- I am racist. - My name is Jacob Komonu and I am a restaurateur. - My name is Mike Miller and I have light perception, so I can tell the lights are on or the studio lights are on but I can't see anything else.
- I can't see anything. No lights, no color, anything. Total dark.
- No. - No. - I would like to think that I'm not.
However, there are those stereotypes that have been instilled in everyone. - I am racist because I think every white person is racist. I participate in institutions.
Like, I benefit from capitalism, which was built on slavery and racism. - I've experienced racism. But I don't let it bother me.
I think allowing it to affect me gives them the upper hand. - No. Because I can't see.
- Blindness does sometimes take those racial cues out of society because if can't tell by someone's voice or accent or whatever, like I have no idea. - I've noticed with a lot of people I meet I don't really find out what their race is until a while after we meet. - We don't necessarily go around asking, Are you black?
Are you white? You are who you are as far as I'm concerned. - I work with a person who's Japanese but I would have no idea unless she told me.
There's just no cue that I have. - I can tell more or less if a person's Caucasian, Black, Mexican, whatever it might be. By their voice, accent.
- Like seeing someone's skin color I think is not the only way that we differentiate people's culture or race. - I can pick out dialects and sometimes try to associate them with what race they might be. I wish I could completely just ignore it.
But I can't help it. If I'm walking down the street and I hear a couple of people and they're like aggressively talking to each other and it's slang and vulgar speech and it's not eloquent, I naturally sometimes think, oh those people might be black because of their accent. I shouldn't think like that but there are natural stereotypes out there in the world.
- No. I don't know. I don't know.
- You can hear the way someone speaks and make a determination about them that could be completely inaccurate 'cause you just don't know. - I've had experiences where I've known a person for probably a year, year and a half or so, and they never knew I was black. Ironically, this was another black person.
They were like, you're black? And I'm, yeah I am black. So.
(laughs) - I believe there's racism within the blind community because there is racism everywhere and the blind community is no exception. - I think it's their upbringing, how they were raised. - I grew up in North Idaho and I wasn't exposed to a lot of people from different cultures.
I grew up in a home with my dad, who was pretty. . .
Racist isn't the term I want to use, but pretty vocal about identifying people by their race. Like it's just how he grew up. - I come from India and my dad is different complexion and they married each other and they're like pretty you know happy couple.
It's a good example for us. - If I did, I probably didn't recognize it because I don't look for it. - The issues I've seen in the blind community kind of take on, maybe they tend to be more white issues.
One thing I haven't seen the blind community collectively work on is housing justice. And I'm complicit in this too, right, 'cause I'm a blind person, right, so I could be the person to organize and I'm not. - People who are blind come in all shapes, sizes, economic backgrounds, beliefs.
And some of them are racist. That's something that we as a society in general, blindness excluded, need to work on being better at.
