Katryna Celek
Aug 31, 2018 · 5 min read

About a year ago, I was privileged to fully connect with the deaf community. I was introduced to a young girl, around the age of five, and truly got to know and understand her ways. I discovered that she has never spoken a word to her mother or father. For five years her only language experiences have been in a deaf classroom at school. She knew no language. The only form of communication she knew was to point. five years of her life was spent on looking, not engaging, or listening, or speaking, just observing.

From the Diary of a Deaf Child

“Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain… To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices — today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.” –Kevyn Aucoin

To understand the meaning of being deaf, everyone needs to have an understanding of the same complexity such as the color of the sky. It is undebatable. Yet, the color of the sky holds so much wonder and a difference between everyone you ask. Each person sees blue differently. Such is the same as deafness; each person understands being deaf different. Everyone knows the broad term of not being able to hear, but there are different levels of severity. Being deaf can mean a countless amount of things, and it can get very complicated to even the percentage of hearing in each ear and exactly why deafness happens. The topic of it is incredibly complicated to the point of many people not doing anything to improve or simplify it. Imagine being in a white boxed room all alone. Now imagine being in the middle of the biggest party on the block. To some deaf people, it feels the same. The feelings of judgment, hurt, dis-loving, no connection, being lost. All negative emotions that some hearing people have no problem to pass onto the deaf. Now, this doesn’t always have to be intentionally, and more times than none, it is by accident. How could you ‘accidentally’ make someone feel worthless? Ignoring them, saying ‘nevermind,’ a look of disgust, even a look of sympathy. Most people look to the deaf and think DISABLED, and give them sympathy; yet, little is done to help the deaf, to lift them up, to bring them into the hearing community. To be involved with the hearing community, you don’t have to hear; to be involved with the deaf community, you don’t have to be deaf.

Artwork by Ann Silver: Deaf people are not hearing people who can’t hear

“Ruthie’s take is that AGB “[Makes] money…by miseducating the parents of Deaf children.” Like many others at the rally, Ruthie feels that AGB takes advantage of the fact that hearing parents may not understand how a Deaf child can lead a functional, fulfilling life. A hearing parent in this situation may be easily convinced that a cochlear implant and an oral-based approach is the only legitimate option.” ~ Ruthie Jordan

The deaf are kicked down for being different. When the hearing and deaf worlds clash, there can be many questions that are to be misguided or are just never answered. This confusion comes into play considerably when two hearing people give birth to a deaf child. Once a deaf child is born, and the parents realize the child isn’t ignoring them, but instead, can’t hear them at all, steps are taken towards ‘fixing’ the child. This can be seen through the actions of trying to pull the deaf child into the hearing world in the most negative way possible. Being deaf doesn’t mean broken, they don’t need to be fixed. Parents automatically try to put devices on the child, some of which accept, most of which seek to take the device off constantly out of discomfort. Not too long ago in schools, being deaf wasn’t tolerated, and verbal language was the only option to learn. This was incredibly easy for the hearing, but a near impossible feat for the deaf; deaf children were often told to sit on their hands, so no communication with the hands was allowed. “Though his (Alexander Graham Bell’s) mother and wife were Deaf, he was intent on wiping out “hereditary deafness.” He removed Deaf faculty from schools, demanded the same schools stop their use of ASL, and advocated against “deaf intermarriage.” (Understanding Deafness: Not Everyone Wants to Be ‘Fixed’, ALLEGRA RINGO,
AUG 9, 2013)

Dear Hearing People — A Film by Sarah Snow & Jules Dameron

This day in age, more schools are becoming more open to having DHH (Deaf and Hard of Hearing) students and teachers in their classes. Speech Pathologists are being a job that every school is looking for, and so are interpreters. The hearing community is slowly opening up to the realization that the deaf community is just as human as they are. Hearing babies are now learning more sign language than ever before as they can start to truly use sign to communicate with parents at the age as young as six months. More high schools around the country are offering ASL (American Sign Language) as a course alongside the prevalent Spanish language. While the deaf community is becoming more known, and deaf culture is more understood, it is not as popular as it should be. The deaf co has been neglected for a long time; their education is becoming more known, and ASL is very much the primary language in DHH classrooms. The deaf are not seen as equals, not quite yet, and maybe one day that will be. As for now, they will continue to get tasered by police officers only because they are not following the orders they can’t hear, not understood by trauma hospitals for the way they speak, and not welcomed in churches for the way they are born.

Citations:

Dear Hearing People — A Film by Sarah Snow & Jules Dameron

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY4uof7vvZk

Understanding Dearness: Not Everyone Wants to Be “Fixed”

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/understanding-deafness-not-everyone-wants-to-be-fixed/278527/

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