack of transportation to get to work."

   While federal law requires employers to make "reasonable"
   accommodations for disabled employees and bars discrimination in
   hiring, anti-bias suits by the blind are rare. "It's hard to prove a
   case of disability discrimination, and lawyers are reluctant to take
   the cases," says Charles S. Hodge, an attorney with the U.S. Labor
   Department's civil rights division. But Mr. Hodge says many blind
   people do face bias: "Employers have this stereotype that you must be
   helpless, pitiable and virtually nonfunctional if you are blind."

   Albert Griffith says he has been blind since infancy in Flint, Mich.
   After dropping out of high school to work as the booking agent for a
   magician, he sold insurance and handled the telephone for a dating
   service. But he became involved with alcohol and drugs. Federal
   benefits for the blind gave him a modest income, plus health benefits.

   Mr. Griffith, who got his high-school equivalency degree and began
   college, says he kicked drugs in 1995 and has been clean since.
   Completing college in 1996, he received his bachelor's degree in
   social work from the University of Detroit Mercy. "We would never have
   given him his degree if we felt he couldn't work -- not necessarily in
   all settings, but in some settings," says Robert Daniels, a former
   professor of Mr. Griffith's.

   Some blind people work successfully in social work, and say others
   could. "The biggest barrier to employment of blind professionals is
   the stereotypic thinking and fears of sighted people," says Amy
   Ruelle, 46, a clinical social worker in a mental-health center in
   Brockton, Mass.

   Ms. Ruelle takes a series of four buses to commute to her job
   counseling disadvantaged and sometimes disturbed clients. "I can't see
   facial expressions, so I use other cues to assess people" such as
   voice, she says. "You don't need to be sighted to communicate with
   people, to convey empathy, to assess problems and find solutions." Ms.
   Ruelle at an earlier job paid house calls on home-bound elderly
   clients. "It took 11 months to get that first job" and 50 interviews,
   she says. "I certainly faced a lot of discrimination."

   Mr. Griffith, has visited dozens of personnel offices at
   social-service agencies, often accompanied by his wife, who is
   sighted. According to Mr. Griffith, most interviewers treat him
   politely. Few give him a reason for not hiring him. At Vista Maria, a
   temporary home for troubled teenage girls in Dearborn Heights, Mich.,
   however, he says an interviewer -- he doesn't recall the name -- said:
   "If we had known you were that way, you wouldn't have had to drive so
   far." Mr. Griffith says: "I acted as if I didn't recognize that he was
   talking about my blindness. I thought I would make an impression as
   the interview went on." He received no job offer.

   Colleen A. Bunting, director of human services at Vista Maria, says
   she doesn't know the details of Mr. Griffith's interview. But she
   expresses doubt that any blind person could look after the sometimes
   violent residents assigned by courts to live at Vista Maria. "It's a
   safety issue, a security issue," she says. Some positions, for
   therapists, involve less risk, but require master's degrees, she adds.

   Mr. Griffith says that he ought to have a shot at the basic counseling
   jobs, even if they involve getting bitten or scratched. Those things
   happen to sighted workers, so they ought to be allowed to happen to
   blind workers, too, says Mr. Griffith, who enjoys defying stereotypes
   of the blind: He delights in bowling and can deftly dice onions.

   What Mr. Griffith sees as discrimination isn't always clear to the
   sighted. His former professor, Mr. Daniels, expresses doubt that Mr.
   Griffith would be suitable for Vista Maria. "Albert sometimes forgets
   he's blind," Mr. Daniels says. "I think any man -- even a sighted man
   -- would have difficulties at Vista Maria."

   The larger mystery, according to Mr. Daniels and others, is why Mr.
   Griffith hasn't landed a position elsewhere in the field. "There are
   many jobs in social work that he could do," he says. Mr. Daniels says
   Mr. Griffith, as a recovered addict, may be especially suited to work
   in anti-addiction programs.

   Openings in the growing social-work field abound. There are about
   800,000 people employed as social workers in the U.S., and about
   30,000 jobs available for new entrants each year. Many veterans are
   leaving the field for higher pay in corporate human-resource
   departments. New social workers often earn less than $25,000 a year.

   But there lies another problem. Unless they are over age 65, blind
   persons can lose their federal disability benefits if they earn more
   than $14,000 a year. Mr. Griffith says he receives $984 a month in
   benefits plus Medicare health coverage. His earnings as a psychic are
   too low to place these benefits in jeopardy. But he says, "There isn't
   any incentive for me to make more, unless I can make a lot more." He
   says he would need pay of at least $25,000 a year.

   A director at a Detroit group home where he once trained says Mr.
   Griffith is worth it. "If people gave him the opportunity, they'd find
   a very good worker," says the director, Anne Benion. "But people are
   probably afraid to take that first step."

   Write to Jeffrey A. Tannenbaum at [log in to unmask]
     _________________________________________________________________


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