The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry (12 page)

"Disabled" is not a label or self-concept that has historically belonged to Deaf people. "Disabled" is a way of representing yourself, and it implies goals that are unfamiliar to Deaf people. Deaf people's enduring concerns have been these: finding each other and staying together, preserving their language, and maintaining lines of transmittal of their culture. These are not the goals of disabled people. Deaf people do know, however, the benefits of this label and make choices about alignment with these people politically 36

Perhaps the Deaf deny they have a disability to avoid stigma.37

There are numerous reasons, without invoking avoidance of stigma, to expect Deaf people to reject the idea that they all have a disability. The key to understanding why "disabled" is a poor fit to "Deaf" is found in the distinctive language and culture of ASL signers who are, in this respect, unlike any group of disabled people. Deaf people are aware that when they are together, or with hearing people who know ASL, there is no impediment but when they are with other ethnic groups, the impediment is based on language. Language changes everything. It was the catalyst that created an ethnic group out of a visual people and that created a culture with myths, memories, and symbols-a culture that values its ethnic identity. During the civil rights era in America, when Deaf people came to see that they speak a natural language, they also came to see their identity in a different light, one that exposed self-derogatory talk about ASL "gestures" and Deaf "afflictions" and "impairments"-talk that had been, in any case, borrowed from hearing people or addressed to them. Many in the DeafWorld say they are content to be Deaf despite the burdens of minority status, and they welcome having Deaf children.38 All ethnic groups want to see their group perpetuated. In contrast, many disability leaders say that, although they want their physical difference valued as a part of who they are, they welcome measures that attenuate or remove their disability and reduce the numbers of disabled children.39

At least ethnic Deaf people could support the disability movement without actually including themselves.

Yes, and that happens. However, the Deaf were not deeply involved with disabled people in lobbying for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and disabled people were not deeply involved in the Deaf event of the century in the United States, the revolution known as Deaf President Now.40 The two groups, disabled and Deaf, have different priorities. People differ widely within each group, but here, much compressed, are the basics: Whereas the disability rights movement seeks independence for people with disabilities, Deaf people cherish interdependence with other Deaf people. Whereas the disability rights movement seeks total integration into society at large whenever possible, Deaf ethnics cherish their unique identity and seek integration that honors their distinct language and culture; they find integration of Deaf children into hearing schools and classes an anathema. Whereas disabled people seek better medical care and rehabilitation services, greater physical access, and personal assistance services (help with personal hygiene, dressing, and eating), Deaf people's priorities concern language acceptance, interpreters, and a spectrum of educational settings including residential schools.41

Some disability advocates maintain that the gap between Deaf and disabled is narrowing as, in recent years, people with disabilities have to a degree forged a group identity and a disability culture-"artifacts, beliefs and expressions"-to describe their life experiences.42 However, disabled people are surely not an ethnic group - where are the language, the sense of belonging, the distinctive culture, and ethnic boundaries? Moreover, transmitting the fruits of shared experience is not the same as the transmission of language, history, and culture across the generations by ethnic groups such as African Americans, Native Americans, and Deaf Americans. Other disability experts do recognize the tension between understanding Deaf people as an ethnic group and understanding them in terms of disability.43

Bear in mind that the people with disabilities, whom Deaf ethnics are asked to join in a common category are, for the most part, hearing people of various ethnicities, especially the dominant one. These are just the people who are on the other side of the ethnic boundary from the Deaf-World. It is not straightforward for Deaf people to belong both to their own ethnic group (us) and at the same time to a disabled hearing group with mainstream ethnicity (them).44

If the Deaf-World's ties to the disability community are slight, its ties to other ethnic groups are even slimmer. What aid can Deaf people expect from, say, black Americans, in their struggle for their human rights?

The Deaf-World has received a lot from black Americans. In the first place, black Deaf Americans are in its ranks and leadership, as are other multiethnic Deaf people. Moreover, it was black Americans who launched the civil rights era that so greatly re-empowered Deaf Americans. Black Americans, hearing and Deaf, were involved in the Deaf President Now movement. But hearing ethnic groups could not appreciate what they have in common with the Deaf-World-a distinctive language, a history of struggle, pride in an under esteemed heritage, and multiethnic Deaf members-as long as those commonalities were masked by presenting Deaf people as disabled. Interethnic alliances are difficult to forge but when the ethnic basis of the Deaf-World is understood, Deaf leaders can expect more from other ethnicities. After all, Deaf children need what the children of other ethnic groups need: parents who take joy in their arrival and who model language for their children from the outset; peers to promote socialization; teachers who are not only competent in their specializations and skillful in their practices, but also fluent in the children's best language, knowledgeable about their culture, and adept as role models.

If Deaf ethnics insist that they are not disabled, why do they accept the perquisites of disability, such as disability payments, interpreter services, and the like?

That is indeed the Deaf dilemma: To exercise some important rights as members of society at the expense of being mischaracterized by that society and government, or to refuse some of those rights in the hope of gradually undermining that misconstruction and gaining rights that are truly appropriate and broader. On the one hand, Deaf people have an obligation to accept provisions that enhance their full participation in our society-that is an obligation but also a human right.

On the other hand, the price of compliance with alien bureaucratic categories is high. Because of the disability misrepresentation, Deaf people are more vulnerable to measures aimed at reducing Deaf births, to surgery where the risks and costs outweigh the benefits, to delayed language acquisition, to monolingual education in an oral language, to social isolation in the local school, and to marginalization when lacking both the dominant ethnicity of their parents and the minority ethnicity of their Deaf peers.45 Because of the disability misrepresentation, the deinstitutionalization movement so precious to disability advocates has swept Deaf children into the local public schools and into a communication vacuum. The schools for the Deaf, whatever the drawbacks of boarding schools, were nevertheless a place of ethnic awakening, language development, education, and formation of positive identity. Because of the disability misrepresentation, Deaf ethnics have not sought collaboration with other ethnic groups in efforts, for example, to promote bilingual education. Because of the disability misrepresentation, ethnically Deaf Americans enjoy neither the protections in law for ethnic minorities, nor the democratic traditions that would give them greater control over the destiny of their own ethnic group.46 Many Deaf citizens seek a middle ground; they wish to retain their rights under the disability umbrella while agitating for reforms based on their ethnicity, reforms such as the promotion of their human rights and of their sign language.47 Clearly, the reconceptualization of Deaf people as an ethnic group must not deprive them of provisions for their full participation in society; those provisions will be more effective if matched to Deaf people's true status and needs.

On Deaf Diversity and American Pluralism

So many different categories of people called deaf! Those born Deaf, those who early became Deaf, those who were deafened as adults; those with Deaf parents and those with hearing parents; those who acquired ASL from birth on, others when they entered school, still others in their teens; those who attended schools where their language was used, others where it was not; those with disabilities and those with multiple ethnicities. Wouldn't it be better just to sweep all these divisive categories away and simply say that anyone who doesn't hear well enough to communicate orally is deaf?48 Period.

The all-embracing disability category you just defined-doesn't hear well enough to communicate orally- sounds appealing but there are few significant issues all the members could agree on. More often we must recognize that the members of the different categories see themselves differently and have different needs and different agendas. Moreover, the Deaf-World has an ethnicity that is so strikingly unlike the mainstream, one founded on the positive value of being Deaf, that it serves few purposes to merge it with self-identified disability groups.

If you could in principle sweep away socially divisive categories, they would promptly come back. It is true that where there are categories there are often fuzzy boundaries and marginal cases. But we cannot do away with "us" and "them." Ethnocentrism is human nature; our identities are bound up with the fate of the significant groups to which we belong. Moreover, categories help us to make sense of the world around us; they give it a degree of predictability; they speed mental processing and facilitate memory. The danger of category-based responses such as stereotypes is to rely on them even when better information is available. Within Deaf ethnicity, some of the cross-cutting categories have received study, such as black and Deaf,49 and others await it.

Why do we need the category of Deaf ethnicity? Wasn't "linguistic and cultural minority" sufficient?

There are so many linguistic and cultural parallels between the DeafWorld and ethnic groups, one must ask what the reason is for denying that classification to the Deaf. We have examined such parallels as selfascription, endogamous marriage, resistance to assimilation, Deaf institutions, boundary maintenance, the use of different sign-language varieties with in-group and out-group members, Deaf acclaim of the positive value of being Deaf despite stigmatized identity, Deaf pleasure at the birth of a Deaf child, Deaf customs such as group decision making, indirect reciprocity, ritualized naming practices and introductions; the sense of commitment and obligation toward former and future generations; the desire to maintain and protect Deaf linguistic, symbolic, and cultural heritage. You can call the ethnic group by another name, such as a "linguistic and cultural minority," but where do we find such minorities that are not also ethnic groups? Moreover, if being a member of the Deaf-World is only a matter of language and culture why are the Deaf "The People of the Eye" and why do the Deaf have a sign language rather than an oral one?

Ethnic Hispanics, ethnic blacks, ethnic Deaf-the way you talk about them and their "physical correlates" seems close to racism.

We disagree. Sex roles are not the same as sexism, religious beliefs not the same as bigotry, ethnicity not the same as racism 50 True, ethnicity, like race, often involves ancestry, endogamous marriage, and biological differences. But race is a category imposed by outsiders seeking dominance; it is often the fruit of imperialism, accompanied by exploitation based on claims about superior and inferior races. And racial classifications are utterly discredited scientifically. Ethnicity, on the contrary, is about insiders who voluntarily find identity and strength in their group, an antidote to racism.51 Racism derogates, ethnicity elevates.

Still, I think America needs to overcome all this fractionation if we are to succeed as a nation.

Polyethnic states are frequently dominated by a single ethnic group that seeks to incorporate smaller and weaker ethnic groups.52 Is that your agenda? When you imagine a homogeneous America with only one ethnicity, one language, one culture, is it by chance your own? In any case, it is not going to happen. Forty-seven million Americansabout one in five adults-speak a language at home other than English according to the 2000 census, and the numbers are growing.53 Immigration will continue to support ethnic identity. Even assimilated Americans have been turning to their ethnic roots.54 With the development of ever more sophisticated tools for information processing, ethnic groups are better able to mobilize and to make their case to one another and the general public. This has been especially true of Deaf ethnicity in America where email, texting, instant messaging, blogs, vlogs, video telephones, and websites have greatly enhanced communication. An important element in the success of the Deaf President Now movement was the rebel students' use of the media.

But should our government be in the business of promoting ethnic differences? In asking for the recognition of Deaf ethnicity, Deaf people are asking just that.

It is true that ethnicity can be divisive-especially when manipulated by political and religious forces. But ethnicity is a basic human good and a natural right. Ethnicity provides continuity, a basis for collective action, intimate attachment to others, the rewards of culture. It is an antidote to the depersonalizing forces of modernity. There is a body of research showing that preserving a tie to one's own group and culture fosters self esteem, life satisfaction, and well-being generally.55 As a nation we must encourage our ethnic groups if we are to talk with the rest of the world 56 Fishman has put it well: "The American dream includes the promise of assimilation, the promise of ethnolinguistic selfmaintenance, and the promise of freedom to choose between them."57

Yet for Deaf people to insist on separateness when it is a hearing world-is that really the right way to go?