The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry (7 page)

In 1971, Stokoe brought together a group of linguists to pursue the scientific study of ASL and in 1979 Edward Klima and Ursula Bellugi at the Salk Institute published The Signs of Language. The book reported on a decade of their research with Deaf collaborators on the structure and functions of ASL. Their studies went well beyond ASL vocabulary to present elements of the grammar of the language and of its art forms. This novel research focused on the language itself and not on culture, as HumphriesD explains. "Contrary to the general assumption that it was the research on ASL that alerted the world to Deaf people and their culture, it was actually cultural processes within the Deaf community that brought into public view the people behind the language." Deaf scholars and performers began "talking culture"-explaining to Deaf and hearing audiences the new vocabulary and way of thinking about Deaf language and culture.87 The National Theatre of the Deaf, mentioned earlier, also disseminated the new Deaf discourse through original plays based on Deaf culture.

When Deaf people began to think about themselves and their world in this new way, it invited comparison with the standing of other cultural groups and it raised the Deaf standard of fair treatment. Deaf young people of college age had grown up with this new understanding of the Deaf-World and were determined to work for improved civil rights and access.

In 1988 a collective action by Deaf students and Deaf leaders known as "Deaf President Now" (DPN) led to nationwide protests and greater activism by Deaf people that has endured. The event triggering the protest was the selection of the next president of Gallaudet University. Named in honor of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, the university was founded in 1864 in Washington, D.C., by Thomas's son Edward; it is the only liberal arts university for Deaf students in the world. American Deaf people have long claimed the school as their own and its campus as their land, even if its affairs were not conducted as they wished.88 Among the three candidates to lead the institution, two were Deaf and accomplished administrators, the third did not know ASL or the DeafWorld. Prior to the selection, Deaf leaders in the Washington, D.C., area and from other states, along with Gallaudet alumni, lobbied intensively for the selection of a Deaf candidate, and they laid the groundwork for civil disobedience if it were needed.

When the university board of trustees announced the choice of the non-Deaf candidate, with seeming disregard for the two Deaf candidates for that office, the Deaf-World and its faculty and staff allies reacted with shock, anger, disbelief, and tears. Then they closed down the university and prevented the newly selected president from assuming office. Deaf organizations around the country staged demonstrations of support. A torrent of Deaf people converged on Washington, D.C., to protest. Labor unions and candidates for U.S. president publicly took the students' side. There was wide media coverage of the demand for a Deaf president and donations poured in from individuals and organizations. At the end of a week of protest, there was a march on the capitol; in the vanguard were Deaf leaders carrying a banner borrowed from the Martin Luther King Museum that proclaimed "We Still Have a Dream."

For the protestors, the demand for a Deaf president was clearly a civil rights issue, and they presented it as such to the media. The Gallaudet Board of Trustees reversed itself and agreed to name a Deaf candidate. In the years since DPN and the Gallaudet Revolution, there has been a marked increase in Deaf activism, including protests for more Deaf teachers and a larger role for Deaf culture in the curriculum of Deaf education programs. There has been an increase of Deaf people lobbying state governments and the movie and television industries, and an increase in the numbers of Deaf people heading education and rehabilitation programs for the Deaf.89

The four students who led the Gallaudet uprising were Deaf children of Deaf parents; they were deeply imbued with a sense of DeafWorld, and they were natively fluent in ASL. One of them explained to USA Today the significance of the event as it relates to the identity of Deaf people: "Hearing people sometimes call us handicapped. But most-maybe all deaf people-feel that we're more of an ethnic group because we speak a different language. We also have our own culture.... There's more of an ethnic difference than a handicap difference between us and hearing people."90

The revolt at Gallaudet was a reaffirmation of Deaf culture, and it brought about the first worldwide celebration of that culture, a congress called The Deaf Way, held in Washington, D.C., the following year. More than five thousand spokespersons from Deaf communities around the world, including scholars, artists, and political leaders, took part in lectures, exhibits, media events, and performances. On the Gallaudet campus, there was a spectacular display of Deaf arts: mime, dance, storytelling and poetry in sign languages, crafts, sculpture, video, and fine arts. It is clear that Deaf leaders and artists in many nations have a sense of ownership of the Gallaudet Revolution, just as they have a sense of special fellowship with Deaf people in the United States and around the globe. This sketch of the history presents a culture that has been constantly evolving, as culture does with ethnic groups. The ties that bind exist in all ages but the expression of ethnicity varies with time and place. Anthony Smith's Ethnic Revival puts it this way: "The soul of each generation ... emanates from the soul ... of all the preceding generations, and what endures, namely the strength of the accumulated past, exceeds the wreckage, the strength of the changing present."91

ETHNIC TERRITORY

"Ethnic minority groups have an imagined and often mythologized history, culture and homeland that provide important sources of iden- tity."92 As with the claim of common ancestry, to which it is closely related, the claim of a historic common homeland should not be taken literally. The ancestors of Hispanic Americans did not come from one place, nor did those of Cuban Americans, nor, presumably, those of the "indigenous" peoples who lived in Cuba before the Spanish conquest.

On the contemporary scene, the ethnic group may not currently occupy its claimed homeland; it is the feeling of the connection that is important.93 Ethnic groups in the United States-Hispanic Americans, for example-are much larger than the ethnic enclaves in which some members live. Members are dispersed throughout the land, and some have returned to the old country or immigrated to other lands. "The ethnic community does not exist in a fixed location but rather as a form of consciousness."94

As do many ethnic groups, members of the Deaf-World have an enduring vision of "a land of our own," a vision expressed in folk tales, utopian writings, newsprint, theater, and political discussions.95 This yearning probably arises because the territory of Deaf-Americans, like that of Asian, African, Hispanic, and Native Americans, has no single homeland. Ethnic heritage sites thus take on great significance as a culturally unifying force. Where are the heritage sites of the People of the Eye? The first are the residential schools. Graduates of the residential schools for the Deaf have a strong sense of place there and Deaf travel is often planned around visits to those schools. It would be a mistake to equate Deaf people's ties to their residential schools, where most acquired language and a positive identity, to hearing people's ties to their schools. The Deaf ties are so strong that many Deaf people choose to live in proximity to their schools after graduation. The search for a place away from the residential school after graduation led to the establishment of Deaf clubs across America, tiny reservations of Deaf culture, as it were, where Deaf people govern, socialize, and communicate fluently in ASL after the workday ends. (As we said earlier, both institutions have been dwindling in the United States).

Historic sites and monuments are evocative of ethnic group memories and ethnic group members visit them. For the Deaf, these include the mother school founded by Gallaudet and ClercD in Hartford; their graves in Hartford and the graveyard on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where there were many Deaf people in the 1800s (more on that later); and the campus of Gallaudet University, with its statue of Thomas H. Gallaudet and Alice CogswellD. Laurent ClercD s birthplace, in the town of La Balme-les-Grottes in France, is a heritage site for the American Deaf, who travel to the village on personal initiative and with arranged tours. The National Association of the Deaf, in association with four other American Deaf organizations, made a formal pilgrimage to La Balme and presented the village with a plaque of recognition and a painting of ClercD.

Many ethnic groups believe in a transnational communality, another expression of ethnic solidarity. This belief adds to the imagined importance of the group and enriches its sense of tradition. Consider the example of the Jews. Although they share a religion, Jews from different parts of the world do not have a single language or homeland. Indeed, Diaspora Jews may speak mutually unintelligible languages. Even vernaculars such as Yiddish often do not allow communication among Jews of different lands as such languages borrow heavily from the language of the country where the speakers reside. Fishman observed that language and territory are detached from Jewish ethnicity, since the symbolic homeland of the Jews is Israel, but Jewish Diasporas do not originate there.96 Indeed, diaspora communities that have lost their homelands and independence can maintain themselves for centuries.97

As there are distinct Jewish ethnic minorities in numerous lands, so are there numerous Deaf-Worlds; communities using sign languages are no doubt to be found in every country in the world.98 Although they all have visual languages, their different sign languages are often not mutually intelligible, as we said earlier. Nevertheless, Deaf people, like the Jews, believe deeply in a transnational communality. Theresa Smith illustrates the point: "Deaf Americans feel a kinship with Deaf Italians in a way that is closer, deeper than they do with hearing Americans."99 The Deaf belief in transnationalism is founded on language.100 Laurent C1ercD tells what transpired when he visited a school for the Deaf in London:

As soon as I beheld [the students] my face became animated, I was as agitated as a traveler of sensibility would be on meeting all of a sudden in distant regions a colony of his countrymen. On their side, those deaf and dumb persons fixed their looks on me, and recognized me as one of them. An expression of surprise and pleasure enlivened all their features. I approached them. I made some signs and they answered me by signs. This communication caused a most delicious sensation in each of us.... 101

Sign languages have enough properties in common that early Deaf scholars even claimed sign language to be universal, though that is not true literally.102 When Deaf people from different countries meet, their exchanges will be in a prominent sign language such as ASL, or in a contact variety, or in pantomime. (There is also International Sign, which has arisen from contact among Deaf participants at international meetings. And there was a proposed international sign vocabulary, analogous to Esperanto, called Gestuno, which is not in use nowa- days).103 In addition to international meetings, communication among Deaf people from different nations takes place using the internet, print publications, and individual travel.104

KINSHIP

Practices related to kinship vary widely in ethnic groups around the world. In the West, kinship among the members of an ethnic group is largely based on the blood relations they have in common and some scholars insist that there is no ethnicity without such shared ancestry. In many societies, however, kinship depends on socialization, not on shared ancestry.105 A few examples of this decoupling of ancestry and kinship may suffice. In Langkawi, a Malaysian archipelago, when a mother feeds her biological children along with unrelated foster children, all these children are seen as kin. They are not allowed to marry one another and all are said to resemble the people who raise them, in the same way that children are said to resemble their birth parents106 Among the Trobrianders, in New Guinea, "The children of a union are not in any way regarded as kin to their father or to his lineage. They are of the same body as their mother."107 The Yao peoples in southern China adopt many non-Yao children; these foster children are seen as kin in all respects, including participating as Yao in the many rituals of this ethnic group, such as ancestor worship.108 Among the Inupiat of northern Alaska most families include adopted children who are seen as kin since the kinship bonds that really matter are with those who raised you, not with those who gave birth to you.109 For the Navajo, kinship is defined by helping, protecting, and sharing: When two people are bonded in these ways, they see one another as kin.110 In such ethnic groups, the claim of common ancestors is inaccurate but "as long as people regard themselves as alike because of a perceived heritage, and as long as others in the society so regard them, they constitute an ethnic group.""'

Further evidence that kinship need not be based on shared ancestry: there are means for acquiring and for losing it.112 Entire tribes may acquire kinship to members of other tribes without blood relation. Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan recognize unrelated tribes as sharing their ethnic identity.113 Some cultures reinforce the bonding of their members with claims about kinship and ancestry while others achieve the same end by claiming connections to similar cultures in ancient times.114 In the United States and Europe, most people have many different ethnic groups in their ancestry due to inter-ethnic marriages; the people we consider kin are just a small subset of those with whom we share ancestry.ns

Thus, ethnic kinship, like ethnic history, is culturally constructed.116 Some scholars attribute the myth of shared ancestry to the common physical characteristics (such as physiognomy or skin color) of ethnic group members or to their shared customs.117 We conclude that the claim of kinship is an expression of cohesion between members of the ethnic group-the kind of solidarity owed to one's family but more dif- fuse.118 Ethnic groups are indeed like a family: "The members feel knit to one another and so committed to the cultural heritage, which is the family's inheritance."' 19 A belief in family-like attachments among group members is nourished by language and religion.120 But the claim of kinship need not be accurate biologically. Traditions and legends handed down across the generations can serve in place of alleged kinship as a link to the past and the future.121 African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and countless other ethnic groups transmit language and culture across the generations without real or even imagined shared ancestry.