I don't think you can legitimately be proud of something you didn't choose or work for.

Personally I'm pretty happy that I managed to do some things that not many people do, including running a business and building a freelance career, and I have to admit to a bit of self satisfaction that I did that without sight, but proud of it? God no.

And yes there are lots of people who have done impressive things in the past, often in a situation where things were not as well organised or permissive as they are now and that's really impressive, but those people are not me and I do not take pride in someone else's achievements.

I'd dump it in a heartbeat if I could. It's not a positive thing. It's a pain in the ass.

my god this is such bullshit. Sorry, but this smacks of an ex post facto justification i.e. justifying something in the past that you can't change.
Let's say, for example, that humans lived forever, except for a small group who were going to die one day. That small group could extol all the benefits of having a finite lifespan. Think about your appreciation of small things! Think about how much more you will value every single day, because you may not get another one! ETC ETC ETC.
But, if you told anyone from the immortal group about these benefits, and gave them the option to choose to die one day...do you really think they would jump at the chance? Of course they wouldn't!
This is the exact same. Being blind does not make us more resilient. Being blind does not give us thicker skin. Being blind may accentuate those personality characteristics, but that is all.
Let's take pride in, and be grateful for, the things we have achieved. But let's not for a second credit blindness for those achievements.

I never thought about being proud of a disability. I understand being proud of hurdles you and others in the same boat have overcome in spite of it, but being proud of the disability itself seems super weird.

I think that’s odd. Strange way to describe being content with who you are.

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about this.

On the one hand, I am glad that I'm more in tune with my other senses, and as a result I'm better at collecting human intelligence, I'm also glad I'm very adept at computers, and my lack of eyesight definitely contributed to this.

But I don't think I could say I'm *proud* to possess a disability. I don't think there's any shame in it either, to be clear. I would love to have the ability to drive or have the right to join the military or law enforcement, for example. If I could, I'd be a truck driver, at least for a while. There is something romantic about being alone in the middle of nowhere with a vehicle. Soothing almost. If I ever marry a woman, I hope to have some sort of cross country trip with her so that I may, vicariously, achieve this goal of mine.

I guess my point is, I'm not proud of being blind, though I do think it's pretty cool I have one of the rarest eye conditions in the world, but there's also no shame in it either. Just because the opposite of pride is shame that doesn't mean you have to have one or the other. You can have neither.

I’m not proud to be blind. But I’m pretty bad at being proud of myself for anything. 😆

More seriously, I’m not proud to be blind in the same way as I’m not proud to have brown hair, or be right-handed. I’m not ashamed of it, by any means, and I’m very open about my visual impairment. But I’ve never been made to feel like I should be ashamed, and that might be a factor here, too.

Thanks, Robert, for sharing this article here. As its author, I’d like to consolidate my comments on the replies so far into one message.
As the original blog post explains, this issue has come up on my podcast, Mosen At Large. I am proud of the community we have built there, with thousands of blind people from around the world listening each week, and some choosing to contribute their thoughts. It’s a place where we can have considered, respectful discussions on a range of issues. We talk technology, civil rights, politics,meditation…it’s an eclectic discussion, but what draws it all together is that we look at issues from a blindness perspective.
One fascinating episode we had recently discussed whether there is such a thing as blind culture. For those not familiar, Deaf culture is very strong, so we had someone on the podcast who was a proponent of the idea that blind culture exists to some degree and we would benefit if that were amplified. The podcast makes you think, you might not always agree, but hopefully you’ll be challenged sometimes and informed at others. If you would like to contribute to respectful discussion on this or any other issue, you would be welcome. Speaking of culture, we have built a culture that’s quite rare in the current era, where everyone’s views are expressed without personal attack.
Regarding this particular issue, I have been overwhelmed by the deluge of feedback I’ve received from blind people who have said how this piece resonated with them. It was this feedback that encouraged me to separate it and put it on my blog, and that in turn has generated even more positive feedback. I have had people write to me asking for permission to publish it in newsletters, read it at consumer group chapter meetings etc. Obviously the reaction here in this sub is markedly different, and that’s totally OK because the experience of blindness will vary a lot depending on one’s outlook on life, when blindness came and your own circumstances.So we all have valid perspectives to share.
In writing this piece, I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone is going to feel, or even necessarily should feel, proud to be blind. For example, if you have become blind later in life and your whole world has come crashing down around you because life as you know it has been up-ended, you’re definitely not going to be bursting with pride about that before you begin the process of rebuilding your life. It’s a much harder journey for those who go blind later in life, or for those whose vision insidiously deteriorates over time. If blindness comes to you, it’s a big deal. Yet I think posts like the one that has sparked this discussion are important, because we are bombarded with negative stereotypes about blindness, and that makes it harder to believe that a brighter future is possible. We’re all familiar with expressions like, “the blind leading the blind”, usually used in a pejorative sense. Yet many of us know that when the blind lead the blind, great things can happen. So why not celebrate the fact that actually, blind people have given the world a lot?
In my day job, I’m CEO of a national employment agency here in New Zealand for disabled people. So I think a lot about the very high unemployment rate experienced by blind people. Isn’t it frustrating that despite the fact that offices are largely paperless, that accessibility to mainstream apps like Microsoft Office are in superb shape, that we can access technologies like email and Teams and Slack, the unemployment rate among blind people remains stubbornly high? Obviously we have to do our bit as blind people to be job-ready. But one of the major problems we face is not blindness itself, but other people’s attitudes to blindness. Attitudinal change hasn’t kept pace with technological change.
In New Zealand, we now use the social model of disability. This is less common in the United States, but it has also caught on in Britain and Canada, and it is starting to change in the US slowly. The idea is that we don’t talk about “people with disabilities”, we talk about “disabled people”. The reason why this is important is that we are making the point that it is society which disables us due to the choices it makes. Those choices can be reversed. The social model of disability is a subject that could and does fill entire books, so if you would like to read more about it I will leave that to you. It is also something we discuss on the Mosen At Large Podcast.
This is leading to a growing disability pride movement, even to the extent that we have a disability pride week here in New Zealand now. So that circles me back to why I feel very proud to be blind.
One of the replies here suggested you can’t feel proud of something you didn’t work for or create yourself. I am proud of several things that don’t fit that category. I’m proud to be a New Zealander, but I was born here, I didn’t choose my country just as I didn’t choose blindness. Similarly, I’m proud of my parents, and I didn’t choose them either.
I do believe that being blind makes us a part of, if not a culture, then a shared set of experiences and history. I am proud of that in the same way that many members of the LGBTQ community are proud of their shared struggle for acceptance and the resulting legislative change that has come with it. The persecution they, and racial minorities, have suffered binds them together, and I believe the shared experiences of blind people bonds some of us together too. Not everyone feels that way, and that’s fine. But what has been heart-warming for me is the emails I have received since posting this to my blog from people who have said they work with parents of young blind children, and that they want to share this post with them. If this post helps those parents to not see their child’s blindness as a massive constraint on their lives, if it helps them to give their children the freedom to just be a kid and dream about being anything they want to be, then that’s a pretty cool contribution to have been able to make.
Thanks very much for the discussion and if any of you feel inclined, I look forward to your contributions to the show.

Yours in blind pride,

Jonathan

This one kinda missed the mark for me.
I'm not ashamed of being blind, but proud would be a stretch.
I don't know how to describe it exactly, but this just doesn't really make sense to me.

Bravo. Thanks for writing this.