Deaf Faculty of Color at Postsecondary Institutions

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

Few and Far Between:

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership

Rezenet T. Moges-Riedel

August 2020

The dissertation of Rezenet Moges-Riedel is approved:

______Dr. Carla García-Fernández Date

______Dr. Barbara LeMaster Date

______Dr. Dimpal Jain, Chair Date

California State University Northridge

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Acknowledgements

Many have supported my academic journey before and during my doctoral study. I would like to use this space to express my deepest gratitude to everyone, particularly some specific people I need to mention here. First and foremost, I am indebted to my wife, Rani

Moges-Riedel, who kept reminding me the reasoning behind my dissertation: an excellent opportunity to tell my story! And thank you for sacrificing the dining room for me to use as my primary office!

Naturally, this dissertation could not be done without the help of Dr. Dimpal Jain, a pure genius who I had the extreme fortune to have as the Chair of my dissertation committee. I am so glad that I could have your fresh perspective on various Deaf critical theories, which was more than I could asked for. I valued every piece of feedback, each correction and suggestion: all were overwhelmingly educating and enlightening! Above all, I appreciate your frankness with my writing direction, which I had yearned for years. All your feedback will live with me for a long time.

To my next committee member, Dr. Carla García-Fernández, I deeply admire you, as a female Deaf Scholar of Color, who provided the necessary resources to ground my understanding of critical race studies. Thank you tremendously for allowing me to use your

DeafLat Crit Theory, which is extremely honorable, and to expand it for Critical Deaf Studies.

Also, muchas gracias for making me feel so welcomed in our Signing Scholar of Color Crew, with Dr. Lissa Ramirez-Stapleton, Dr. Jamila Guerrero-Cantor, and Dr. Lynn “Lina” Hou before our memorable panel experience at the Critical Race Studies Education Association. You all are rock stars in my eyes.

Third, my outside committee member, Dr. Barbara LeMaster, who I always called “my boss” (for more than 15 years). You have been a wondrous mentor, which made it incredibly easy to work for and under you in the ASL Linguistics and Deaf Cultures Program at CSU-Long

Beach. What a great honor to have you back on my committee after your great support of my

Master of Arts in Anthropology with a focus in Linguistics.

My deepest thanks go to all 15 Deaf Faculty of Color (DFOC) who participated and were willing to share so many rich narratives that expose what it is like to be in a faculty position, either as the only or one of few DFOC at their institutions. All your stories and truths will open so many people’s minds to learn more about the intersectional experiences of being both Deaf and a Person of Color working in higher education.

Next, I am truly indebted to my ASL interpreter, Aileen Smith, who is also identified as

Black woman and an extremely magnificent tag-team player to collaborate with ASL translations of my data collections! Working with her solidified my beliefs about the importance of DFOC working with Interpreters of Color.

Lastly, but certainly not least, to my immediate family and closest friends: before I even started considering a doctorate in higher education, you were already determined that I would get my doctoral degree. Molte grazie, Dad and Mom (Dr. Tsegay and Felicita Moges) for setting the bar so high for me. My deepest gratitude to my sister and brother (Zaid and Awet Moges) for your unlimited support! Thousands of thanks to you both, Caya Consunji-Sebest and Paola

Morales, for constantly checking on my progress in completing my dissertation!

In closing, I truly appreciate everyone from my signing, DPOC, Black-Deaf, and Deaf-

Queer communities for your support and eagerness to see my accomplishments and those who

are curious about this finished product. I hope you will be pleased or inspired to do more research for our developing field of Critical Deaf Studies!

Dedication

All the labor, sweat and tears invested in this dissertation is wholeheartedly dedicated to all Deaf People of Color in academia who have felt or feel lonely, isolated, marginalized, or neglected in predominately white and hearing fields. You set a great example of resilience for our Students of Color, who eventually will become our leaders. You are warriors in my eyes.

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Table of Contents

Signature Page iii

Acknowledgements iv

Dedication vii

List of Tables xii

Abstract xiii

Chapter 1: Statement of the Problem 1

Introduction 1

Problem Statement 3

Purpose of the Study 4

Research Questions 6

Theoretical Frameworks 6

Intersectionality 6

Critical Race Theory in Education 7

Deaf LatCrit 7

Overview of Methodology 8

Data Analysis 9

Limitation and Delimitations 9

Map of the Dissertation 10

Chapter 2: Review of the Literature 12

Introduction 12

Deaf Roles in Education 12

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Deaf Epistemologies and Ontologies 12

Deaf Teachers of Color 14

Deaf Faculty in Higher Education 18

Experiences of Deaf Faculty 18

Deaf faculty members’ cultural differences 19

Deaf ASL teaching experiences 20

Deaf Faculty Environment 22

Academic spaces 22

Accommodations and interpreters 23

Issues related to Systematic Audism 26

Retention of Deaf Faculty 28

Retention of Faculty of Color 29

Job Satisfaction 31

Job Involvement 33

FOC experience and Organizational Commitments 34

Racial battle fatigue 36

Critical Race Theory in (Deaf) Education 38

The Intersectionality of Deaf Bodies 39

Deaf Critical Theories 41

Implications of the Relevant Literature and Theories 47

Chapter 3: Methodology 48

Introduction 48

Research Tradition 49

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Research Settings 51

Site Selection 51

Gatekeepers 51

Research Data Sources and Samples 52

Sources of Data 52

Participants 52

Protections of the Rights of Research Participants 54

Data Collection Procedures 54

Research Tradition and Connection to Methods 54

Personal Interviews 55

Data Analysis Procedures 56

Data Analysis Plans 56

Chronological Steps of Data Analyses 57

Transcription method 57

Data storage 57

Strategic analysis 58

Timeline 58

Researcher Roles 58

Researcher Bias 58

Negotiation with Researcher Roles 60

Participant Effects 60

Strategies to Mitigate Researcher and Participant Effects 61

Researcher effects 61

Participant reactivity 61

Conclusion 62

Chapter 4: Data Analyses and Finding 63

Introduction 63

Insufficient Job Opportunities 63

Intersectional Experiences of DFOC 65

Microaggressions 66

Trivialized or dismissed credentials 69

Hyper-scrutiny 71

Presumed unapproachability 72

Xenophobia 74

Non-native ASL accent 74

Non-native voiced accent 76

Intersectionality Issues 76

White Interpreters and DFOC 81

Summary of Research Question One Findings 84

The Retention of DFOC 84

Why DFOC Stay 85

Committee Service 88

Tokenized committee service 91

Benefits of service and representation 94

Audistic, Linguistic, and Racial Battle Fatigue 95

DFOC Peer Support System 100

Conclusion and Summary of Findings 102

Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Research 103

Introduction 103

Summary of Findings 103

Intersectional Experiences of DFOC 103

Retention Experiences of DFOC 104

Discussion of the Literature 106

Implications and Recommendations 109

Contributions of Theory 110

Implications for Practice 111

DFOC registry and media presence 112

DFOC mentoring advice 113

Implications for Policy 114

Future Research 117

Significant Takeaways 118

Limitations 120

Conclusion 121

Epilogue 122

References 123

Appendix A - Deaf Faculty of Color - Invitation to Participate in Research 143

Appendix B - General Interview Guide 144

Appendix C - Consent to Act as a Human Research Participant (One-on-One Interview) 147

Appendix D - Confidentiality Agreement for use with Interpreter/Transcription Services 151

List of Tables

Table 1 - Demographic Information of Deaf Faculty of Color Participants 54

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Abstract

Few and Far Between:

Deaf Faculty of Color at Postsecondary Institutions

Rezenet T. Moges-Riedel

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership

The purpose of this study is to explore the intersectional experiences and retention of

Deaf Faculty of Color (DFOC) employed at postsecondary institutions, with the goal to explore resources and support that influence the retention of DFOC. Overall, I was interested in learning more about the work experience of DFOC and how their relationships with students, peers, and administrators impact retention rates. The problem that this project addresses is the lack of knowledge surrounding DFOC experiences at predominately hearing- and white-populated universities and community colleges. Many factors impact DFOC employment opportunities and qualifications but have not yet been explored. There is a gap in knowledge and practice due to the insufficient information published or otherwise accessible on this particular marginalized faculty group.

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This qualitative study employed a critical grounded theory tradition, which allowed

DFOC’s narratives to emerge and produce a suitable framework that will define their intersectionality and work experiences. This study is also guided by the following theoretical frameworks: Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory in education, and Deaf Latin[x] Critical

Theory. This study aims to answer the following two research questions: (a) What are the intersectional experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education?; and (b) What are the retention experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education? To answer these questions, I collected 15 interviews from individual participants across the nation. The aim of my study was to emphasize the racial diversity among Deaf faculty members. Ultimately, Deaf scholarship needs to broaden its resources and literature by bringing in more diverse perspectives and narratives. My study contributes to the formation of a new “Critical Deaf Studies” that centralizes Deaf People of Color epistemologies and narratives.

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CHAPTER ONE: STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Introduction

To the best of my knowledge, there are fewer than 20 Deaf Faculty of Color (DFOC) in the nation who teach American Deaf Culture courses. As a Person of Color (POC) and Deaf faculty member, I am one of them, and thus I am compelled to tell a story as an introduction to this dissertation:

At California State University, Long Beach, I approached a Black hearing transfer

student in March 2019 and encouraged her to submit any topic of interest to a

national Black Deaf conference. She was passionate about an idea that would explain her

frustration with her previous two community colleges, where she took Deaf Culture

courses. She objected to their white-Eurocentric curriculum, which she explained when

comparing her experience with my class. To paraphrase, she said, “I never knew that

there were Deaf POC-focused books or articles until I arrived in your classroom!”

I share this story to illustrate how having an underrepresented faculty member can affect

Students of Color and their learning process. The trends in postsecondary institutions are shaped by the demands of the student population and changes in technology and the economy (Kezar,

2001). Recently, the U.S. Department of Education (NCES, 2018a) described that there was an overall increase in Student of Color enrollment over the past four decades, from 16% to 42%, in comparison with their white counterparts (NCES, 2018b). In contrast with Students of Color, in

2017 in all types of higher educational institutions, there were 24.3% minoritized faculty members (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2019). One recent estimate is that Faculty of Color make up only 12% of all full-time professors in the United States (Quaye, Griffin, & Museus,

2015). These statistics indicate a clear disparity between underrepresented Faculty of Color in comparison with the underserved Students of Color.

When discussing issues related to Faculty of Color, their minoritized status is important to recognize; however, it is also important to acknowledge how their multiple identities intersect

(Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013; Crenshaw, 1991; Jain & Turner 2011; Turner, González, &

Wood, 2008). Intersectionality is a framework that functions as an added lens to understand the experiences of people with two or more oppressed and marginalized identities (Crenshaw, 1991).

It is difficult for Faculty of Color to remain in the academy as their socialization in the workplace often becomes a barrier to retention (Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). Due to the concerningly low numbers of Faculty of Color, their retention requires urgent attention as the number of Students of Color increases.

One discipline where there is also a great disparity between Students of Color and

Faculty of Color is Deaf Studies. Scholarship related to Deaf education in the postsecondary field is extremely limited in terms of the topics regarding Deaf Faculty or Students of Color.

Andrews and Jordan (1993), in their canonical article—despite being long-outdated, provide a glimpse of the statistics of Deaf teachers from different education levels in K-12, postsecondary programs, and teacher training institutions (n=5,166) and the total number of Deaf teachers

(n=805). This means that Deaf teachers made up only 15% of the population of teachers at that time. This report also revealed a large disparity of Deaf Teachers of Color (n=66), which totaled

1.28% of the entire Deaf education teaching force (Andrews & Jordan, 1993). In a more recent study of the Deaf teacher population, Simms, Rusher, Andrews, and Coryell (2008) compare data with Andrews and Jordan’s research (1993) and reported a small improvement, with the number of Deaf teachers increasing to 22% (10% increase over a 15-year span); however, the

statistics of Deaf Teachers of Color did not change substantially. Thus, the unchanged hiring practice or low retention rate of Deaf Teachers of Color can be attributed to a “failure of deaf education to raise academic standards and provide equal opportunity or equal outcomes” (Simms et al., 2008, p. 394).

Deaf faculty and Deaf Faculty of Color who teach in higher education can most often be found in Deaf Studies programs that center around American Sign Language (ASL). The

Modern Language Association (MLA) stated that in 2013 ASL was the third most popular language-learning course in higher education, with 19% enrollment growth across U.S. colleges and universities since 2006, including a massive 432.3% increase between 1998 and 2002 (MLA,

2015; Welles, 2004). Consequently, this surge in ASL courses meant that there were more Deaf faculty members and thus more employment opportunities for minorities in this field (Cooper,

Reisman, & Watson, 2011).

Problem Statement

The problem that this study addresses is the lack of DFOC at predominately hearing universities and community colleges. The growing population of Students of Color at postsecondary institutions across the nation (NCES, 2018a) begs the question why the representation of their racial and ethnic identities is not being met with a similar increase in faculty hiring. While there are a small number of DFOC, their burden is doubled when compared with hearing or white peers at their postsecondary institutions. This burden can jeopardize DFOC’s chances of being retained in the academy. In addition to the concern of a low number of DFOC, there are other factors that need to be explored in terms of impacts on their employment opportunities or qualifications.

Parasnis and Foster (2005) provide crucial narratives from DFOC and Deaf staff members of Color at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), a well-known university with a high level of Deaf student enrollment, located in upstate New York. A participant in their study shared how Students of Color need to see more role models like themselves on the faculty so they can have something to strive for and achieve. It is important to look at the relationship between DFOC and Students of Color, whether the students are Deaf or hearing. Andrews and

Jordan (1993) indicate that there is a gap between the few Faculty members of Color who are hearing and the larger number of Deaf white faculty members. Parasnis and Foster (2005) also indicate that although there should be an increase of DFOC, it is equally important to not have

DFOC feel overburdened or overwhelmed with additional responsibilities related to mentoring and service. Therefore, while DFOC are truly an asset to higher education institutions and can serve the needs of the increasing population of Students of Color, they are in danger of burnout

(Parasnis & Foster, 2005). Due to the low number of DFOC, there is an acute need to support them and meet the needs of Students of Color (Andrews, Martin, & Velasquez, 2007; Andrews

& Covell, 2006; Ausbrooks, Baker, & Daugaard, 2012).

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this qualitative, critical, grounded theory study was to examine the intersectional experience of Deaf Faculty of Color and how their experience impacted their retention at universities and community colleges. In this project, intersectionality is defined as the life experiences of those with two or more types of marginalized identities related to sex, gender, language ability, race, ethnicity, etc. Additionally, retention is defined as the faculty member being retained from one academic year to the next in an adjunct or tenure-track position.

As a Deaf female faculty member of Color myself, I have the privilege of sharing an

“epistemology of insider-ness” (Reinharz, 1992, p. 260) related to DFOC issues that my research participants may face. Using a feminist-structured approach, this study was designed to fulfill the following goals: first, to document minoritized lives and activities; secondly, to understand

DFOC experiences through their perspectives; and thirdly, to build concepts from their behavior as “an expression of social contexts” (Reinharz, 1992, p. 51). Nonetheless, it is vital to remember that if one shares any particular identity with the research group participants of a minoritized status, it still will not suffice to simply gain insider status (Few, Stephens, & Rouse-

Arnett, 2003, p. 207). Through structured one-on-one interviews, I aimed to build “racial congruity” between myself and my research participants while facilitating my position as a

DPOC insider in order to gain “trust and mutual empowerment” (Few et al., 2003, p. 209).

The concentration of this research was on faculty members working mainly in Liberal

Arts programs, instead of focusing on those from any other educational field. The field of

Liberal Arts has Deaf professors who teach a variety of courses such as language (ASL), cultural studies, and Deaf or Special Education. It is important to understand where an ASL course originally emerged in a certain department. Unfortunately “[i]n 2004, [… at] the department or division level, speech pathology/audiology departments continued as the most popular home for sign language programs, with education and foreign language departments ranked as second and third, respectively” (Cooper, Reisman, & Watson, 2011, p. 318). With ASL located under the department of audiology or Communication Disorders implies that the ASL language is a communicative disorder used by Deaf people, which superimposes the concept of abnormality and stigma toward different modes of communication. Importantly, Deaf education is not limited to ASL instruction; however, it is necessary to discuss the strong connection between

ASL and Deaf education due to the ever-growing industry of ASL education nationwide

(Brueggeman, 2016; Kanda & Fleischer, 1988). Consequently, this booming educational field has drawn more Deaf faculty members, who are often native or fluent signers (Brueggeman,

2016; Cooper et al., 2011).

Research Questions

For the grounded theory to be used, one method is to allow information to emerge through narratives. In this case, my research questions were posed to understand how intersectionality impacts DFOC in the field of higher education. The overarching questions are:

1. What are intersectional experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education?

2. What are the retention experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education?

Theoretical Frameworks

There is a recent increase in studies on Deaf people’s intersectional experiences, showing various life struggles and departing from reporting only on life as experienced by white Deaf populations (García-Fernández, 2014; Moges, 2017; Ruiz-Williams, Burke, Chong, &

Chainarong, 2015; Stapleton, 2014, 2016). While Deaf People of Color experience racism, the general deaf population in the U.S. still experiences “audism” (Humphries, 1977), a form of oppression that elevates the ability to hear as a superior trait. Deaf people lack what is enjoyed by their hearing peers, often referred to as “Hearing privileges” (Tuccoli, 2009), especially in the fields of secondary and postsecondary institutions where the conveyance of information to students occurs primarily through the auditory channel. I list theories below that I employed in this study and will elaborate each in greater depth and how they are applied in the data analysis in Chapter 2.

Intersectionality

The research tradition is structured by a critical grounded theory and explores Deaf

Faculty of Color’s intersectional experiences and how this impacts their retention at postsecondary institutions. To explore this completely, my theoretical approach is embedded within the foundation of Crenshaw’s (1991) intersectionality framework that examines the intersection when two or more oppressed identities overlap. The two primary intersectional oppressions she examines are race/racism and sexism and I will honor that by maintaining the primary focus on race/racism as one of the intersectional oppressions that I will explore in my own study. To construct an intersectional oppression, I include audism and its impact on my research participants.

Critical Race Theory in Education

Since my research topic is situated in higher education, the other frameworks I utilize are models of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-

Billings & Tate, 1995; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). CRT in education highlights issues of race and racism throughout the education pipeline related to leadership, policy, and school politics

(Ledesma & Calderón, 2015). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) have researched the connections between schooling and “institutional and structural racism,” in the form of testing, pedagogy, curriculum, school funding, etc. CRT in education gradually developed five tenets to examine issues related to educational inequity: 1) the centralization of race and racism, 2) commitment to social justice, 3) challenge to dominant ideology, 4) the importance of experiential knowledge, and 5) an interdisciplinary perspective (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). These tenets serve as a foundational framework for the following model of Deaf LatCrit.

Deaf LatCrit

Deaf Latin[x] Critical Theory (García-Fernández, 2014, 2020), which can be shortened to Deaf LatCrit, merges the work of CRT and Latinx epistemology. Deaf LatCrit takes after the work of Solorzano and Yosso’s LatCrit (2002), framing the Latinx experiences of racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and birthism. García-Fernández (2014) has developed Deaf LatCrit by adding linguicism to Solorzano and Yosso’s theory in order to better capture the experience of

Deaf Latinx dealing with their own intersectionalities. García-Fernández (2014) also formats her theory with four new tenets by focusing on intersectionality, dominant ideologies, consciousness, and storytelling. My goal of utilizing these four tenets of Deaf LatCrit as a framework for my research was to encourage my research participants to explain the intersectional experiences of two or more different oppressions, their ideologies of DFOC contributions in higher education, their consciousness of how the presence of DFOC matters in higher education, and finally, their counter-narratives as successfully retained DFOC.

Overview of Methodology

The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn about DFOC who are employed at universities and community colleges. While I was interested in learning about their intersectional experiences, and how that relates to their faculty retention experiences, I also wanted to explore the reasons why DFOC are underrepresented across higher education.

Overall, my research sites covered different regions across the nation in the West, South, and

East. This geographic diversity was necessary due to the low numbers of DFOC in the U.S. My research participants have a wide variety of racial backgrounds. Due to their underrepresentation in higher education and the need to protect their confidentiality, I do not disclose their locations or the specific kind of postsecondary institution where they are employed.

I interviewed 15 DFOC individually and the sampling approach depended on snowballing strategies (Durdella, 2019; Patton, 2014), with the specific criterion as someone who identifies as Deaf, Person of Color, and a faculty member with at least two years of experience in the same job. Through the snowballing effect, I was guided to interested research participants who shared the significant criterion as DFOC. The interviews were videotaped due to the visual-spatial language of ASL.

Data Analysis

For 15 one-on-one interviews and quicker results, I arranged voice interpreters to record voiced translations while watching the films and then used captionists and text-to-voice apps to transcribe the recorded voices. Those who assisted my data processing signed a confidentiality form. After completing, documenting, and translating each transcript, I highlighted the thematic patterns across all of the transcribed documents. At the final stage, I performed member- checking (a double-checking process of transcripts with interview participants) with my research participants to ensure that my translation still captured the essence of their narratives.

Limitations and Delimitations

The downfall of this extremely small-scale minoritized group of DFOC is the superimposition of the risk to their reputations and occupations, especially those who are adjunct lecturers. Thus, the limitations of my findings were restricted to those people who trusted me enough to conduct interviews and protect their data.

As a DPOC researcher myself, I have an “unspoken understanding of cultural norms” with my DFOC participants, particularly those who put their untenured positions at risk, so I needed “to create an environment that [is] safe and comfortable for open, honest, and mutual exploration” (Few et al., 2003, p. 209). Even with “[r]acial congruity between informant and

researcher [that] can facilitate the position of insider status” (Few et al., 2003, p. 209), I am still reminded of other possible deviations and the disparity of statuses enforcing racism, colorism, and socioeconomic and educational statuses. Thus, my educational status as a doctoral candidate may have interfered with or prevented mutual understanding if my research participants did not have a doctorate or if their highest degree was from a Master’s program.

Regarding delimitations, being employed in fields related to Liberal Arts is one of the criteria of my research participants. The research participants all worked under Deaf-related department or programs, such as Deaf cultural studies, Deaf social services or education, and

ASL Linguistics or interpreting studies. There is no report of anyone teaching outside of those fields and I would be concerned if a different field would shift the focus away from working experiences in Humanities or Liberal Arts, for example the inclusion of faculty in STEM fields.

Those who teach in STEM fields may experience other types of oppression, which relates less to my focus for the dissertation. Nonetheless, I did explore this further, but did not find a willing research participant from a different field, such as the Engineering or Math departments, so I cannot confirm if a variety of disciplines would aide my findings by broadening my data collection to faculty members outside Liberal Arts programs.

Map of the Dissertation

The structure of this dissertation is as follows: the second chapter reviews the relevant literature, with four themes relating to DFOC: 1) Deaf People of Color in general education, 2)

Deaf faculty in academy, 3) the retention of Faculty of Color, and 4) theoretical approaches, including CRT in education and those in Deaf Studies. Next, my methodology (Chapter 3) describes the research design and my data collection in detail. Then, I discuss my data findings in Chapter 4, outlining seven themes from both of the research questions. For the intersectional

question, I include microaggressions, intersectionality issues, and white interpreters working with DFOC. In the second question about retention, I address: 1) reasons why DFOC stay, 2) committee service 3) audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue, and 4) DFOC Peer Support. In the final chapter, I offer an overview of the gap being filled in literature as a result of my findings, contributions to theories, and implications for practice, policy, and future studies. I end the dissertation with a collection of appendices that include my interview protocol, consent forms, and other recruitment material.

CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Introduction

The focus of this literature review is the dual identities of faculty members who identify as both Deaf and People of Color (POC) working in higher education. Unfortunately, an extremely low number of Deaf POC faculty across the nation teach full-time and hold either MA or PhD/EdD degrees (Simms, Rusher, Andrews, & Coryell, 2008). There is an established concern about the low number of Deaf Faculty of Color peers and the lack of role models for

Students of Color (Parasnis, 2012; Parasnis, Samar, & Fischer, 2005; Stapleton, 2014, 2016).

Thus, this research topic requires a great deal of attention and this study can demonstrate the delicate balance faced by this marginalized group of faculty members. As a reminder, the research questions for this study ask the following:

1. What are the intersectional experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education?

2. What are the retention experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education?

This literature review focuses on four themes: (a) Deaf People of Color in (higher) education, (b) Deaf faculty members, (c) retention of Faculty of Color in higher education, and

(d) Critical Race in Education and Critical Deaf Studies. There are gaps in research studies that focus on Deaf Faculty of Color at higher education institutions, their retention experiences, mentoring practices, job evaluations, and a lack of statistical information concerning Deaf faculty members across the nation. The latter issue also applies to faculty with disabilities

(Olkins, 2011).

Deaf Roles in Education

Deaf Epistemologies and Ontologies

One of the goals of Deaf scholarship is to “challenge scholars and others to reflect on audism and phonocentrism in the production of theory and knowledge” (de Clerck, 2010, p.

436). Before generating any theory related to Deaf people, de Clerck (2010) draws attention to audism (Humphries, 1977), which is a belief in the superiority of hearing ability or a set of behaviors that suggest the same, and phonocentrism (Bauman, 2004), which is defined as a deficit approach that focuses on the inability to hear or a focus on hearing-level abilities (audism will be elaborated on further under the Critical Race Theoretical section below). Deaf Studies, on the other hand, often diverge from concentrating on the medical perspectives of speech and hearing and, instead, focus on Deaf cultural worlds. For my study on DFOC, I incorporated both epistemologies from de Clerck (2010), who has advocated for a more sensitive approach in science when working with Deaf people to gain Deaf epistemologies, and secondly, from

Ladson-Billings (2000), who has challenged hegemonic structures by using racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies.

An ontological analysis cannot separate a Deaf Person of Color from their racialized identity or their deafness alone when discussing their personal experience (Hou, 2017). As

DPOC are experiencing multiple oppressions or living simultaneous marginalizations, it is important to recognize the intersectionality of their experiences (Parasnis, 2012; Ruiz-Williams et al., 2015). The objectives of this research on DFOC is to provide “standpoint epistemologies”

(Schwandt, 2007), deconstructing dominant knowledge from Eurocentric, straight, male, and—I add—able-bodied and all-sensorial perspectives. This follows Patricia Hill Collins’s (2000) critical social theory, which centralizes standpoints on Black feminist theorists with four basic components: “its thematic content, its interpretive frameworks, its epistemological approaches and its significance for empowerment” (p. 17).

Deaf ontology (Kusters, De Meulder, & O’Brien, 2017) advocates for Deaf liberation and the dissociation from theories by hearing scholars who often have a “top-down” approach to their scholarship. In contrast, Deaf ontological research has a “bottom-up” approach that more authentically draws from the Deaf experience and enables people to speak for themselves; it expands and enhances Deaf scholarship by focusing on ideas originating from Deaf communities

(Kusters et al., 2017). This challenges a Eurocentric or hearing epistemology that limits the knowledge that can be disseminated. Deaf ontology needs to be experienced and lived by a Deaf person (or Deaf POC in this case), pushing for more Deaf-centric views to eliminate an outsider view or the cyclical oppression of top-down observations (Kusters et al., 2017).

Hou (2017), a Deaf female Asian American, conducted fieldwork in signing communities

(Latinx hearing and deaf families) in Oaxaca, Mexico. While traveling with a hearing white researcher, Hou observed a difference in racial treatment, accessibility, and the negotiation of language use during her research. She states how deaf ontologies “intersected with gender, race and ethnicity, education, mobility and citizenship [that] will impact research methodologies”

(Hou, 2017, p. 356), and how this affected the language ideologies and attitudes from her research participants. Robinson and Henner (2018) recently have pushed for a movement of

“cripping higher education” (para. 4). This is a concept from Critical Disability theory, using

Deaf epistemologies and ontology to (re)design the curriculum and integrate diversity. In this project, I have integrated this scholarship through DFOC’s drives to share their ontological and epistemological teaching methods. As the previously mentioned scholarship exemplifies the current momentum of Deaf research, I now turn to the teaching experience of Deaf educators.

Deaf Teachers of Color

Insufficient research focuses on Deaf faculty members in higher education and little to none centers on DFOC (Parasnis & Fischer, 2005; Parasnis et al., 2005). As a result, this section will also examine literature on K-12 Teachers of Color in the field of Deaf education. There is scant demographic information on Deaf Teachers of Color and the data that do exist are often supplementary or grouped with hearing educators of color (i.e., Andrews & Jordan, 1993;

Parasnis & Fischer, 2005; Parasnis et al., 2005). However, there is one widely cited canonical article by Andrews and Jordan (1993) about demographics on Deaf teachers across the U.S.

Despite being long-outdated, this article still provides invaluable foundational information, specifically on the statistics of Deaf teachers and administrators of minoritized backgrounds compiled from various K-12 educational levels, postsecondary programs, and teacher training institutions (n=5166).

Andrews and Jordan (1993) report that there were 805 Deaf K-12 teachers, totaling only

15% of the population of teachers nationwide, in the early 1990s. This report also reveals a drastically large disparity of Deaf Teachers of Color (n=66), which totaled to 1.28% of the entirety of Deaf education-focused programs (Andrews & Jordan, 1993). One major limitation of the 1993 study is that there is no information distinguishing between K-12 teachers and postsecondary faculty members, rather the data are grouped together. Nonetheless, from the extremely low statistic of Deaf Teachers of Color in the K-12 educational fields, Simms et al.

(2008) has bluntly titled it “Apartheid in Deaf Education,” expressing their interpretation of a metaphorical “apartheid” between Black and white educators.

In a more recent study of Deaf teachers from the K-12 sector, Simms et al. (2008) compare data with Andrew and Jordan’s research (1993) and report minimal improvement, with the number of Deaf teachers increasing to 22% (10% increase over a 15-year span). Simms et al.

(2008) have determined that the stagnant hiring pattern of Deaf Teachers of Color is a “failure of deaf education to raise academic standards and provide equal opportunity or equal outcomes” (p.

394). Although, the statistics of Simms et al. (2008) are still outdated by a decade, their data gathering process at Gallaudet Research Institute (GRI) was cut short after a law was passed to protect confidentiality for Deaf institutes and programs. Nonetheless, that small number of Deaf

Educators of Color indicates a limitation on what kind of potential jobs or careers Deaf Students of Color can imagine themselves pursuing in the future (Simms et al., 2008). Related to the occupation of Deaf educators, Garberoglio, Palmer, Cawthon, and Sales (2019) have surveyed a vast range of different employment positions for Deaf Americans: education was the fifth highest field, with 6.9% of the population. The highest field was manufacturing, with 15.7% of the population.

Concerning students, Parasnis et al. (2005) have conducted a survey at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), a well-known university with a large size of Deaf faculty and student enrollment, located in upstate New York. They perform a quantitative study and identify that

“campus comfort level and educational satisfaction” (p. 48) were the two of the most important factors that determined the retention rates of Students of Color. Of the total number of respondents, 157: 88 students were enrolled in a Deaf program and 69 were in a mainstreamed program (an inclusive program where Deaf students are sent to hearing classes with special service providers). The authors have uncovered major differences between responses from

Asian and African American students in discussions related to building better relationships with faculty. Asian American students had more positive responses than African American students—due to the lack of African American faculty members in comparison to the availability of Asian American faculty members.

As a result, Parasnis et al. (2005) advocate for the disaggregation of racial data in future studies, so that each group is respected and honored for their racial differences, and so that their varying oppressed and marginalized experiences can be recognized. The authors also confirm that there were “significant interactions,” based on mainstreamed students. For example, mainstream students rated “the importance of ethnic minority role models higher than the importance of deaf role models, while [Deaf program] students rated the importance of deaf role models higher than the importance of ethnic minority role models” (Parasnis et al., 2005, pp. 52–

53). However, the survey data did not isolate DFOC in particular but focused on FOC in general, so we do not know the DFOC experience and their rapport with Deaf Students of Color.

At the most basic level, there are not enough DFOC who can serve as role models on campus, which was also expressed by the Black Deaf graduates in Stapleton’s (2016) study, which explored academic success for Black Deaf students.

Considering the significance of racial identity over Deaf identity, Andrews and Jordan

(1993) also indicate that there were more Deaf white teachers than hearing Teachers of Color in

Deaf education programs. Related to the similar pattern of the small number of hearing Teachers of Color, there are few African American faculty at RIT, and yet African American students would relate to and view those faculty as role models, as compared to Deaf faculty of a different race (Parasnis et al., 2005). This can lead to the African American faculty at RIT feeling overburdened with mentoring and advising; however, this concern only came from the narratives of hearing FOC—there is a need to document DFOC narratives to uncover their resilience and retention.

In Stapleton’s (2016) study, which examines the success stories of Black Deaf graduates, one Black Deaf student shared the following:

Most [white] faculty are not taught how to teach, and there is no handbook on how to

work with all students, so we must take a more collaborative and proactive approach

through reading books, seeking out services on campus, and/or talking directly to

students [of color]. (p. 162)

This quote indicates that white faculty members were not trained or culturally competent to guide Students of Color. In Stapleton’s study, Black students were frequently left to be self- reliant and often succeeded without any Mentors of Color. Therefore, DFOC are truly an asset to higher education institutions, serving the needs of the increasing population of Students of Color, but they are also in danger of burnout (Andrews & Covell, 2006; Parasinis & Fischer, 2005). It is crucial to examine the severity of this exhaustion and how DFOC may feel overwhelmed, in particular it is necessary to explore what kind of resources facilitate job retention among the few

DFOC in higher education. Due to the lack of DFOC, there is a severe need to prepare and train them to meet the needs of Students of Color (Andrews, Martin, & Velasquez, 2007) while insulating them from burnout. Unfortunately, limited research focuses on these retention experiences and the barriers DPOC endure to become faculty members. This next section details some of the experiences of DFOC specific to postsecondary education.

Deaf Faculty in Higher Education

Experiences of Deaf Faculty

This section opens with the experiences of Deaf faculty members in higher education, then cover systematic audism institutionalized at the postsecondary level, and finish with a brief look at the few studies on the retention of Deaf faculty members. To date, several studies have illustrated factors that impede Deaf people from advancing in academic fields, such as the lack of qualified interpreter services, limited communication access with hearing colleagues, and signing

model representatives in higher education (Brueggeman, 2016; Burke & Nicodemus, 2013;

McDermid, 2009; Robinson & Henner, 2018; Schornstein, 2005; Smith & Andrews, 2015;

Stapleton, 2015; Tidwell, 2004; Trowler & Turner, 2001; Woodcock, Rohan, & Campbell,

2007). This section predominately covers the ASL teaching field since there is not sufficient scholarship on Deaf faculty in other fields outside of Deaf Studies (Brueggeman, 2016; Cooper et al., 2008). This section also incorporates the literature on both the experiences of native-Deaf and late-deafened faculty members.

Deaf faculty members’ cultural differences. Tidwell (2004) has emphasized that not all Deaf and late-deafened experiences are uniform or equivalent. For example, often late- deafened people learned how to speak English fluently as their first language and either learned

ASL late as an adult or never learned ASL, due to their advanced age. This section is inclusive so as to provide a peripheral experience of people with little to no hearing ability and a range of early to late exposure of ASL or Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, and late-deafened identities. In addition, the literature gathered in this section focuses primarily on Deaf faculty who teach hearing students instead of Deaf students or in Deaf college programs in order to maintain my concentration on DFOC experiences at predominately hearing (and white) postsecondary institutions. It is important to note that most of the authors and researchers referenced in this section, which concentrates on Deaf or late-deafened faculty, are white, except for one who is a hearing Black signer. Unlike the previous theme on Deaf Teachers of Color, any issues explicitly related to race or racism are virtually non-existent.

In writing about their identities at work, three Deaf professors clarify that “a Deaf academic is likely to teach somewhat differently than would a hearing academic,” though one of the authors had discovered “that the difference is not large” (Woodcock et al., 2007, p. 366).

The students of those authors had commented in the past that “the modifications [to their curricula were] actually positive and widely accepted” (Woodcock et al., 2007, p. 366). Trowler and Turner (2001) describe Deaf faculty members’ community of practice at campuses as a hybrid workspace: working with hearing people and participating in Deaf cultural practices in their personal time and spaces. One of their interviewees, a Deaf teacher, explained that they would work weekdays with hearing people and spend the weekends with Deaf people “like recharging a battery. […] (Interview 3, Deaf academic, teacher)” (p. 245).

Deaf ASL teaching experiences. ASL courses proliferated exponentially in the late 20th century, increasing the rate of hiring of Deaf faculty (Brueggeman, 2016; Cooper et al., 2008;

Kanda & Fleischer, 1988). However, ASL courses are not always taught by Deaf faculty members (McKee & McKee, 1992; Robinson & Henner, 2018) due to an insufficient amount of qualified Deaf instructors (McDermid, 2009; McKee & McKee, 1992; Robinson & Henner,

2018) and inequitable hiring processes (Colella, 2001; Kaye, Jans, & Jones, 2011). In McKee and McKee’s (1992) study on ASL faculty members, administrators and department chairs did not realize that ASL hearing students would have preferred Deaf faculty members since they saw them as “more trustworthy as models of, and authorities on, the language” (p. 150). Deaf college graduates are often brought into the pipeline to teach ASL or Deaf Studies courses, which have become a “cash cow” for departments of foreign or modern languages (Brueggeman, 2016).

Most importantly, it would be a grave mistake to assume that any Deaf-signing college graduate can teach ASL (Smith & Ramsey, 2004) as an ASL teaching position requires masterful fluency of ASL and fundamental knowledge of ASL linguistic structure.

As an ASL professor, Schornstein (2005) has expressed trust that Deaf ASL faculty would provide proper tools and positive feedback (instead of public embarrassment or undue-

criticism) to students, who “can become fluent communicators in a language that has fought long and hard for its due” (p. 399). She shared her personal Deaf experience while teaching ASL to hearing students to give them more contextual ideas of how a Deaf person lives and how vital the use of ASL communication is in their lives. This teaching method implemented Deaf epistemology by introducing her own ontological observations.

The married couple of Deaf and hearing researchers, McKee and McKee (1992), have conducted qualitative research, interviewing 12 ASL teachers and gathering survey data with 72

ASL hearing students. The authors bring together narratives from Deaf faculty, finding that these faculty were “more concerned with students’ perception of their competence as a teacher and as a Deaf person,” while students believed that learning from native signing Deaf faculty was “the richest learning experience, not purely for linguistic reasons but also because of the cultural insights and contacts a Deaf teacher brings to the learning experience” (McKee &

McKee, 1992, pp. 150–151). Thus, the research findings suggest that Deaf faculty members should feel assured that they are indeed providing what hearing students need for a Deaf cultural learning experience.

Recently, there has been a controversial issue about hearing people teaching ASL and taking job opportunities from the “authentic representation of Deaf culture” (Robinson &

Henner, 2018, para. 42). Robinson and Henner (2018) have developed a new concept termed

“nondeaf or able-bodied fragility,” which “can be considered a form of emotional labor performed by deaf faculty for [hearing] colleagues” (para. 38). This concept reinforces Deaf epistemology with authenticity that includes their own Deaf experiences. This presents another challenge for DFOC: competing with hearing people for faculty positions that centralize on signed education. However, “nondeaf or able-bodied fragility” is a borrowed concept from

“white fragility” (DiAngelo, 2018), which references the insecurity and overreaction of white people who prioritize their emotions over the actual existence of POC. Robinson and Henner’s

(2018) use of “nondeaf or able-bodied fragility” parallels Gertz’s Deaf-Crit (2009), which erases the racism from the original concept of Critical Race Theory. As shown in the subsequent section, this has an effect on Deaf faculty spaces.

Deaf Faculty Environment

Academic spaces. In a discussion of academic environments and working with hearing colleagues, Tidwell (2004) has analyzed the experience of faculty members with “hearing impairment,” those who lose hearing later in life, feeling like “invisible” faculty members, who differ from those accustomed to this disability either from birth or a young age. He describes one of the coping strategies that late-deafened faculty would frequently engage in: “‘avoidance’

– staying away from embarrassing situations or people where the challenge to hear is understood and cannot be reckoned with preemptively” (Tidwell, 2004, p. 201). Avoidance can be mistaken as an introverted behavior, however it is a strategy to avoid interacting with hearing non-signers or attending hearing-centric events without accommodations such as captioning services or other accessibility for late-deafened non-signers, which can be seen as a nuisance, for example an expensive request to human resources (Tidwell, 2004). Again, those with late-deafened experiences take some time to adjust to their new identity and different abilities, thus this avoidance strategy may work effectively for some people.

The concept of avoidance, however, is not only restricted to the behavior of late- deafened people but also applies to Deaf-signing people when they do not have or cannot access interpreters to interact with colleagues on campus, which is an impediment to any opportunity or work interaction (Woodcock et al., 2007). Yet, Tidwell (2004) sees the benefits of “avoidance”

for late-deafened professors, who thrive in their “autonomy and their ability to remain isolated,” though only for the most senior faculty members (p. 201). This coping strategy could hurt junior faculty members who have yet to secure their career with tenure, or by full-time lecturers who need to perform university or community service to improve their portfolio for future evaluations.

In addition, if one has already obtained a senior role prior to becoming a (not openly) late-deafened person, they would have the privilege to be selective of whichever particular committee they choose to serve on. Whether it’s a late-deafened experience or Deaf faculty member of any level at a predominantly hearing work environment where audism prevails, this means that faculty members have to constantly arrange for communication access or request accommodations for communication that everyone else at their postsecondary institution takes for granted. In other words, “the burden [is placed] on the [Deaf] faculty to try to change the social context that creates barriers for them” (Smith & Andrews, 2015, p. 1,530). It should not be left to Deaf and late-deafened people alone to resolve the barriers in higher education. This burden of requesting communication access for every inaccessible encounter in their daily work life often leads to avoidance of such interactions as one of the coping strategies Tidwell (2004) describes. Those who do not engage in avoidance strategies must overcome additional barriers to access in their everyday interactions.

Accommodations and interpreters. For Deaf faculty members or professionals, engaging in interactions with non-signers means using interpreters. The ethics of interpreters frequently conflict and often limit Deaf career ladder opportunities (Burke & Nicodemus, 2013;

Stapleton, 2015; Trowler & Turner, 2002; Woodcock et al., 2007). Trowler and Turner (2002) list up to six patterns regarding interpreters for Deaf faculty members in academic environments

or staff meetings: (a) an interpreter is not a member of the academic staff so will not be totally prepared with all of the terminology; (b) Deaf participants may not be familiar with the discourses and jargon of their hearing colleagues; (c) hearing people tend to not be willing to slow down for interpreting lag times; (d) textual documents used during presentations do not allow additional time for Deaf participants to observe when watching signed interpretations simultaneously; (e) no team support of interpreters to correct their voiced and signed interpretations; and (f) hearing signers would switch to and stick with English, their first language choice, in meetings with other non-signing hearing colleagues, rather than ASL, which is “almost always the case” (p. 238). These six reasons alone can be overwhelming and exhausting for Deaf faculty to find suitable accommodation for interpreting services.

As a hearing member of the faculty in a Deaf Studies department, Stapleton (2015) has witnessed unqualified interpreters who had voiced a Deaf colleague in important meetings where the interpreters “stumbled, used a lot of ‘ums,’ missed important details and big concepts, and relied on a very limited vocabulary” (p. 58). As a result, her “highly intelligent [Deaf] colleague came across as a nervous, unclear, and unskilled presenter who could not accurately articulate ideas” (Stapleton, 2015, p. 58). Burke and Nicodemus (2013) have explained that there is no standardized ASL for specialized academic or occupational fields because there are not enough

Deaf professionals in each subject to reach a certain critical mass. Therefore, Deaf professionals or academicians are requested to generate new signed vocabulary for their assigned interpreters, who are not professionally trained in the specific discipline. And given that they are not assigned the same interpreters in each situation, they must repeatedly engage in this task, taking valuable time away from concentrating on the issues at hand. The issue of interpreters also affects graduate students—the largest part of the pipeline to Deaf faculty—who struggle to locate

qualified interpreters capable in both speed and the ability of comprehending the subjects of their classes (Woodcock et al., 2007). In addition, there is a racial issue, with Interpreters of Color being underrepresented and DFOC therefore being underserved by those whose voices and physical presence could best match them. Unfortunately, no formal publications have yet investigated this underrepresented group and what this means for interpreting for Students of

Color (Shambourger, 2015; West Oyedele, 2015).

Trowler and Turner (2001) have reported that some Deaf instructors experienced voiced- only conversations between hearing ASL faculty and students in the same room with them. This is similar to Schornstein’s (2005) experiences of audistic microaggressions with her assigned interpreters in ASL-1 courses, as she recounted in the following:

It’s interesting that some interpreters want to maintain friendships with the students and

won’t tell me if they are talking. If I see this happening and ask them about it, they will

tell me, but they don’t offer the information voluntarily. On the other hand, I have had

interpreters who are very professional, recognize this as part of the job, and let me know

right away when students are conversing. Let me stress that in my department we are

teaching our students to be interpreters of ASL. (p. 401)

Here Schornstein presents the disturbing irony of the very field the students are to be trained to become interpreters in, where they are already engaging in microaggressions and audist acts.

As Tidwell (2004) has described, some Deaf faculty members and professionals have different hearing and speaking skills. Some are able to follow and read lips as to what their interpreter voices for them, or which word choice the interpreter would choose and register to convey the messages signed by the Deaf person (Burke & Nicodemus, 2013). However, after a long period of “[s]elf-monitoring [their] own sign production as well as the mouthing of the

interpreting is not only tiring, it also [is frustrating when] all of the attention [is turned] back on the interpreter rather than the other [hearing] conversational participants” (Burke & Nicodemus,

2013, para. 43).

As the structure of my research focuses on narratives, the next narrative is drawn from

Trowler and Turner’s (2002) study that examined Deaf faculty members, in which a Deaf instructor comments on their feelings of marginalization in the academy:

I don’t feel that Deaf colleagues are actually involved in this university culture. We don’t

have that network … [Hearing people] have an advantage because [they] can actually

listen to what people are saying, background information, bits of new information

just…through informal discussions that other people might be having. You can pick up

information that way and in one to two weeks you will pick up an awful lot of

information. (Interview 4, Deaf academic, teacher). (Trowler & Turner, 2002, p. 251)

Deaf faculty continue to experience marginalization and audism within the ASL faculty community, other academic spaces, and at times have access to only limited accommodations.

Although ASL courses should be ideally a Deaf(-centric) space, both McDermid (2009) and

Schornstein (2005) have reported that some Deaf faculty experience audism but fail to act.

Issues Related to Systematic Audism

Oftentimes, Deaf faculty members are not willing to speak up and draw unnecessary attention that places their unsecured positions at risk (Woodcock et al., 2007). This overlaps with the behavior of other marginalized groups, who maintain their silence within predominately white institutions (Onwuachi-Willig, 2012) and may feel a sense of obligation and gratitude for their position (McDermid, 2009). This inability to address issues related to their experiences as

Deaf faculty is symptomatic of systemic audism perpetrated by the college or university. Lane

(1992) defines systemic audism as a “hearing way of dominating, restructuring, and exercising authority over the deaf community” (p. 43). Relatedly, McDermid (2009) observes that some hearing students see Deaf faculty in a subordinate role. When a Deaf or late-deafened faculty member shows “unwillingness to challenge these audist practices,” their conduct “clearly demoted their position from a college professor to an oppressed member of a minority group and impeded their development” (McDermid, 2009, p. 243). Stapleton (2015) also disagrees with the excuse of academic ignorance on behalf of the academy, as seen in the following excerpt:

The academy cannot say it is blameless in the continuing challenges experienced by

faculty with hearing loss. The academy is a breeding ground for phonocentrism, the

inherent belief that hearing and listening are central features of being human, a

phenomenon that puts Deaf faculty in a vulnerable position. (pp. 61–62)

Not only is audism experienced in academic spaces, Stapleton also draws attention to phonocentric attitudes more pervasively, even outside of the academy, that do not incorporate any other modes of communication.

Within the field of higher education, Robinson and Henner (2018) have stated that it is not enough to just have Deaf faculty members teaching ASL courses alone. Institutions of higher education still “need to critically examine how their health professions, interpreter education, and teacher preparation programs contribute to the undermining of deaf people’s civil and human rights” (Robinson & Henner, 2018, para. 11). Deaf faculty would regularly feel “like they had to ‘work harder at winning’ their Chair over and forced them to point out that they were

‘a faculty too’, though their language and culture differed” (McDermid, 2009, p. 238). When other hearing colleagues reject or do not communicate with Deaf/late-deafened faculty, Tidwell

(2004) has insisted that those acts of marginalization and negligence can contribute to feelings of isolation, alienation, and anxiety among Deaf faculty.

People need to remember that, “the actual accommodation [of interpreting services] should be considered of benefit for everyone at the academic institution, not just the Deaf academic” (Woodcock et al., 2007, p. 367, original emphasis). Both Deaf and late-deafened faculty members still need support to keep up with the rapid changes on their university campuses (Tidwell, 2004). Otherwise, as McDermid (2009) warns, “the Deaf instructors in turn might continue to face year after year of unchecked audism and a constant struggle to balance the role” (p. 245) as a Deaf faculty member and an advocate for their Deaf community. This struggle with Deaf identity and power dynamics may shorten the lifespan of their career in higher education, which leads to the next section concerning the retention of Deaf faculty who may experience systemic audism.

Retention of Deaf Faculty

While my study focuses on the retention of faculty, specifically DFOC, which will be expanded at a greater depth in the next thematic section about Faculty of Color, this section covers recent research that concentrates on the retention of Deaf faculty members overall.

Unfortunately, to date, the literature on the retention of Deaf faculty (of Color) in particular is lacking when compared to Deaf faculty in general. In her dissertation, Pine (2012) has interviewed 12 Deaf full-time professors who described what kind of support and challenges they experienced to successfully achieve tenure at a university in New York and found that collective support from understanding colleagues created an inclusive work environment that assisted their long-term retention.

To date I have yet to find a peer-reviewed publication that specifically focuses on Deaf faculty retention. Yet, several authors bring up the interesting point that some Deaf faculty members put in additional work to prepare for their own communication accommodations, which given the time and energy involved ought to be recognized in their (tenure) evaluations

(Stapleton, 2015; Woodcock et al., 2007). For example, it may take an additional week or two to prepare for service work and lesson plans with “lining up interpreters, explaining Deaf culture, making others comfortable, organizing lectures for interpreters” (Stapleton, 2015, p. 60). The able-bodied or all-sensorial faculty would not need to worry about this matter in their daily agendas.

In closing, whether a Deaf faculty member is a senior or junior faculty member with more or less work experience at postsecondary institutions, people from any marginalized group still find it difficult to self-advocate for their needs. According to Smith and Andrews (2015),

“these barriers will decline once fellow academics are educated and become allies” and increased awareness will remove the “socially created obstacles” (p. 1,530). Rather than negotiating their way through the academic environment alone (Woodcock et al., 2007), Deaf/late-deafened faculty members should dismantle the walls between hearing and Deaf faculty members by exposure to and preparation for all able-bodied and all-sensorial people to work with a variation of disabled faculty members (Kaye et al., 2011) and reduce their isolation and anxiety (Tidwell,

2004). In this next section, I draw parallels from the scholarship related to retention issues that

Faculty of Color experience and Deaf Faculty of Color retention experience.

Retention of Faculty of Color

The types of faculty retention this study center on include tenure, promotion, and job satisfaction (Aguirre, 2000; Jayakumar, Howard, Allen, & Han, 2009; Johnsrud & Rosser, 2002).

Instead of limiting itself to tenure-track faculty (full-time professors), this study investigated retention of all types of faculty, including lecturers (FT/PT lecturers and instructors) at postsecondary institutions. Although lecturers and part-time faculty may not experience tenure or promotion considerations due to their institutional contracts, I substitute job satisfaction as a proxy for retention for contingent faculty. Job satisfaction here will include not only if the faculty member is satisfied with their position, but if the institution is also satisfied with the faculty member (which will be gleaned from DFOC accounts of their performance reviews and student teaching evaluations).

In the related literature, Johnsrud and Rosser (2002) have listed three factors of retention that determine the morale of faculty members: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement. The authors state that it is vital to explore the morale (of Faculty of Color) to understand and predict faculty retention. So, “to address faculty morale, institutions need to attend to these key issues. And, it is equally important to think about what enhances morale as it is to think about what diminishes morale” (Johnsrud & Rosser, 2002, p. 537). An Administrator of Color, Yoshinaga-Itano, (2006) provides a direct explanation of the retention experience for

Faculty of Color (FOC):

Retention is affected by a hostile climate, lack of students of color, lack of community,

lack of mentorship for both scholarship and role models of success in the academy, and

inequity in job description irrespective of what advocacy programs are established. (p.

351)

The structure of this section on FOC retention will use Johnsrud and Rosser’s three factors, starting with job satisfaction, job involvement, and then organizational commitment,

which will be extended to the concept of “racial battle fatigue” (Smith, 2006, elaborated later in this section) as a consequence of being an underrepresented faculty member.

Job Satisfaction

There is a considerable amount of research related to faculty job satisfaction (Antony &

Valadez, 2002; Bozeman & Gaughan, 2011; Maynard & Joseph, 2006; Olsen, Maple, & Stage,

1995). For example, Valadez and Antony (2001) have studied part-time faculty members and break down “multifaceted” job satisfaction in the following ways: satisfaction with autonomy, satisfaction with students, or satisfaction with demands and rewards. In contrast, Bozeman and

Gaughan (2011) surveyed 1,750 tenured and tenure-track faculty members and have determined academic faculty job satisfaction in the following three ways: (a) individual attributes, (b) institutional work context, and (c) characteristics of faculty work. Maynard and Joseph (2006) have studied both part-time and full-time tenured faculty members and list three salient facets of satisfaction: (a) advancement, (b) compensation, and (c) job security. For the purposes of this study, I focus on Valadez and Antony’s (2001) definition of job satisfaction.

In 2007, Faculty of Color comprised 21.9% of the faculty population, compared to 78.1% of white faculty employed across U.S. postsecondary institutions (Chronicle of Higher

Education, 2010). The number of Faculty of Color has not increased after ten years, with a statistic of 24.3% minoritized faculty in all types of higher educational institutions in 2017

(Chronicle of Higher Education, 2019). However, a large percentage of “faculty of color continue to occupy the lowest academic ranks and are tenured at lower rates than White faculty, regardless of academic discipline” (Villalpando & Delgado Bernal, 2002, p. 262).

One solution to underrepresentation among faculty members would be an incentivized

“diversity effort” (Halualani, Haiker, & Lancaster, 2010) in higher education: hiring and

retaining more Faculty of Color and diversifying the curriculum. However, Arnold, Crawford and Khalifa (2016) have warned that “diversity efforts may exacerbate rather than ameliorate inequality […] if postsecondary institutions have not modified policies and procedures nor prepared the institutional culture and climate to support them” (p. 891, original emphasis).

Otherwise Faculty of Color are only there to “window dress” (Aguirre, 2000, p. 45) their institutions to fulfill diversity efforts with faculty hiring.

This brings up a concerning point of an “ethnic mobility trap” (Aguirre, 2000, p. 48), resulting in Faculty of Color possibly feeling tokenized and that they have to perform as a

“model citizen” or “shining example,” meeting the expectations of the senior white faculty who will review them. Kanter (1977) has likened underrepresented faculty to “tokens” if they hold less than 15% of the total population of faculty positions. Discouragingly, Stanley (2006a) has described a typical Faculty of Color member as “an outsider in academia” who “usually receives little or no mentoring, inside information, or introductions to valuable connections and networks”

(p. 14). Mentoring, networking, and access to insider knowledge are different types of career support necessary for faculty retention (Turner, Myers, & Creswell, 1999; Turner & Myers,

2000).

Relatedly, a faculty member’s job evaluation (and tenure review) depends excessively on each part of their job performance, including teaching, research, and service. One of the biggest concerns of underrepresented faculty members is that they may be evaluated predominately by white senior (and hearing) faculty members (Ho, 2002; Reddy, 2002). Regarding inequity in teaching evaluations and how this relates to tenure and promotion, Reddy (2002) states:

White professors’ course evaluations will be superior to those of professors of color in

similar courses, which in turn leads to an easier time getting tenure, promotions, and the

many perks doled out by institutions such as released time for research, merit pay, and

the like. (Reddy, 2002, p. 54)

Similarly, Lazos (2012) echoes that evaluations serve as gatekeepers to greater opportunities but are “particularly dangerous for minorities and women who must also contend with the unconscious biases of their students who have role expectations that are anchored in gender and race stereotypes” (p. 173). In addition to racial and gender stereotypes, I add that Deaf Faculty of Color may also have to contend with stereotypes related to deafness or disabilities.

Job Involvement

Job involvement means how one identifies psychologically with and cares about their occupation (Blau & Boal, 1987, 1989; Martin & Hafer, 1995) or can be measured as

“internalization of values about the goodness of work or the importance of work in the worth of the person” (Lodahl & Kejner, 1965, p. 24). Faculty of Color, especially those who identify as female, often find themselves overburdened with service requirements far more than their white counterparts (Aguirre, 2000; Turner & Myers, 2000). The expectation placed on Faculty of

Color is called “cultural taxation” (Padilla, 1994; Stanley, 2006a), referring to excessive academic expectations to perform services representing diversity, mentoring Students of Color, and participating on committees as a member of an underrepresented group. Aguirre (2000) states that Faculty of Color “spend more time in workplace activities such as teaching and service that do not necessarily promote their professional socialization in the academic workplace, especially the professional socialization that increases their chances of attaining tenure and promotion” (p. 70).

In terms of recognition, “across all institutions, faculty of color as a group appear to be as productive in research as White faculty, yet they do not seem to be rewarded equally with their

White colleagues” (Villalpando & Delgado Bernal, 2002, p. 258). The most recent statistics on tenured professors in the U.S. demonstrate the following breakdown: 82% white and 18%

Faculty of Color members; 55% of the white group are male (National Center for Education

Statistics, 2018). These statistics show that the gender gap is closing, but the race gap is wide apart. Villalpando and Delgado Bernal (2002) have estimated the reason of the “unequal tenure rates is the double standard for faculty of color, who often report being held to different expectations than their White colleagues” (p. 256).

Turner, Myers, and Creswell (1999) identify six barriers to both the recruitment and retention of Faculty of Color: (1) isolation and lack of mentoring; (2) occupational stress; (3) devaluation of “minority” research; (4) the “token hire” misconception; (5) racial and ethnic bias in recruiting and hiring; and (6) racial and ethnic bias. These barriers present a pattern identified by other researchers that limit the number of Faculty of Color at postsecondary institutions

(Turner et al., 1999). Turner et al. (1999) list three reasons for the underrepresentation of

Faculty of Color: (1) the pipeline to the professoriate being broken by not retaining enough

Students of Color in graduate or doctoral study; (2) the job market, with (insufficient) faculty job availability and attractive salaries; and (3) a chilly climate that does not provide the necessary supportive environment for isolated minorities. Turner et al. (1999) state that “[s]upply in the pipeline and demand in the market are external factors affecting the number of minority faculty in higher education” (p. 39). However, Villalpando and Delgado Bernal (2002) disagree with the

“pipeline problem” of Students of Color as the core issue of underrepresentation in faculty since that would discount racial discrimination during the hiring process in higher education.

FOC Experience and Organizational Commitments

This section describes the commitment of FOC to their academic careers. Organizational commitment is defined as the extent to which a faculty member identifies with the goals of their higher educational institution(s) and wishes to maintain their role there (Blau & Boal, 1989).

Many faculty members begin their careers without being properly prepared for the level of commitments they will be assigned or need to do, and thus “have a difficult time trying to interpret the unwritten expectations about collegiality” (Stanley, 2006a, p. 367). Durazo cautions that the university is one of the institutionalized spaces that exploits and overburdens People of

Color due to the “design of imperial and Eurocentric knowledge formations” (p. 191). Stanley

(2006b) has addressed that

faculty of color spend a great deal of time mentoring students of color […] because they

view this service activity as a way to give back to the community and a chance to effect

positive change as role models. Some are looked upon as experts in matters of diversity.

(p. 704)

The presumption of their racial or ethnic expertise goes back to the idea of “cultural taxation,” as in Umbach (2006), who conducted a quantitative survey with 13,499 faculty members from 134 institutions. His findings show that “African American and Native American faculty more frequently interact with students than White faculty” (p. 332). However, out of all his respondents, only 8% of his data came from Faculty of Color. He believed this was because the

FOC “come from diverse and varying backgrounds that translate into unique perspectives and pedagogical techniques in the college classroom” (Umbach, 2006, p. 337). Similar to this finding, Villalpando and Delgado Bernal (2002) summarized that:

[M]ore faculty of color than White faculty believe it is very important or essential to: (1)

prepare undergraduates for employment, (2) develop their moral character, (3) prepare

them for family living, and (4) help them develop personal values—all functions that the

general public defines as important roles for higher education (Higher Education

Research Institute 1989). (pp. 258–259)

Umbach (2006) has explained that Faculty of Color believed “they need to work harder to prove they are as good as their White colleagues” (p. 337), which also resonates in other studies

(Aguirre, 2000; Tuitt, Hanna, Martinez, Salazar, & Griffin, 2009; Turner & Myers, 2000;

Villalpando & Delgado Bernal, 2002). In classrooms, FOC often toil harder to gain the authority that would have been granted automatically to “a white person at the front of a classroom or lecture hall and she will look like a figure of authority to most of the people sitting at the desks”

(Reddy, 2002, p. 59). Five emerging Faculty of Color in Tuitt et al.’s (2009) study recounted their experiences as “feeling different, doubted, and emotionally taxed is an everyday challenge of simply existing in the world of academia as a person of color” (p. 71). This leads to the over- exhaustion of Faculty of Color, which can be linked to racial battle fatigue and subsequently cause the weakening of a Faculty of Color member’s organizational commitment.

Racial battle fatigue. This section focuses on the psychological and mental burden of

Faculty of Color. Gaining faculty status does not free a Person of Color from racism or racial microaggressions at the level of higher education. Smith, Yosso, and Solórzano (2007) define racial microaggressions as:

1) subtle verbal and nonverbal insults directed at people of color, often automatically or

unconsciously; 2) layered insults, based on one’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language,

immigration status, phenotype, accent, or surname; and 3) cumulative insults, which

cause unnecessary stress to people of color while privileging whites. (p. 300)

In higher education, Smith et al. (2007) have cautioned against “the accumulative stress from racial microaggressions produces racial battle fatigue” due to the “unavoidable front-line racial battles in historically white spaces” (p. 301). Smith (2004) was the first to describe “racial battle fatigue” among African Americans and other POC as

much like combat fatigue in military personnel, even when they are not under direct

(racial) attack. Unlike typical occupational stress, racial battle fatigue is a response to the

distressing mental/emotional conditions that result from facing racism daily (e.g., racial

slights, recurrent indignities and irritations, unfair treatments, including contentious

classrooms, and potential threats or dangers under tough to violent and even life-

threatening conditions). (p. 180)

For instance, a Black professor teaching about race, racism, and/or white supremacy can experience potential psychological and physiological stress-responses when dealing with student expressions of reactionary racism and resentment (Bowman & Smith, 2002). The bigger problem is when “White university administrators downplay the race-based stress that African

American professors experience at the classroom, department, university, and community level”

(Smith, 2004, p. 179). Unfortunately, too often this dismissal adds to the stress and self-doubt of

Faculty of Color.

Even though Faculty of Color may feel obligated to teach and be aware of racial tensions when teaching courses related to race, racism, or diversity, they may not realize the consequences and toll of prolonged stress on their physical wellness and mental health (Smith,

2004; Smith et al., 2007; Villalpando & Delgado Bernal, 2002; Williams, Yu, Jackson, &

Anderson, 1997).

Finally, returning to the morale of Faculty of Color and their retention, Arnold et al.

(2016) strongly advocate that those in academia educate and discuss racial battle fatigue openly to determine how FOC are faring. If not, the recruitment and retention goals of diversity efforts will fail due to the impact of racial microaggressions that can be dangerous to the mental and physical health of Faculty of Color. In the meantime, (Deaf) Faculty of Color are “teaching in the line of fire” (Tuitt et al., 2009, p. 73) during institutional changes. In the end, DFOC are likely to experience racial battle fatigue as compounded by institutional audism and linguicism.

To turn to the last major section of this chapter, I now discuss the theoretical frameworks related to my study.

Critical Race Theory in (Deaf) Education

The frameworks for this research are Critical Race theory (CRT) in education (Ladson-

Billings & Tate, 1995) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) with a recognition of the dual oppressions of DFOC with racism and audism (Humphries, 1977). Ladson-Billings and Tate

(1995) address CRT in education by exploring the poverty of education in Black and POC communities and the intersection between schooling and “institutional and structural racism” (p.

55). They conclude that this nation’s success is based on property rights, and the authors provide an analytical tool to observe the intersection of race and property to understand social and educational inequities. Ladson-Billings (1998) views CRT “as a more powerful explanatory narrative for the persistent problems of race, racism and social injustice” (p. 22). She also describes the responsibilities of scholars using CRT when exposing racism in education to propose “radical solutions” (Ladson-Billings, 1998, p. 22) when addressing these issues.

Audism is defined as a belief in the superiority of hearing ability that marginalizes Deaf people from language and information accessibility, prevents them from prosperity, and comes in

different forms of discrimination on individual, institutional, and metaphysical levels (Bauman,

2004; Eckert & Rowley, 2013; Humphries, 1977; Lane, 1992). Lane (1992) and Bauman (2004) distinguish Humphries’ (1977) audism into two categories: individual audism and institutional audism. Eckert and Rowley (2013) define institutional audism as “a structural system of exploitative advantage that focuses on and perpetuates the subordination of Deaf Communities of origin, language, and culture” (p. 107, emphasis removed). I utilized these definitions of audism as I engaged with DFOC’s narratives regarding their retention in the academy.

The Intersectionality of Deaf Bodies

Crenshaw (1991) discusses her concept of intersectionality as the oppressive overlapping identities of a marginalized group, specifically in her case, Black women experiencing two forms of oppression simultaneously: racism and sexism. The frame of intersectionality builds upon and facilitates resistance to any oppressive system that coerces a marginalized group to choose a single identity over another, instead calling out all types of discrimination. Borrowing the lens of intersectionality from Crenshaw’s framework of two or more types of oppression experienced at the same time, I re-apply the concept of intersectionality by examining two or more forms of oppression in the Deaf community.

The first and foremost oppression in Deaf communities is racism; secondly, audism from those in hearing environments; and thirdly, linguicism as a form of discrimination against different language use. There has been a sharp increase within the past decade in Deaf scholarship (chiefly authored by Deaf and/or signing People of Color) focused on intersectionality in terms of what it means in Deaf communities today, and what it means to be

DPOC in education settings such as high schools or colleges and universities when a Deaf

Person of Color finally faces their multiple identities in the general Deaf community (García-

Fernández, 2014, 2020; Parasnis, 2012; Ruiz-Williams, Burke, Chong, & Chainarong, 2015;

Stapleton, 2014, 2016). In line with the research that examines intersectionality within Deaf

Communities of Color, Parasnis (2012) states that “[t]he experiences of white American Deaf

ASL users created a perception of Deaf culture as a monolithic overarching trait of all deaf people and suppressed recognition of the demographic diversity of individuals within the Deaf community itself” (p. 64). POC perspectives benefit Deaf scholarship by intersecting the

“deafness dimension to create an emergent complex Deaf identity” (Parasnis, 2012, p. 69).

If intersectional experiences are not acknowledged within DPOC identities, a misleading assumption will emerge that suggests the homogenous experience of Deaf bodies such as the new theoretical concept “DEAF-SAME,” (Friedner & Kusters, 2015), or an ASL sign that can be translated to English as “Deaf similitude.” This concept was introduced to capture a frequently used phrase in signed conversations between Deaf interlocutors. It refers to the sentimental euphoria experienced at any encounter of Deaf strangers, most especially when coming from different nations and using different sign languages (Friedner & Kusters, 2015). While DEAF-

SAME is a popular discourse in Deaf international experiences, it is used to portray the shared oppression as a Deaf person with a mutual understanding of Deaf experiences and language barriers. It reflects “likeness and affiliation between people with very different cultural, racial, class, religious, economic, and geographic backgrounds [and] produces a desire and imagined deaf geography in which differences between deaf are rendered minimal” (Friedner & Kusters,

2015, p. x). Consequently, it reduces one’s focus of experiences on the shared rather than the multiple ways one might explain their own intersectionalities.

However, some scholars have argued against the concept of DEAF-SAME (cf. Ruiz-

Williams et al., 2015). An edited collection (Friedner & Kusters, 2015) of international research

on Deaf people benefitting or affected by the misconception or generalization of Deaf experiences provides arguments for and against this concept. Within the book, Ruiz-Williams et al. (2015) draw attention to the different oppressions experienced at Gallaudet University and tell four personal stories about their own student experiences with their various national identities, sexual orientations, bodies, and educational backgrounds. This rare scholarly paper finally has brought attention to the intersectionality experienced in a single location inside a large Deaf institution, which builds off the work of several other researchers on intersectional Deaf bodies

(García-Fernández, 2014, 2020; Ruiz & Holcomb, 2013; Stapleton, 2014; Stapleton & Croom,

2017).

The framework of intersectionality ultimately dismantled the romantic notion of “DEAF-

SAME,” that limited and erased the uniqueness and variation within any Deaf community (Ruiz-

Williams et al., 2015). Taking up that same objective and using an intersectional lens, this research dismantles the outdated method of standardizing the white Deaf faculty experience in comparison to the Deaf Faculty of Color experience. The next section presents the variety of critical theories with a Deaf focus. In addition, the intersectional, racial, and linguistic backgrounds of each theory are described to better indicate the significance of Deaf epistemologies and ontology.

Deaf Critical Theories

The history of CRT addresses social and racial injustice, starting with legal controversies and desegregation, and frequently examines inequality in the field of education (Bell, 1980;

Ladson-Billings, 1998). Solórzano (1998) defines CRT in education as a framework that

“challenges the dominant discourse on race and racism as they relate to education by examining how educational theory, policy, and practice are used to subordinate certain racial and ethnic

groups” (p. 122). He forms five tenets that have been used heavily in CRT studies and are listed as: 1) the centrality and intersectionality of race and racism, 2) the challenge to dominant ideology, 3) the commitment to social justice, 4) the centrality of experiential knowledge, and 5) the interdisciplinary perspective (Solórzano, 1997, 1998). Yosso (2005) has designed a diagram with five different offshoots from the original theory of CRT, including hers with Solórzano,

“LatCrit Theory,” (2002) which will be described in another section. However, Yosso’s diagram does not include the newer theories concentrating on disabled or Queer bodies, which was precautioned by Ladson-Billings (2005) in the growing and evolving discipline on social justice.

Deaf Critical Theory (Deaf-Crit) was one of the first theories to merge at the intersection of CRT and Deaf Studies, composed by a white Deaf female scholar (Gertz, 2003).

Gertz (2003) defines Deaf-Crit as an application “when one examines the audistic subordination and marginalization of Deaf people” (p. 421). Consequently, Deaf-Crit is an adaption of CRT (Solorzano, 1997) with audism alone, challenging the dominant hearing ideology and the centrality of (white) Deaf experiential knowledge (Gertz, 2003). It is controversial, however, as some scholars believe Gertz (2003) deviates from CRT by replacing racism with Eurocentric audism, implying that there is no racism experienced in Deaf communities (Chapple, 2012; García-Fernández, 2014). In her version of CRT in education’s five tenets, Gertz (2003) lists them as the following: 1) the centrality and intersectionality of

Deaf people and audism, 2) the challenge to dominant hearing ideology, 3) the commitment to social justice for Deaf people, 4) the centrality of Deaf experiential knowledge, and 5) interdisciplinary perspective to broaden the understanding of Deaf people (p. 422). Although

Gertz (2003) was lauded for Deaf-Crit, this can be viewed as a setback for Deaf and CRT scholarship, given that Deaf-Crit Theory erased the theoretical pillar on race, and instead

concentrated on only a monolithic (white) Deaf identity (Chapple, 2012; Fernandes & Myers,

2010; García-Fernández, 2014; Paransis, 2012). Chapple (2012) and García-Fernández (2014) have asserted that there were repetitive acts of marginalization and dismissal of racial issues within U.S. Deaf communities not recognized by Gertz (2003).

Gertz’s Deaf-Crit replaces “People of Color” with “Deaf people” and deviates from the principles of the five tenets of CRT in education (Solórzano, 1997) by eliminating the experience of Deaf People of Color and, in turn, reproducing the projection of color-evasiveness. She erroneously states that “Critical Race Theory themes are equally applicable to the lived experiences of Deaf people” (p. 421, emphasis added). This trivializes the experiences of racism and imposes an invisibility of race within Deaf communities. Ultimately, Deaf-Crit does not honor the epistemologies of CR theorists. In addition, “color-evasiveness” is used instead of

“color-blindness” so as not to engage in ableism and deficit language. To clarify, “color- blindness” neglects the experiences of people who are actually blind or color-blind (Annamma,

Jackson, & Morrison, 2017).

In the following scholarship in Deaf Studies using CRT, Stapleton (2014, 2016) has built a critical framework for Black Deaf people, mainly focusing on college graduates. She has attempted to reinsert the Black experience into the original framework of Deaf-Crit and then frame it as “Black Deaf Crit Theory.” Black Deaf-Crit Theory is structured with five tenets that again combine both Solórzano’s (1997) and Gertz’s (2003) frameworks. The intention of this theoretical framework is to address the inequity of and microaggressions experienced by Black

Deaf people. The five tenets are as follows: 1) racism and audism, 2) challenging white and hearing ideologies, 3) intersectionality, 4) experiential knowledge, and 5) a social justice commitment. The first tenet reinserts the concept of racism similar to the first tenet of Critical

Race Theory in education (Solórzano, 1997) and adds the oppression of audism. The second tenet acknowledges how white ideologies are intertwined with hearing ideologies. Thirdly, intersectionality is observed with the intersecting social identities and experiences of Black (or

POC) and Deaf bodies. The fourth tenet centers both Deaf and Black stories, instead of white

Deaf stories. Lastly, the fifth tenet addresses racial and auditory injustice in order to mobilize social justice for others. Essentially, Black Deaf-Crit Theory is Deaf-Crit racialized through the added lens of Blackness. This framework can still be re-visited based on Black Deaf values and

“standpoints” (Collins, 2000), using Black Deaf epistemologies and ontologies while separating them from white Deaf experiences, per se Deaf-Crit Theory.

A Deaf Latina education specialist and social justice activist, Carla García-Fernández

(2014) has introduced and developed a completely new grounded theory called the “Deaf

Latina/o Critical Theory.” This framework merges the values of CRT and Deaf Latinx epistemology, which can be summarized as “recognizing all intersecting identities of [Deaf

Latinx people] such as race, ethnic, class, gender, sexual [orientation], nationality, phenotype, language, immigration status, and religion” (García-Fernández, 2014, p. 68) experienced in

Latinx cultures. Her descriptions of Deaf Latinx epistemology differ from the general Deaf epistemology by incorporating intersectional identities in Deaf Latinx cultures. Her theory supports CRT appropriately by focusing on People of Color and how they deal with race and racism as well as linguicism. Her framework is based on LatCrit Theory as introduced by

Solórzano and Yosso (2001), which concentrates on the racism that Latinx people face regarding their national background and issues related to immigration and language. Deaf LatCrit Theory

(García-Fernández, 2014) is composed of four new tenets that simultaneously deconstruct and dismantle Gertz’s Deaf-Crit Theory.

The four tenets of Deaf LatCrit framework start with intersectionality, ideologies, and consciousness, and close with storytelling, which is the heart of both CRT and ASL/Deaf culture

(Bahan, 2006). Within that storytelling, I also explore “counter-narratives” or “counter- storytelling,” defined as untold stories that challenge the majority in power (Solórzano & Yosso,

2001). García-Fernández (2014) utilizes these tenets in order to first recognize, honor, and then weave in the multiple identities of any research participant to dismantle the homogeneity of Deaf people or experiences (i.e., DEAF-SAME). Secondly, these tenets challenge Eurocentric linguistic ideologies and aim to increase awareness of social injustice, microaggressions, and discrimination. Last, these tenets allow Deaf Latinx to tell their own stories, validating their knowledge, and to correct any error derived from other non-POC or hearing persons telling

DPOC’s stories. Unlike Gertz’s (2003) set of tenets related to (white) Deaf-Crit, Deaf LatCrit eliminates any oppressor-based history in developing the framework by co-constructing the tenets with DPOC participants and researcher herself (García-Fernández, 2014).

There is one further off-shoot of critical theory called “Dis/Ability Critical Theory”

(Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013), which concentrates on the intersections of race and dis/ability with seven tenets that push for a more inclusive approach to accessibility. Although

“DisCrit” is not the focus here and does not represent Deaf experiences linguistically, it is still important to recognize different types of disability in addition to Deaf bodies and identities. For example, some Deaf Americans does not identify as a culturally disabled group, unless stated otherwise such as “DeafDisabled” (Ruiz et al., 2015).

In a separate discussion of (hearing) faculty with disabilities, Olkins (2011) has presented the challenges of mobility around her university campus and recognized the barriers related to her promotion and tenure from not teaching enough courses or publishing sufficiently due to the

inability to attend conferences frequently and network with other scholars. Importantly, Olkins

(2011) lists four categorical barriers faced by faculty with disabilities that I found equally applicable to Deaf faculty members: “(a) logistics directly related to disability; (b) financial and budgetary constraints; (c) interpersonal, social, attitudinal, and perceptual prejudices; and (d) the confluence of disability and other aspects of identity” (pp. 202–203) such as in this case in terms of racial identity. Vance (2007) also has reiterated the frustration of faculty with disabilities, who are often accused of being costly and a financial drain when using university (or department) resources. This is only true if human resources (in equity and diversity) do not set aside financial resources readily for people with disabilities (Olkins, 2011).

Finally, Evans, Broido, Browan, and Wilke (2017) offer a solution for those interested in the intersection between CRT and DisCrit for the success of Faculty of Color:

To ensure that disabled mentors are available to disabled students, institutions must hire

more faculty and staff with disabilities in visible and prominent positions. To do so,

college and university leaders need to modify problematic work environments to ensure

that positions are accessible to any potential faculty or staff member who is interested in

applying. (p. 257)

I planned this research design by fusing three major theories: intersectionality, CRT in education, and DeafLat Crit. The first theory helped to frame and answer the first research question about DFOC’s multiple oppressed identities, while the second was answered through using CRT in education, centralizing DPOC experiences of racial and audistic disparities in higher education. Finally, for the third theory, the four tenets of Deaf LatCrit have allowed me to reevaluate the data and see where they would exactly fit under both research questions. For the ideologies, I could see how data fit in DFOC’s deaf ontology and racial/ethnic

epistemologies and how it applies within their teaching fields. Throughout the data, the exact definition of intersectionality was maintained within the aspect of DFOC experiences of audism, linguicism, and racism, and possibly sexism or more. Then consciousness (or prior unconsciousness that came to light) would explain DFOC’s retention and what issues are involved. Lastly, their own storytelling narratives have allowed them to explain their experiences, which were treated as concrete evidence.

In the end, the use of all frameworks was successful, which validated each grounded framework. However, there are some suggestions on how to re-ground a couple of theories, such as incorporating DPOC’s experiences, that are expanded under Contributions of Theory in

Chapter 5.

Implications of the Relevant Literature and Theories

In sum, there have been few studies on Deaf faculty or Deaf Teachers of Color, and none focus specifically on DFOC as a group (instead of being grouped with other Staff or

Administrators of Color) and across varying institutions (instead of a single university). Thus, my study fills this gap in the literature on this specific underrepresented group of DFOC.

In order to gather counter-narratives, a significant component of Critical Race Theory in education, one needs to collect personal narratives from research participants and treat their stories as concrete evidence. Finally, as evidenced by the varying counter-narratives of different

Deaf POC told through a CRT lens (García-Fernández, 2014, 2020; Ruiz-Williams et al., 2015;

Stapleton, 2014, 2016), the aim of my study was to signify the racial diversity among Deaf faculty members. Eventually, Deaf scholarship will need to broaden its resources and literature by bringing in more diverse perspectives and narratives in order to form a new “Critical Deaf

Studies,” centralizing DPOC epistemologies and narratives.

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY

Introduction

The purpose of this study was to learn about the intersectional experiences and retention of Deaf Faculty of Color (DFOC) employed at postsecondary institutions. One goal was to explore professional development resources and supports that shape the retention of DFOC.

Overall, I was interested in learning more about DFOC’s work experiences and their different relationships with students, peers, and administrators. The problem that this study addressed was the lack of DFOC at predominately hearing- and white-populated universities and community colleges. There are many factors that impact DFOC employment opportunities or qualifications that needed to be explored. There was a gap in knowledge and practice due to insufficient information published or otherwise accessible on the experiences of this particular marginalized group of faculty members. To review the research questions:

1. What are the intersectional experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education?

2. What are the retention experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education?

I begin with the research design and tradition that I utilized. I first used grounded theory, framing my research with Deaf Latinx Critical theory (García-Fernández, 2014), which I saw as compatible for the general experiences of Deaf People of Color. My research design diverged from Deaf-Crit Theory (Gertz, 2003), which is a misappropriation of Critical Race Theory because it excludes the racial experiences and oppressions of Deaf people. Second, I describe the settings of the study, which were spread out across the U.S. Third, I review the data and sample sources I collected from tenured, tenure-track, and adjunct DFOC through filmed one-on- one interviews, which was necessary since our mode of communication is ASL, a visual-spatial language. My goal was to gather 15 interviews from individual participants. For data collection

instruments, I used Zoom online chat for far-distance residents and a digital video camera,

GoPro, to obtain the most peripheral view for my face-to-face interviews. The data collection procedures include how I set up my interview questions for all research participants and how I gathered my interview data on video cameras. I next explain how I analyzed my data through thematic patterns in the interviews. Finally, I describe my role, articulate my stance and values, especially as I also identify as a DFOC, and describe strategies to mitigate possible researcher biases.

Research Tradition

This qualitative study employed a critical grounded theory tradition (Durdella 2019), which I found best suited due to my interest in learning about the experiences of Deaf Faculty of

Color and their job retention. Grounded theory is “currently the most widely used and popular qualitative research method across a wide range of disciplines and subject areas” (Bryant &

Charmaz, 2007, p. 1). Critical grounded theory may be defined as the intersection of an emerging data-based theory with a critical lens from diverse perspectives embodied in racial, social, and body identities. This tradition allows DFOC narratives to enable embodied intersectionality perspectives to emerge.

The key features of this grounded theory approach informed the focus, purpose, and guiding principles used to develop the research design (Durdella, 2019). The focus of my research was structured by three components: experience, events, and processes. Based on individual DFOC’s work experience, this study relied on their perceptions of their job positions during their teaching term at a postsecondary institution and their expressed processes used to sustain their occupation. The guiding principles of grounded theory research design are personal

(semi-structured) interviews and researcher observations. In order to “[allow] the theory to

emerge from the data” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 12), I needed to perform three procedural steps: 1) conduct concurrent data collection and analysis, 2) employ a theory-based sampling technique, and 3) complete continuous comparative data analysis of collected data from different individuals in the study (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2006). I expand on these in later sections.

The research paradigm of my study has utilized a Critical Race Theoretical framework that helped me to explore and eventually answer questions about the sociological traits and social strata of DFOC in their work environments. Using a critical framework, I was interested in praxis, “the relationships between thought and action, theory and practice” (Glesne, 2016, p. 11) from the narratives of DFOC between their marginalized identities and their positions within postsecondary institutions. Usher (1996/7) frames critical theory as “the detecting and unmasking of beliefs and practices that limit human freedom, justice, and democracy” (p. 22). In line with a critical framework, my goal was to provide “standpoint epistemologies” (Schwandt,

2007), defined as deconstructing dominant knowledge from Eurocentric, straight, male, and—I add—able-bodied and all-sensorial perspectives for the purpose of “advancing social justice studies” (Charmaz, 2005, p. 507).

I argue for a new standpoint epistemology from two different marginalized identities using Deaf LatCrit Theory (García-Fernández, 2014) and its four tenets—intersectionality, ideologies, consciousness, and storytelling—while drawing in DFOC’s narratives about their retention experiences in higher education. This framework enables an analysis that explores

DFOC’s intersectionality and centralizes their resilience toward possible oppressions from the dominant majority in their daily work lives. When DFOC exposed their truths about their underrepresentation, I aimed to illuminate their experiences at predominantly hearing-serving

universities and community colleges. Thus, when performing this grounded theory method, I structured my study with “a set of performative and interpretive practices and ways of making the[ir] world visible” (Denzin, 2007, p. 459). It is time for DFOC to be seen and heard in the higher education field and research.

Research Settings

Site Selection

My site selection depended on the higher education institutions where my research participants work. As there are a limited number of DFOC across the nation, the different locations of one-on-one interviews included their offices, lab rooms, or faculty lounges at their institutions, or online over Zoom, which is a video chat platform that could hold multiple participants on a screen (only two in my case). When not Zooming, I was able to fly to some locations to gather interviews fortunately before the travel restrictions were implemented due to the global COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. In sum, I gathered data from Eastern,

Southern, and Western regions of the U.S.

Gatekeepers

First, I built rapport with different authors who have conducted research on Deaf

Teachers of Color at varying institutions and requested informal conversations regarding my study. Second, I reached out to another DFOC contact who is also in a doctoral program and understood what I was going through. They helped with networking connections and invited me to meetings at their university. Thirdly, I have another DFOC colleague with many years of work experience in the Southern region of the U.S., so I began with them as both my gatekeeper and informant. Fourth, I reached out to my white Deaf and signing colleagues for references to

any potentially willing or interested participants they knew. Fifth, I already had a strong academic and higher education network in my region, so I was able to rely on my network.

Research Data Sources and Samples

Sources of Data

This study used DFOC as data sources through personal interviews and observations.

Since ASL is a visual language, I used visual recordings of individual interviews and ethnographic observations of interviewees in their offices if visiting in person.

Participants

There are no exact statistics of DFOC available online, so I did not have access to these demographics across the U.S. I used a combination of sampling strategies to select participants in my group, including criterion, networking, and snowballing strategies (Durdella, 2019; Patton,

2014). The criteria for my participants were to identify as Deaf, American Sign Language

(ASL)-fluent, a Person of Color, and employed as faculty at a postsecondary institution. The information about my doctoral study was posted in a Deaf People of Color private group on social media for recruitment purposes. I also reached out to some of my peers who met the criteria for either their interest or their references, which is an example of a snowballing or networking method.

In total, this research collected data from 15 participants across the nation who held various faculty positions. Nine were located at four-year universities, six at community colleges, and one participant was employed by both. Table 1 depicts the key demographic information about the participants. Seven faculty had a tenure-track or a tenured (TT/T) position, with one non–tenure-track faculty (NTTF) member. The other seven were lecturers: four were full-time, and three were part-time adjunct. They had various lengths of employment, which will be

divided as new/recent (2–10 years), moderate (11–20 years), and veteran (20+ years).

Fortunately for the part of this study that concerns retention, out of the 15 participants who were recruited and willing to participate in this study, nine could be classified as veterans, five as moderate, and one was a recent faculty member. Their narratives contributed greatly to understanding retention at their institutions.

Concerning more specific details, five faculty members taught in the field of ASL, three in Deaf Studies, and the rest were in various additional fields. The majority of these faculty taught or currently teach hearing students (7), or mixed groups of hearing and Deaf students (5), while only two of them had only Deaf students. As for their racial and ethnic identities, five of them identified as Asian/Pacific Islander, another six as Black, and four as Latinx/Hispanic.

Importantly, nine were U.S.-born while the other six immigrated to the U.S. at various ages.

Nine of them were female and the rest were male. Adding to their intersectional identities, four of the faculty members were Queer, one was physically disabled, and one was neurodivergent.

Finally, to maintain anonymity within the data as much as possible, the regional information is simplified as East (10), South (2), and West (3).

Next, for the continued purpose of maintaining anonymity, the specific nation or country of participants who were immigrants will not be revealed; instead the general regions are to be reported. For the racial group of Latinx, one participant identified as Hispanic from the

Caribbean Islands, and one as Latinx from South America. For the Asian/Pacific Islander group, two immigrated from Eastern Asia, and three were first-generation U.S.-born. Two of the Black participants emigrated from Africa as adults, and only one identified as a first-generation U.S.- born.

Table 1

Demographic Information of Deaf Faculty of Color Participants

INTERVIEW SAMPLES

HEI (UNIV/CC/BOTH) 9 6 1

FACULTY POSITIONS (T - TT/NTTF/L) 7 1 7 JOB LENGTH (VETERAN/MODERATE/RECENT) 9 5 1 TEACHING FIELDS (ASL/DEAF/OTHER) 5 3 7

STUDENTS (HEARING/MIXED/DEAF) 7 5 2 RACE/ETHNICITY (ASIAN - P A C I F I C ISLANDER/BLACK/LATINX - HISPANIC) 5 6 4 NATIONALITY (U.S./OTHER) 9 6

SEX (FEMALE/MALE) 9 6 OTHER IDS (QUEER/PHYSICAL- DA/NEURODIVERGENT) 4 1 1 REGION (EAST/SOUTH/WEST) 10 2 3

Protections of the Rights of Research Participants

Ethical issues were a vital concern to maintain a healthy research relationship between myself as a researcher and my participants. First and foremost, my research participants were informed that participation in this study would be voluntary and reminded that they could change their mind to abstain from participating at any time during the data collection process. Due to this intimate network of DFOC, I assured anonymity and I have used pseudonyms for each participant. In my data collection and analysis, I redacted information in interview transcripts that could have disclosed their true identities to protect confidentiality. To further maintain anonymity, I kept a record of their names strictly separate and inaccessible to anyone, including my dissertation committee members.

Data Collection Procedures

Research Tradition and Connection to Methods

As noted previously, the qualitative data collection methods of my research study, which is designed as a critical grounded theory study, involved individual interviews of DFOC. This section focuses on the process of information gathering and how to link each method to the research design. For each data collection session, I carefully prepared the interview protocol for the participants in my study, including the noting of limitations.

Personal Interviews

First, the interview protocols were designed as structured interview guides, which contained “a mix of questions, prompts, and topics [that inform my] work but [also allow] open opportunities to follow hunches and intuitive directions” (Durdella, 2019, p. 220). I collected 15 in-depth structured interviews (Appendix B) from DFOC at varying research sites. I initially sent out an email invitation (Appendix A) to a national registry of Deaf scholars and shared it with my colleagues at different institutions. Through networking and snowballing procedures, I was guided toward new and potential research participants. The definitions of networking and snowballing strategies both involve recruitment processes for additional participants with shared identities and serve as collaborations with professional colleagues or consultations with current research participants, respectively (Durdella, 2019). These strategies reduced my potential research bias or nepotism by broadening my participant base to whoever responded to my emails through networking systems.

Due to their underrepresentation at institutions of higher education, I will not disclose locations or the specific kind of postsecondary institution where participants worked to protect confidentiality. At each site, I sought a neutral location outside of their university or college campuses, such as a coffeehouse with good lighting source (daylight or lamps). I collected all interviews between summer 2019 and late fall 2019.

Data Analysis Procedures

Data Analysis Plan

My data analysis enabled “thematic categories” (Durdella, 2019) to emerge that I then used to code the interview data. Coding enabled a “constant-comparative method” (Charmaz,

2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to be used across the interview data, which facilitated the generation of new themes from repetitive comparison between multiple interview data. This section defines each stage and procedure of data analysis.

The three different stages of data analyses I performed are categorized as: preliminary data analysis, thematic data analysis, and interpretation (cf. Durdella, 2019). The goal of the preliminary analysis stage was to prepare the data collection prior to the planned data gathering schedules such as backyard sampling, which provides convenient access in a familiar territory of the researcher (Glesne, 2015), such as in my case Southern California. The first interview enabled a further “data simplification or reduction” (Coffey & Atkinson, 1999, p. 28) toward the formulation of more and more relevant questions (Grbich, 2007). As interviews were being transcribed, themes emerged. This allowed thematic data analysis to transpire. The aim of thematic data analysis is to segment, categorize, and to link data to identify emerging themes

(Grbich, 2007). Last, instead of merely reporting the findings, the objectives of interpretation were to look for “significant relationships and experiences,” to distill “the data to the key findings and trends” and to “re-organiz[e] the content around” the findings (Payne, 2013, p. 65).

Along those data analytical plans, I utilized CRT in education, Deaf LatCrit, and intersectionality theoretical frameworks to guide me as I made sense of the emergent themes in the data. This stage of data analysis is a part of grounded theory techniques. More details follow for each step of the data processing and analytic aspects of the research.

Chronological Steps of Data Analyses

Transcription method. Since the language used on video-recorded interviews was only

ASL, I needed two different approaches for each type of interviews. For one-on-one interviews and quicker results, I arranged a voice interpreter to record voiced translations while watching the filmed interviews. Then I first decided to use my university service of captionists using

CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) technology to transcribe the interviews, but that was inconveniently time-consuming. Thus, after the sixth participant, I switched to using a Speech-to-Text app, “Otter.ai,” to transcribe the recorded voices. Those who assisted my data processing signed a confidentiality form (Appendix D). By triangulating the transcribing and translating processes, I worked closely with my assigned interpreter for ASL-to-English translations for each video. Next, I reviewed all the transcripts once more on my own to assure that the appropriate translations captured the essence of each participant’s narrative.

Lastly, all transcriptions underwent member-checking processes with each participant via email to have them review their transcripts, or we held a video chat to have conversations in ASL about their perception of the accuracy of the transcriptions of their interviews. Member- checking is generally a qualitative research practice sharing ideas with research participants about the accuracy of their transcript and, at times, the interviewer’s interpretation of the data

(Charmaz, 2006). This step was crucial due to the different language and modality that could have been interpreted slightly different by the signers, my voice interpreter, and myself.

Data storage. For each data collection type, the format of data storage varied. The video documentations of the one-on-one interviews were stored on memory cards (used only once) and transported on an external drive with at least 128 GB memory storage. For the notes of my participant observations at group meetings, those documents were saved on Microsoft

Word on my password-protected computer, while names or personal information were redacted and stored on a list separately and could only be accessed by myself.

Strategic analysis. After completely documenting and translating each transcript, I first identified “core categories to use for sorting segmented and coded data into meaningfully organized units with subcategories” as laid out by Durdella (2019, p. 268) and Birks and Mills

(2011). I segmented data by building an axial coding system (cf. Durdella, 2019), which is a linear connection of the most significant or frequently used codes or terms from interviews, a useful technique for grounded theory.

Timeline. While the first scheduled data collection for the Western region was set for beginning of August, my data analysis quickly initialized the transcribing and segmenting process in the following two weeks with access to voice interpreters and captionists through

NCOD services. Upon completion, I conducted member-checking with the transcriptions and revised those documents. Then I became more familiar with the amount of time required and allotted that time for the other data collection in the East regions during the fall. Importantly, I needed to finalize the transcription process within two weeks to ensure completion before the end of December, due to student access to special service providers during the fall 2019 semester. For a grounded theoretical research tradition, Charmaz (2006) encourages the use of the data constant comparison of data, while Birks and Mills (2011) remind researchers that

“everything is a concept” (p. 89). So, in order for a theme to emerge, I waited to see the connections from each narrator at each research site to transpire in connected and novel ways, and later, my interpretations of the data.

Researcher Roles

Researcher Bias

Researcher bias, privilege, and positionality are notions that are frequently (self-) evaluated and laid out in Deaf-related research paper topics. Each research opportunity often presents a dilemma for a Deaf researcher studying Deaf research participants. Previously, I presented a paper, “Is the joke on us, Deaf anthropologists?” (Moges, 2015) that critically inquired into the research approaches on our own people while having insider access.

Eventually, I concluded that each researcher performs the “enactment of hybridity” (Narayan,

1993), rather than “native anthropology” (Jones, 1970), due to numerous variations of sociological traits that a researcher may have in comparison to research participants (i.e., education status, race, class, signing levels, etc.).

Narayan explains that hybrid anthropology imbues our texts with “writing that depicts authors as minimally bicultural in terms of belonging simultaneously to the world of engaged scholarship and the world of everyday life” (1993, p. 672). In this case, it was used more as an intersectionality frame, where hybrid anthropology brings in accountability and consciousness of the intersectional identity of the researcher while identifying them with the research participants and recognizing the researcher’s subjectivity and shared experiences. Thus, this reminds me to consider the hybridity from an overlapping “personal and ethnographic [or professional] self”

(Narayan, 1993, p. 681) while researching those who share the same identities as my own, yet not all of whom overlap.

I focused on DFOC at postsecondary institutes, especially because of my passion and current position in both higher education and the Deaf Communities of Color. Carlson reminds us that “researcher bias is not necessarily viewed as problematic in qualitative research as long as researchers […] explicitly disclos[e] their biases, assumptions, and aspects of their backgrounds that could influence the interpretations they make” (2010, p. 1,104). In addition, when using

CRT frameworks, subjective perspectives are a necessity in the research process, especially when identifying with the research participants is taken as a strength. While interviewing Deaf

POC, they became comfortable opening up with me due to our shared identities. As a Deaf female faculty member of Color, I could sympathize with their possible repressions. Similarly, the most common genre of Deaf literature is autobiography because Deaf authors often lived suppressed lives, unable to voice the pain and isolation of their upbringing (Holcomb, 2012).

Identifying with the participants, I anticipated them having great enthusiasm to tell their stories at last.

Negotiation with Researcher Roles

It was necessary for me to be open about my sampling strategies when recruiting participants. In addition, I needed to discuss explicitly how I avoided bias since some people in my Deaf communities identify me as an advocate for racial and social justice for Deaf people, especially for DPOC. Although I do not see this as a negative quality, some DFOC may have been reluctant to participate in the study if they did not agree with my public political ideals.

With other DFOC around the state of California or the U.S. as a whole, we were somewhat connected through several mutual friends or DPOC organizations. I have a well-established reputation with both Deaf academic and POC communities and I have allies and gatekeepers across the nation. However, I did not have instant access to the gatekeepers at each institution, which posed some challenges to widening my research.

Participant Effects

My research participants could have affected me by informing and sharing with others about any aspect of my research. There are very few Deaf POC who have already or who are in the process of obtaining a doctoral degree. Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, a well-known Black Deaf

scholar, counted only 14 (now 18) Black Deaf people with doctorates (O’Donnell, 2017). Given this reality, it might have been an intimidating encounter between myself and research participants without a doctoral educational background or experience with the kind of research methodology used in this study. Sometimes study participants became defensive or insecure in their responses, worrying about their job position and having high expectations for a solution.

To mitigate their stress, I allowed collaborative participation for any participants to modify their quotes for use in my dissertation. Again, it was vital to be mindful of the possible influences that my research participants had on me since DPOC in academia make up an extremely small community, made minuscule when considering DFOC.

Strategies to Mitigate Researcher and Participant Effects

Researcher effects. In my data collection, I explained my inevitable bias and attempted to protect my research participants’ voices by member-checking: “the validity procedure [and when it] shifts from the researchers to participants in the study” (Creswell & Miller, 2000, p.

127). I provided them their ASL-to-English translated quotes in order to increase trustworthiness, ensuring that I was capturing their essential messages properly while identifying

“emotions coding” (Saldaña, 2009) that described their intersectional and retention experiences.

Participant reactivity. In my data collection, I needed more time to fit in the research site, as Miles and Huberman (1994) recommend, so I attended and sat in during one of my research participants’ classes. In addition to on-site observations, I interviewed my participants at an off-site to create a different setting, less influenced by their work environment. In data analysis, I used peer review by obtaining feedback from an informant (Miles & Huberman,

1994). This means that I shared my findings with study participants in order to make this work a

“venerated” qualitative research study (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

Conclusion

In sum, this research design gathered narratives from participants who identify as Deaf

People of Color, ASL-fluent, and a faculty member at any postsecondary institution. Through 15 one-on-one interviews gathered nationwide, I learned more about Deaf Faculty of Color and their intersectional and retention experiences. Furthermore, this qualitative study has added knowledge to existing information regarding Deaf academia, especially as it relates to faculty.

CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSES AND FINDINGS

Introduction

“Well, where else would I find work?” (Lee)

It is widely documented that Faculty of Color are underrepresented and show low retention rates while Students of Color proliferate across higher education institutions (Llamas,

Nguyen, & Tran, 2019; Villalpando & Delgado Bernal, 2002). While there is severely limited documentation on Deaf Faculty of Color in academia, this chapter counters the dearth of information by providing greatly needed qualitative data on DFOC employed at predominately white and hearing postsecondary institutions across the nation. The data were gathered from 15 qualitative semi-structured interviews designed through a critical grounded theory and Deaf

Latinx-Critical theory approach (García-Fernández, 2014, 2020). The aim of this chapter is to present findings that answered two research questions: 1) What are the intersectional experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color in higher education? and 2) What are the retention experiences of Deaf

Faculty of Color in higher education?

Insufficient Job Opportunities

The quote in the epigraph above had a bone-chilling effect on me personally. Five years ago, before switching careers to work at a university, I actually voiced this same line to my spouse based upon a concern about staying employed, as there were insufficient job options for me as a Deaf Person of Color. We as DPOC carry the extra pressure of maintaining an occupation in a field of limited opportunities with signing accessibilities.

Deaf people in general do not have enough job opportunities across the nation. Deaf communities are often seen as small, with 3.89 million Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people (not counting late-deafened senior citizens) throughout the nation (U.S. Census, 2018), and few

organizations serving them at state or local levels. Garberoglio, Palmer, Cawthon, and Sales

(2019) have stated that 53% of Deaf people are employed (22.5% fewer than hearing people), which can add an extra layer of pressure for Deaf people as faculty members at predominantly hearing universities.

In turn, postsecondary institutions with Deaf-related or Liberal Arts courses available to

Deaf faculty members has minimally opened the pipeline (Cooper, Reisman, & Watson, 2011).

The quote in the epigraph of this chapter illuminates this reality as Lee, an Asian male faculty member, confessed; the full quote is as follows: “Well, where else would I find work? Besides

[this college], I am, you know, I’m not sure if anywhere else, […] I don’t think that I would have the same chances or the same abilities afforded to me.” This concern was mutual for Antonio, a

Latino male faculty member, who mentioned:

In ten years, [universities and colleges] will throw people out, you know? They’re going

to keep individuals who are tenured, but that may not be offered continually. People say

“Oh my gosh, you’re tenured! You’re so lucky!” I’m hearing that more of those tenured

positions aren’t even being offered. It’s not even in the contract and your contract isn’t

even full time. So the people that have those positions are keeping them, and everyone

else, you know, it’s kind of like, “good luck!”

Due to the current neoliberal climate that privileges the hiring of adjunct instead of tenure-track faculty (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004), Antonio was correct to be concerned and to feel possessive about his position as a full-time faculty member.

The structure of this chapter begins with a focus on the first research question, providing three themes that appeared in the participants’ narratives about their intersectionalities: microaggressions, intersectionality issues, and white interpreters with DFOC. Then, the second

question will wrap up this chapter, with four themes that emerged from discussions of the retention of DFOC at their institutions: reasons for DFOC to continue their employment; their experiences of committee service; audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue; and, finally, the

DFOC Peer Support system.

Intersectional Experiences of DFOC

“So I realized that… I had to change my… persona to appear more lighthearted so they could

feel comfortable with me.” (Marcus)

This section focuses on the first research question, inquiring about the intersectional experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color. While all 15 participants held various faculty positions, they shared intersectional experiences of at least two different types of oppressed identities: Deaf and People of Color. From more than an hour of interview data each, many themes emerged from each participant. However, this dissertation will focus on Deaf experiences, ontology, and epistemology to contribute to both hearing People of Color and Eurocentric Deaf scholarship and to gain a greater critical understanding about intersectionality experiences in higher education.

Following García-Fernández’s (2014, 2020) Deaf LatCrit Theory in education, which evaluates the Deaf-Latinx epistemology and linguicism, this dissertation also incorporates the ontology of Deaf People of Color and audism. In addition, it addresses the oppression experienced by Deaf bodies from hearing people as acts of discriminatory superiority. Multiple themes emerged that revealed the intersectional experiences of DFOC participants, including their experiences with microaggressions, xenophobia, intersectional issues, and unracialized voice representation. These intersectional experiences present several types of impact, including positive contributions, negative factors, and challenging dilemmas created by systemic racism.

Microaggressions

Microaggressions are defined as “subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously” (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000, p. 60). Sue (2010) has explained that microaggressions can be covert or overt incidents and are

“numerous, continuous, and have a detrimental impact upon targets” (p. 40). When asking if any of the participants experienced microaggressions based on their intersectional identities, too frequently and unfortunately, they were quick to confirm. During an interview in a conference room with Gayle, a Black Deaf woman, I asked her to explain what microaggressions were and if she could recall any in her past experiences. She began by informing me that there were too many to count:

I mean, come on, it’s been 20+/- years. I mean, over these 20+/- years I could go on and

on forever. I’ve definitely experienced microaggressions. I chose to ignore them

because of course they add up, and I’m not going to spend my entire life angry holding

on to all that anger. I choose to not live that way. I just let it go. I know it’s

happening—I just let it go. I don’t hold on to it. Sometimes I would be angry, and there

have been a few times where I have actually cried about the microaggressions, but I

realize that you know what? I’m in control of my mind. I’m not going to give that

control to them. And I released it and I was able to proceed with what I had to do and

just ignore those individuals who were treating me that way.

Oftentimes there are too many microaggressions for her or other DFOC participants to recall.

Gayle learned that she had to let go and move on in order to regain control of her sanity and security in her faculty position. Susanna, who considers herself a Hispanic woman (instead of

Latina), had a narrative resembling Gayle’s: she was called “too sensitive” by her colleagues and she eventually learned to “toughen up,” or else she would “never reach [her] goals.”

Marcus, a Black male Deaf professor, met me after a conference in a secured room, dressed in his professional winter warm clothes. He explained his definition of those who committed microaggressions against him:

They have and maybe they just don’t recognize it. And maybe it’s just their insecurities

and they ended up oppressing others with their own insecurities. They also would try to

push me down and criticize me, but I would reject their criticism. Quite often, I felt

targeted due to my success—they would aim their criticism at me. Their insecurities

constantly criticizing others making them smaller than they truly are (gestures with both

hands up like “C’mon man.”).

Marcus defined microaggressions as people’s “insecurities” that continually oppress and marginalize others to prevent them from succeeding. The next example came from Tomas, another Black Deaf man who reflected about a unnecessary comment coming from a senior white administrator. Tomas recalled them referring to someone, “‘Oh, he’s Black, but he’s nice.’

…What does that even mean?” After letting out a long, exasperated sigh, he continued about microaggressions:

What we keep facing are either tiny or big. The other one is communication. I noticed

that communication could be an issue that could be resolved between two people. Then

someone would overstep by CC-ing [in emails] many higher-level senior positions in the

administration. This is directly intended as a threat. Obviously. So when I point it out,

they’d apologize for us feeling attacked. “Feeling attacked? You know exactly what you

were doing! Your intention was not an accident.” That made me nauseous! So many

forms of microaggressions we’ve experienced every day!

Whether the microaggressions were intentional or not, Tomas still did experience various forms and yet, persevered through it and continued to be perceived as what one might refer to as “a nice Black Deaf man.”

The next racial microaggression focuses on ethnic appearances, specifically the hair of a

Black Deaf female faculty member. In her office, during the interview, Desiree seemed reserved and deep in her thoughts. She explained:

With other [white] colleagues coming up to me always mentioned how they liked my

hair. They’d say, “It’s always changing,” “You’re always doing something different with

your hair,” and “Is that your natural hair?” When making faces, I’d respond to them,

“There’s nothing wrong with my hair. I like my hair exactly the way it is now.

There’s—it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with it.” Recently, one of my student’s

friends said to me, “You’re popular and I see you everywhere.” And then said, “I like

your wig.” And I thought, “Really?” It was a white student, of course. Oh, okay… You

like the wig? What do you really say to that? Her signing was clear. There was no

misunderstanding. [She said] “There’s something different. But I like your wig!” but in

a negative way. And it’s all the time talking about my hair or my appearance, “Your hair

was long today. It was shorter yesterday. What’s going on?” or “How long does it

take?”

What Desiree experienced is strongly reinforced by literature that discusses how Black female faculty members are hassled or micromanaged over their supposedly “exotic” hair (Ford, 2012;

Pittman, 2012). Being the only Black female DFOC at her institution had led to inappropriate comments or inquiries, especially from the perspective of (white) Deaf culture in the U.S.

(Holcomb, 2012; Leigh, Andrews, & Harris, 2016), which often lacks boundaries of respectability.

Most of the faculty in this study experienced microaggressions as different forms of marginalization and neglect, trivialization by dismissing their credentials, hyper-supervision and overt-targeting, and presumed unapproachability. Importantly, it must be clarified that not every participant experienced these same types of oppressions, due to their various racial identities, the color of their skin, their sex or gender, and their teaching positions. Therefore, the plan for each elicited quote is to include each data participant’s racial or ethnic identity (in addition to their

Deaf identity), in order to not erase either racism or possibly colorism from each narrative.

Trivialized or dismissed credentials. In order to be hired as faculty members, all of the participants met the minimum qualifications of their job descriptions. However, as a form of microaggressions, some DFOC participants experienced dismissal or trivialization of their valid credentials by non-DFOC. These dismissals often came in the form of having to engage in long explanations of their credentials. For Ann, an Asian American, this would serve as a disclaimer to defend her self-worthiness, and here she described an encounter with this type of microaggression:

If you want proof of my worth, then sure, here we go: 20 plus years of experience! That

should be enough. […] They ask me outside the department, “are you tenure-track or

tenured?” That’s something of a great value, which is clearly a traditionally academic

value, to them. And then I have to clarify that all of the time, and feel like [asking,] “why

is this something that needs to be answered?” I cannot help feeling the way they ask is

judgmental. It’s a long explanation that comes up and being put in that position is

something that I dread to go through. Constantly proving myself to individuals outside

the department that I am of value can be exhausting.

This constant need to prove their worth can be taxing for any DFOC and lead them to question the security of their positions. Unfortunately, the longevity of Ann’s work experience cannot be applied as defense for DFOC with a shorter career in higher education. The DFOC in this study were constantly expected to prove their worth to their colleagues and administrators in academia in general and within their institution specifically, especially if they were not tenured or on the tenure track. In her office, as a seasoned and elegantly-suited Black female professor, Sharon recounted very calmly how her white peers were dismissive regarding her potential to become a full-time faculty member:

This was outside of the classroom. [Other Deaf white people] had heard that I received

the position, and they thought, “Oh, I didn’t know you had it in you to teach.” I’m like,

“Well, what does that mean? You see me presenting, giving lectures, talking about

multiculturalism, diversity, etcetera. You’ve seen my presentations.” And they would

say, “Oh yeah but I didn’t know you had it in you to teach.” I would ask them, “Well,

what’s the difference?”

In Sharon’s situation, the microaggressions were not limited to the space of a higher education institution, but expand to her representing her work in the community, within organizations, or at conferences. Her treatment of being questioned about her credentials was also echoed by another Black participant who did not feel comfortable addressing their white Deaf peers given that they also doubted her capability to teach. As an act of Black vernacular, they said they wished they could “go off” and yet, in order to save face, they did not want to walk around as an

“angry Black person.” These examples indicate how continuously aware DFOC are of their

multiple identities and how they experience oppression from the dismissal of their intellect, hard work, and knowledge.

Hyper-scrutiny. This theme describes one negative factor that this underrepresented group regularly experienced, which was being easily marked and consequently drawing unsolicited attention to their quality of work. This scrutiny was often related to their skin colors as well as their signing. Joy, a female Asian American faculty member, described their experience with hyper-presence:

I’ll stand out more. And people will look at me a little bit more intensely more often.

[…] it may be a little bit paranoid receiving that response because the last supervisor,

something happened with the timesheets and there was a bit of disagreement with—a bit

nitpicky and like about everything. And I had gone to another colleague to see if she had

gone through the same nitpicky detail requirements with her timesheet. [When] she told

me “no,” […] and I decided to leave it alone. I was going to challenge it, but just to leave

it at that.

Joy felt like her racial difference attracted increased scrutiny compared to her white Deaf female peer when they were using the lab room for their class time. Her passive reaction was a defense mechanism to protect herself from any possible retaliation by her supervisor. The issue of being hyper-surveilled frequently came up from those who had repressed themselves from speaking out against this microaggression. The next example comes from Desiree when she was opening up about how she felt her peers were scrutinizing her presence and work in department meetings and how she had to defend herself. Desiree explained:

So it’s like are you doubting my work? You’re not believing that I’m creative enough

keeping the classroom safe, I’m on time, I’m not lashing out at anybody, I’m controlling

my anger, I’m showing up, I’m arriving safely, [or] my roles are being fulfilled. There

are no anger issues in any classroom, must I always walk around with a smile on? […]

the challenges. You know everybody else who I’m working with is white?

She ended that trail of thought with a defeated sigh. Her narrative related to how being visible with her looks or behavior was measured against a white standard of politeness. This portrayed how the politics of respectability, or forced politeness, that DFOC are expected to adhere to are expectations of “compulsory whiteness,” (Tehranian, 2007) repressing and erasing one’s expression of their racial and cultural diversity. Adding on top of the pressure of moderating her reactions, her excessive facial expressions are already a part of ASL grammar structure. Both examples showcased a source of worry for those DFOC who are under pressure to maintain their willingness, or docility, as reliable employees.

Presumed unapproachability. This theme addresses the supposed intimidation that

DFOC or POC in general present through their non-white presenting appearances, which results in a presumption of unapproachability by others. The overreaction of white people who thought those DFOC looked intimidating or were not approachable is what is currently referred to as

“white fragility” (DiAngelo, 2018), signifying the insecurity and overreaction of white people who prioritize their emotions over the actual existence of POC. The first example is from

Marcus, who referred to how students reacted to his physical presence and demeanor and how he had to change how he presented himself in the classroom to be more approachable:

And there would be a complaint and they approached their preferred instructor who was

hearing and white. Then that instructor came up telling me about that student’s situation

and tried to offer help. (Stunned) Why couldn’t my student come directly to me?

(Interviewer said: “That’s crossing a line going up to a different professor.”) Yes. And it

wasn’t just one time. It was several times that happened. Hmm. So, I realized that… I

had to change my… persona to appear more lighthearted so they could feel comfortable

with me. Yeah, I had to. I am aware as a Black male faculty, I constantly shift how I

present myself, so I could have good evaluations. To make people comfortable to

approach me, I often try to be funny in class so students will think, “Cool, cool.” Or if

I’m strict, they’d be too nervous and run to other professors. Hmm, interesting. Even

though I know that other teachers are strict with them—but for some reason, they felt

more comfortable with them than me. (Shrugs) That’s a reality that was thrown in my

face that I had to experience. (Emphasis added as originally expressed in ASL by the

interviewee)

Later in that conversation Marcus emphasized that, as a Black man, he felt he “had to” change in order to keep his job. Thus, as a DFOC, he had to conform to ensure his white peers or students’

“comfortability” and mitigate their white fragility. Next, Keller, a Pacific Islander faculty member, shared her story about her teaching experience:

I remember before they would think that I had a mean expression on my face, but that’s

just the way that I looked, and I would be pleasant and direct with them. And that’s how

I framed up, and I let them know you know definitely, to be honest, there’s no

sugarcoating. We’re just direct. […] I try to teach them [students] not to make

assumptions. It really depends on who the people are. It just depends, you know, in

general, how the individuals are.

Keller was correct to teach her students the significance of constructing proper facial expressions, which helped to lessen students being intimidated. This mode of communication incorporates a necessity of non-manual expression in ASL, which frequently requires frowns

when constructing a Wh-question (Hill, Lillo-Martin, & Wood, 2018), such as in Keller’s case,

“HOMEWORK (raised-eyebrows) WHERE? (frowns).” In the end, DFOC had to be consciously aware of their physical appearances and constantly attempt to reduce any threatening looks that may be attributed to their racialized and Deaf-signing bodies.

Xenophobia

As 40% of all participants identify as immigrants in this study, it is important to point out that some had xenophobic experiences, which presented another type of extremely explicit maltreatment that exacerbated from the level of microaggression to macroaggression. Two forms of xenophobia presented focus on language registry, which ranges in both modalities of signing and voicing. Specifically, both forms concentrate on some of the participants’ non- native ASL accents and non-native voiced accents. The prior is the signing accent of L2- unimodal bilingual signers, which reads as a second language within a single modality-use, while bilingual refers to two language-use. Pichler, Koulidobrova, and Palmer (2019) describe L2- unimodal bilingual signers as late learners of ASL (L2) after learning another sign language first

(L1) from a different nation. The latter accent refers to the similar issue but on voiced English as a second language (L2) of any speaker, in this case as a Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing-speaking person.

Non-native ASL accent. This section focuses on signing accents of non-native ASL users who learned L1 elsewhere. In these cases, their L1 has some influences, or what Quinto-

Pozos (2008) refers to as “interferences,” on their ASL use. Thus, in this case, signing accents will signify the participants’ L1 influences or interferences with ASL. There is considerable sociolinguistic evidence of a variety of sign language uses in the U.S. that are associated by racial group, such as Black ASL in the South (McCaskill et al., 2009), code-mixing with

Mexican Sign Language in border regions (Quinto-Pozos, 2008), and Indigenous or Plains Indian

Sign Language (McKay-Cody, 2019). However, there are few sociolinguistic studies on Deaf

Asian immigrants signing ASL, and Lee’s narrative spotlights how xenophobia leads to the assumption that their signing accent interferes with the authenticity of ASL and ASL-teaching quality. Lee shared the following regarding their accent:

I think the accent being a native ASL signer—that’s something that’s been a

microaggressive experience with English having an English accent. So, I do notice, you

have to be careful with what is said to me, you know being [Asian]. So I do have to

make that impression. […] Oh, before teaching ASL, it wasn’t me, but I had seen an

ASL teacher teaching ASL and saying that you had to be native, a native ASL user—in

order to teach ASL you needed to be a native signer. […] And we don’t all have the

same opportunities to live here in this country. So that ASL teacher, it’s been a long time

that they’ve been at [this] College and they’ve been an adjunct. So I need to ask

everyone, all the other faculty members, if they support that concept of requiring that you

be a native signer before you can teach American Sign Language. I’m sure everybody

would be shocked by that. And if everybody, if one person says no, then we can proceed

from there.

From this anecdote, Lee spoke a great truth that not everyone has had “the same opportunities” to have been born or raised in the U.S. with greater and more legislation-based accessibility for

Deaf or disabled people in comparison with the majority of the world. Xenophobic discrimination against his non-native ASL accent did make him worry about his qualifications to be able to keep his teaching course, competing with other native ASL signing faculty members.

Non-native voiced accent. While not every Deaf person in this study could use spoken language, one particular faculty member could and stated firmly their belief that they are part of a system that supports the economy of this nation. When asked about experiencing any xenophobia due to their immigrant background, Gayle responded with the following:

Oh, yes. Go back to where you came from. Go back. You’re taking our jobs. These are

our jobs. Like, go back to where you came from! […] You know, Americans here on

this campus, you know, they can see what I look like. They can hear my accent. So they

automatically assume “you’re taking my job from me.” I don’t sound American. And

America was built on immigrants and their experience. We’re all immigrants. We all

have a right to be here. And I wouldn’t let that go. I would definitely respond to that.

You know, this country was built on the backs of immigrants—by immigrants. So that’s

something I had to speak to directly.

This racist behavior was definitely reported and is inexcusable coming from other peers at a postsecondary institution. As aforementioned, this participant also frequently experienced other types of microaggressions and dismissed them. Unfortunately, the level of macroaggression as an extreme form of microaggression with inappropriate remarks or treatment had escalated to the level of xenophobia, where it becomes an irrational point of hatred and erasure of linguistic variations.

Intersectionality Issues

This theme details how DFOC often experience oppression at the intersections of their multiple identities. In each case, DFOC had to juggle their different identities and sets of values, yet values are not uniform in shared races, deafness, disabilities, or occupations. Sometimes

DFOC experience differences based on their age, religious affiliation, or their job description. In

this first example, Antonio felt a responsibility to be an advocate for the Deaf students taking his classes. During our Zoom interview, he discussed how he was well-accustomed to encountering resistance while trying to get equitable accessibility to interpreters. He shared the following:

You know, it’s a hearing world or strong hearing politics and sometimes the Deaf

students come to me, and they’re upset, you know, because the interpreters are lousy, and

I’m kind of like, “I have no authority over Disability Services and who they say can

interpret.” One time I let them know and they told me to focus on teaching and they

would focus on the interpreters. I was like “Oh, all right let me just step back here,” but

they have no idea of what a qualified interpreter is and they just kind of shoo me away.

So I have to direct the students back, and I feel trapped. I can do this, but I can’t do this,

[which I’m] bad at that, according to them.

As someone who is well-experienced with highly qualified interpreters and non-qualified certified interpreters (an ongoing issue), Antonio was conflicted by being denied his expert knowledge and willingness to support Deaf students at his institution. Due to his lack of authority, he had to step aside and allow the injustice to continue at an institution that is oppressing and neglecting the cries of its powerless students.

The next example indicates a large generational and age difference that disrupts the notion that people of the same gender, race, and age have similar intersectional experiences.

This was communicated by Jacqueline, a Black Deaf woman who shared different values than another Black Deaf woman educator. Just because they both shared the identities of being

Black, Deaf, and women, this faculty member observed how different her values and opinions were surrounding sexuality and sexual orientation. Jacqueline shared:

This is a different age. Different! In a different generation. I look up to […] those Black

female Deaf educators, Deaf specifically. [However,] the way that they think, their

philosophy is… Hmm. Their generational perspectives are different compared to mine.

I’m more open minded, you know, my mind swings on all sides of the spectrum. Theirs

are more old-fashioned, old-school. Mine is anything goes! With gay, lesbian, trans, I’m

supporting everyone and anyone. They’re religious quote-unquote. (Laughs) And I’m

not. You know what I mean? Just not being as open, I’m just different than they are.

It’s a different generation. But for educational purposes, they’re extremely amazing!

However, for the people in the current times, they want more of what I bring than what

an older generation would bring.

Jacqueline emphasized the differences between herself and older Black Deaf scholars and their more conservative perspectives. She felt that she offered what society and her students currently need related to a more welcoming viewpoint on sexuality and gender. Although she recognized that older Black Deaf women faculty provided valuable educational knowledge, where they differed were their values related to sexual or gender diversity due to age and religious differences.

Similarly, Marcus shared a personal encounter with another Black, but hearing, female scholar who snapped her finger twice at him, as in “snap-snap,” expecting him to step up his game in academia:

She said “You have to do it. Come on, come on. You have to do it,” and snapped her

fingers meaning, you have to do something. “You need to get it together, you need to do

more.” And I told her that I have to set up a pipeline first. So I can establish feeders

from several institutions. No, like she said, “it doesn’t matter, you have to do it.”

(Shrugs and leans back) Wait a minute. I felt like she did not recognize my experience as

a Black Deaf man. (Sighs) It’s frustrating to set everything up by myself. I felt like she

should’ve known better. But no. Hmm-mmm. She was too hearing! Okay. Despite that

she’s Black and I’m Black and we are in the same field or her knowing what it’s like to

go through, she still didn’t understand [my challenges]. So that’s how I feel altogether

experiencing with the systematic oppressions in three areas that are unique to me. She,

being a Black woman—that’s unique to her. But, we do not go through the same types of

oppression: it’s different.

Her obliviousness with being “too hearing” had dismissed and trivialized his different intersectional experiences as he continuously had to overcome other types of oppression such as linguicism and audism. Thus, a supposed universal Black experience is insufficient to understand both individuals’ journeys.

The next examples come from two participants who reflected upon an unsuccessful mentorship they experienced with mentors who had different intersectional identities. This parallels the objections of DPOC against Deaf white scholars for mis-using intersectionality in

Deaf Studies-related topics (Moges-Riedel et al., 2020). Oftentimes, white scholars limit intersectionality to only one type of oppressed identity of Deaf people, which refers to audism.

However, considering only audism is insufficient to refer to the experience of a general Deaf population under the concept of intersectionality. By applying intersectionality erroneously to all “Deaf identities,” it suggests a homogeneity for all Deaf people. In other words, it results in generalizing all oppressed experiences in our diverse Deaf communities. Jacqueline opened up, saying that:

I didn’t have a great boss. I didn’t have a great mentor. They were white, gay. And we

were just not the same. When I was new, it was an awkward period for me at that time.

You know, the[ir] attitude and how they read me. Almost like a sense that made me not

want to deal with them at all. I thought [to myself] I could just do this on my own,

rolling up my sleeves and focusing on my teaching and the things I would need to do.

This resonated with another Black participant who was Queer and thought they could relate with another Deaf Queer faculty member who was white. However, their whiteness proved divisive after showing a lack of support when racial issues became tense at their institution. Consequently, that Black member sought refuge elsewhere with other (heterosexual)

DFOC on their campus for peer support. The next participant, Lorenzo, explained their loneliness and solution to the absence of DFOC Peer Support:

Back then I was alone. At that time, I thought, “I shouldn’t be asking.” I thought that

because I was new, that they would come to me. Someone in the program would be

suggested to mentor me. I felt that I could ask individuals. I felt equal. And there

weren’t any Deaf Faculty of Color. These were only white individuals that I could go to

and get some advice from.

With a limited choice of role models, this professor requested assistance or mentorship sequentially by people’s identities in this order: 1) DPOC, 2) hearing POC, 3) white Deaf, and then 4) white hearing-signing faculty members. This sequence shows that with each shared identity, the safer and more secure this participant would feel to associate or exchange some shared knowledge during vulnerable moments. However, Lorenzo, a Latino male faculty member, could not find any POC signing faculty and was forced to turn to the last resort, his

white signing peers. More about peer support will be detailed further in the section on retention.

The next theme discusses the accessibility needs that DFOC encounter.

White Interpreters and DFOC

While DPOC are already racialized with their identity, the voices of their white interpreters present an additional complication in terms of how they present themselves through voice. This issue concentrates on how voicing accessibility is in high demand, especially for tenured and tenure-track Deaf faculty members. As evidenced in published literature, the demand for voicing interpreters is greatly in need in any position at higher education institutions.

However, the literature is based on one type of Deaf experience, coming from all-white Deaf or

Hard-of-Hearing faculty (McDermid, 2009; Tidwell, 2004; Trowler & Turner, 2001; Woodcock,

Rohan, & Campbell, 2007). Authors have not recognized the challenges of inconspicuous voices and sounds from white interpreters, which would not racialize them as Interpreters of Color would have. For DFOC particularly, their racialized identities are presented via their white voice(d) interpreters, which can be problematic because the interpreters’ uncultured knowledge of non-U.S. names or the sounds of their whiteness. Sometimes Interpreters of Color would have more cultural knowledge and background of multi-ethnic names (West Oyedele, 2015) and more training with multilingual practices, such as trilingual skills with ASL, English, and Spanish, than their white peers (Treviño & Quinto-Pozos, 2018). Antonio shared his experience with a white interpreter who wasn’t able to interpret Spanish:

They’re struggling with the French and the pronunciation, and not knowing how to get

that out clearly, and then I’m wondering, […], what are you going to do to Spanish when

you hear those names? And you know the students who would speak Spanish… So the

students would speak Spanish, in my class, you know, just a few little words, and then

another student would hear that, and they would say, “Hey, what did they just say?” But

the interpreter had no idea what to tell them [since] they didn’t understand Spanish at all.

They weren’t able to completely interpret all of it. And so, I’d ask for, you know, some

type of spelling and they couldn’t lip read it, and I would be stuck.

The unskilled-voicing and non–culturally-trained interpreter obscured Antonio’s Latinx identity by making him seemingly ignorant of any non-U.S. names or basic Spanish words. Due to his lost opportunity to claim his Spanish-speaking culture, his identity was obstructed with the inability to access a clear racialized voice from his white interpreter. He felt too embarrassed to join any Spanish-speaking event with the limited staff made up entirely of white interpreters.

Antonio continued by mentioning a revelation about how a Latina ASL-interpreter had contributed and validated Latinx identities in the classroom. He had never had that experience before until, thankfully, he had this Latina substitute interpreter and consequently they had an eye-opening experience together. Antonio shared:

The cultural behavior of the Latino gestures being used. You know, when you sign,

“eat,” how we sign it. So in the Latino culture you usually have a closed-fingers and flat,

open-hand [the palm is facing upwards and you bend the fingers repetitively towards

your mouth] for “eating” and that would be a Latino gesture, for example, but other

interpreters wouldn’t catch that. But this Latina interpreter caught it and I felt great about

that I felt validated with that. And it allowed me to further assess myself and realize,

“Okay, I have my own identity my own behaviors that match who I am, that match my

parents. This is all part of me and who I am.” And that was awesome for me, that

validation, that feeling from that incident. […] It was so inspiring I was so excited about

that, you know, I wanted to just let everyone know about this process that occurred.

Antonio had this revelation of the importance of Interpreters of Color, especially Spanish-fluent or Latinx-culturally conscious ones, in recognition of a cultural gesture that led to a feeling of validation of his Latinx roots.

The next example indicates a similar experience of how the whiteness of an interpreter mediates the surroundings for DFOC. This example takes place outside of the classroom at a conference. This is important to recognize due to the responsibilities of tenure-track faculty to maintain an active research agenda and share their current work within their discipline, however this requirement does not often apply to lecturers or adjunct instructors. As a Black male conference attendee, Marcus had always been assigned white interpreters, while Interpreters of

Color were frequently unavailable or not even considered for conferences or similar types of events:

[At a conference meeting with a Black female hearing non-signer], there were two white

female interpreters and one white hearing-signing colleague with me. They were all three

skilled signers. This dynamic is effective to make everyone comfortable. Without them,

it would’ve been a superficial conversation like before. I know that. Afterwards, she said

herself, “I really enjoyed our discussion. Why didn’t we have this before? I wonder

why. I could feel the hesitation. What do you think why I felt discomfort to approach

you?” I was like, “I’m not sure.” She replied, “I’ve always wanted to talk to you but,

um, I feel there’s always the white women who are around you.” “Ohh!” I always

thought it was because of the deafness. I’ve always thought it was American Sign

Language. Yet that’s true but it never accorded to me that [the cause of] their hesitations

would be the white women with me. (Emphasis added as originally expressed in ASL by

the interviewee)

This indicates a notion of a safe space or POC-space that has been infiltrated by white interpreters and how for DFOC it is not the language or modality of ASL as a barrier but rather the race of the interpreter. Marcus did not realize that until his Black female colleague brought up the issue of the discomforting presence of whiteness around him. However, it was out of

Marcus’s control (as often with conference attendees) to make specific requests, especially at national conferences that mobilize in different states. Importantly, a white interpreter is usually a foot or longer away from a DFOC body, thus producing an unintended repellant associated with

POC spaces. This truly is difficult for DFOC to control due to limitations of supply and the demand for Interpreters of Color (Jones, 2020; Oyedele, 2018).

Summary of Research Question One Findings

In sum, DFOC shared the negative intersectional experiences that presented challenges for them within their institutions. Every participant had a story to share about the numerous microaggressions they have experienced. DFOC would be treated unfairly, hyper-supervised, dismissed, or trivialized for their qualifications, and some had to face xenophobia. Other DFOC experienced intersectional issues with DFOC who shared similar backgrounds, yet still had differing values and perspectives related to age and gender. Last, the insufficient number of

Interpreters of Color with ethnic epistemologies resulted in DFOC’s inability to achieve a sense of belonging or to connect with other POC in academic fields. The next section focuses on how these intersectional experiences specifically impacted the retention of DFOC.

The Retention of DFOC

“When I became a dumpster, I allowed people to just throw all types of work at me and I would

take that.” (Desiree)

After compiling data that answers what the intersectional experiences of DFOC look like, their narratives lead to a greater understanding of what it means to be both Deaf and POC (or

Women of Color) teaching in higher education. Now, we will see how those data inform the question of their retention experiences as DFOC. While the literature review highlighted three factors related to faculty retention: job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment (Johnsrud & Rosser, 2002), this section will expand into four additional themes that include some of those factors: 1) reasons why DFOC stay; 2) committee service; 3) audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue; and 4) DFOC Peer Support.

Why DFOC Stay

One of the major reasons DFOC stay in their professions is due to representation. They want to be able to contribute to a growing number of Deaf People of Color in the faculty ranks as well as be in service to Students of Color and Deaf Students of Color. When I asked Ann why she changed her previous career to teach at a postsecondary institution, she casually replied:

I mean, it’s not really funny, but I never thought I’d be a college instructor. I didn’t have

the makings of a professor. I’d been in managerial positions for years and it didn’t occur

to me to pursue a teaching position. To make the long story short, the teaching

opportunity simply presented itself and here I am.

When listening to this, I was personally stumped and had to hold back before continuing the interview. Her response reminded me that I also never envisioned myself as a university lecturer or even a teacher because of a same reason: we did not see any DFOC with a doctorate in our postsecondary education. This ties into the reception of DFOC from students and how many never anticipated having a Deaf Professor of Color. Sharon recounted the following:

And several students have let me know that “Oh my gosh. We’ve never had a Black

professor.” And they told me that I was their first Black Deaf teacher ever. It’s 2019 and

this is still happening. And they’ve never had a Black Deaf teacher […] up ‘til now!

The students’ response may be understandable with the lack of representation throughout their lives, but not in Sharon’s case, as she has had Black teachers and colleagues. Nevertheless, her quote was mirrored by two other Black Deaf female lecturers who had to deal with their students’ first-day-of-the-semester shock or dismay to have a DFOC (or specifically female

DFOC) teach their courses. In fact, another female DFOC, Nancy, who identified as Asian

American, wanted to deconstruct the perception of how WOC faculty members are supposed to behave:

[…] what is their perception of People of Color, I mean Women of Color? Do they

perceive us, Women of Color, as we are supposed to show nurturing and sensitive

behaviors? I’m not like that. I am tough and push them [students], but I do this with

cheerleading support at the same time. (Emphasis added in ASL by the interviewee)

Nancy was determined to overwrite the outdated images of Deaf female Faculty of Color by setting high standards for student performance in higher education. Like others, DFOC challenged misconceptions about their rigor in order to elevate the standards for both Students of

Color and students in general.

While the DFOC in this study are extremely underrepresented in their fields, their resilience has kept them teaching and employed. While there are statistics on Deaf Students of

Color in postsecondary institutions (Garberoglio, Palmer, Cawthon, & Sales, 2019; Ausbrooks,

Baker, & Daugaard, 2012), there is a dearth of statistical information that would reveal how many DFOC are currently employed. In addition, within the general Deaf population there are a

small number of graduates with post-baccalaureate degrees, which has led to a limited pipeline of Deaf teachers in general education (Garberoglio et al., 2019). When the participants were asked what keeps them working and teaching at their postsecondary institutions, most responded uniformly: “the students.” Jacqueline explained her passion for teaching:

I enjoy seeing happy students, I enjoy seeing that lightbulb turn on in their eyes [and]

giving them the opportunities that I didn’t have. I don’t want them to have the same

struggles that I went through [which] was my passion.

This was another shared sentiment amongst the faculty: they did not want students, especially Deaf Students of Color, to suffer in the same ways they did when they were in school.

Jacqueline and another Black female participant Desiree shared a similar traumatic experience during their undergraduate years of study with white Deaf teachers. Their teachers marginalized their existence by neglecting their class participation and trivialized their requests for academic help in areas where they were struggling. However, their trauma pushed them to become better models as Deaf faculty members. Desiree shared her commitment for students, particularly as a

DFOC:

And someone has told me if I leave, the students are going to suffer, and that’s heart-

breaking. I love my job. I really do love my job. And I feel like there’s so much more

that’s needed out within the world, within the community. It takes more people. You

know, [show that] more Brown people and Black people for these younger individuals to

be able to succeed. And I want to let them know that there aren’t enough Black people

and I want to be able to beat the system. It’s difficult to be able to beat the system that’s

in place.

Her desire and perseverance to “beat the institutional system” for students requires resilience. In turn, she wants to set a high standard for the next generation of DPOC leaders. The next example came from Keller, an adjunct faculty member who was not hired for a full-time lecturer position. When she gave up their dream of becoming a full-time employee, Keller explained why she continued as an adjunct:

It’s too late now, [they] denied me already. So I suspect that the things that I wished

for… I am a warrior. You know my final expression (motto) “I keep going.” I don’t get

the job? That’s fine, you know? That’s who I am, what I would advocate for it, just do

the job. You know, it implies to be a warrior so I could be… Perhaps the combat warrior

within me builds up.

Keller was not referring to violence so much as using “combat warrior” as a metaphor to describe her resilience in ongoing battles for equitable treatment for POC at higher education institutions. Despite Keller’s disappointment of not being hired for the full-time job, her symbol of a “warrior” also signified her Pacific Islander background and was reflected in her occupation as an adjunct faculty member. Nevertheless, she persisted to serve those in great need—her students. The next section will shift to the focus on DFOC experiences with committee service.

Committee Service

While there seven participants were TT/T faculty, 12 faculty members total mentioned a prevalent pattern of unjust high expectations or workload placed on their shoulders to fulfill the lack of representation of Deaf, POC, and sometimes female faculty members. In turn, the multiple identities of DFOC made them extremely valuable assets to various department and university committees to fulfill an imagined or real diversity quota at their institutions. Gayle shared what it meant for them to be overworked with committee service:

You know, every faculty member I have met whether they are People of Color or not,

they have the same complaints about the workload being so heavy. Having to do A

through Z as well as teaching, having to do research, and giving presentations, and

offering their services, and being on committees. Everybody’s going through the same

experience. Deaf Faculty of Color, you have a little bit extra that’s added on to you

because people doubt your skills, so you have to fight for your—proving yourself to be

legitimate—that you do have the skills. That you are able to do this work, and you’re

good at doing this work. So Deaf Faculty of Color, of course you’ve got less time to

publish and do your research because you’re too busy proving what you can do, and your

services are going elsewhere as well mostly in that classroom. Institutions have not

recognized that.

For Gayle, the consequences of the unjust high expectations resulted in an over-commitment to service work, which meant less time to publish and conduct research. In addition, this harms tenure-track DFOC, which consequently is a risk to their retention.

The second and third examples, below, show evidence of the unfair treatment of two female Asian American faculty members who both were interviewed separately on Zoom from their homes. The first example is reflected by Nancy and shows how she felt unjustly compared to her hearing white colleagues:

So… I really get more…hmm… targeted—No, “target” is a wrong word. Their

expectations of me is… whoo, very, very specific. I got the sense if I don’t behave in a

certain way they expect to see, I’d be perceived as… “Mean. Not fair. Demanding.” I

got that reprimand (Action: finger-scolding) while [those white hearing colleagues] got

none.

Nancy identified the unjust high expectations by her colleagues, which also overlaps with another theme, hyper-supervision. She acknowledged the different treatment she had received as a Deaf Woman of Color in comparison with her peers who were hearing and white. The second example came from Ann, explaining the (super-)imposed obligations to accept more responsibilities, despite her full load of tasks:

And of course, the expectations for us are higher. They don’t realize it that often we’re

expected as People of Color to do more, to be better, to provide more, to prove ourselves

more. […] It’s like “Would you mind taking care of this and doing that,” and it’s like, “I

have a full load already.” Nonetheless, they press on: “Well, can you just add this on?

Can you add that on?” Putting me in those positions where I have to say no. And it’s

awkward because I would be misperceived as being unwilling to serve. And culturally

[as an Asian American], it’s awkward to say no to their request to be on that committee.

It’s really inadvisable. So, you experience another layer of stress as a Faculty of Color

while struggling to balance between self-care and other commitments.

The excessive requests produced an unwanted and unnecessary negotiation of a cultural clash experienced by Ann and Nancy, who were going through the double bind of gender oppression and identifying as Asian American women. That was echoed with Desiree, who shared the opening sentiment of feeling like a dumpster in the epigraph. She went on to share:

When I became a dumpster, I allowed people to just throw all types of work at me and I

would take that. And whatever work they wanted me to do they would just keep

throwing it at me, and I would just go on ahead and keep doing it. I wouldn’t say “no”

because “no” means that I’m lazy. I’m not involved. I’m not actively participating. I’m

not doing the job that I was hired to do.

As a Black woman, if one declined any job responsibilities, that would reflect their poor teamwork skills. Thus, in Desiree’s case, her employment was at risk if she objected to the constant increase of job responsibilities, which created unjust high expectations that she could not refuse.

Tokenized committee service. Another theme amongst the participants when it came to committee work was that they felt they were being tokenized in terms of their representation.

The first example is from Ann, who shared the following:

For example, when they [administrators] ask me to join a committee, [I’d wonder if it is]

because I’m [Asian] or it based on my merit only? So, it’s critical that we take care of

ourselves, and we have to know and believe in self-worth. And that’s challenging, and

we need to know that “you are damn good.” I am damn good. You need to believe in

yourself, minus the doubt within that. It’s not uncommon [other DFOC] individuals go

through the same experiences of struggling to believe in their self-worth. So yes, it’s like

that self-defeating, that doubt that keeps you limited. (Emphasis added as originally

expressed in ASL by the interviewee)

Internal doubt also came up with two other female DFOC participants. The doubt related to DFOC questioning if they were being asked to serve on a committee due to their skills and expertise versus their race or gender and fulfilling some type of real or imaginary diversity quota on the committee. One DFOC member explained an important issue that, despite the existence of other Faculty members of Color at their institution, he still felt oppressed and misunderstood.

His observation significantly emphasized the different experiences that different racial groups go through and the importance of not generalizing all POC experiences uniformly. Lorenzo stated:

And there’s a strong group of Black Faculty of Color […], and they’ve been around for a

while. And their cultures are different from us of the Latinx background or the Latino

background. […] At first, I was lonely. Sometimes I would be invited to different

committees to provide service because I was the only Deaf Latino. Eventually, enough

was enough with that [of committee service]. Knowing that I was only being invited

because I was the only Latino, and I needed to focus on myself and take care of things

that I needed to take care of as well.

Lorenzo reached a point of realizing how his intersectional identities were being exploited and he finally declined to join any additional committees. However, he was able to make that choice as he was already tenured and no longer probationary faculty. Marcus also shared his story of the slippery slope of being displayed as a trophy for his Blackness and Deaf identity while being exploited on a committee. He expressed the following:

That’s often what I feel is that it is tokenism like [his institution saying] “yes we have the

token individual here.” You know the name gets out about who you are, my position and

my credentials, and I often feel like a (poses like a model), there they’d go “We have

one! We have Black in here.” Plus, experiencing some type of…, it has some type of

passing in it, you know, like you pay a Deaf tax, you pay a Black tax, [or] you pay that

Minority tax for your services for being who you are. That’s an extra tax that you pay.

And it’s not just in a department: it’s institution wide.

Here Marcus states what many other Faculty of Color have discussed about paying a “minority tax” (Hirshfield & Joseph, 2012; Padilla, 1994), however based on the intersectionality of

DFOC, there would be paying double taxes (or more) to juggle their intersectional identity, which includes not only being Deaf, but also being a Person of Color. Susanna mirrored this

phenomenon, being presented as the only Deaf Hispanic faculty member at her institution and used a diversity model, which brought on feelings of scrutiny. This overlaps with the previous theme under the first research question, based on Joy’s and Nancy’s hyper-surveilled experiences.

Next, as an adjunct faculty, Joy explained the surprise that she felt with an obligated committee service, which she accepted in exchange for a free lunch. Included is a conversation between her and myself where I am represented as “I” for interviewer:

I: So, how are you remunerated [for your committee services]?

Joy: Lunch. That’s all I get is lunch.

I: Is it at least a good quality meal that they’re giving you?

Joy: They give me Subway.

I: No way, you’re kidding me?

Joy: Yep, that’s all I get: Subway. I’m serious. That’s all. That’s like Subway for lunch,

and I put it down on my resume that I was pulled to all these different committees, you

know, that the services go in my evaluation.

I: That’s definitely a huge service that you’re providing. Wow, and they just offered

Subway?!

I tried to close that conversation without showing my astonishment, but simply could not. It did not sit well with me that on top of her being an adjunct, she was obligated to do committee work.

It was not what I was expecting from all of the interviews I have had with tenured employees.

Her nonchalant responses made me wonder if this was acceptable. Eventually, I learned that Joy wanted to become an administrator at a high level, so this experience of committee service benefited her with a greater knowledge of how her institutional system operated. With that said,

however, to only be recognized and thanked for her service with a fast food meal, rather than more formal mechanisms such as a certificate of recognition or a letter of appreciation sent to her direct leadership, adds insult to her injury of already being burdened with additional service.

Benefits of service and representation. There are DFOC who did benefit from and were appreciated for their service, which was a positive attribute for their retention. Some of the participants were able to utilize their identity in a strategic manner when it came to different types of service and hiring, especially as it related to the importance of diversity. Joy shared the following:

I try to use the term when applying for a job. I let them know that I am DEAF. Not

formally Deaf, but generally as in “Deaf educator, Asian female,” so that’s an acronym I

borrowed from someone else. That’s me, personally. So, when I put that down as my

background, Deaf educator, Asian woman, and I want to make sure that I accommodate

what their needs are. Diversity is always first and foremost. You know, the state

government, they want inclusivity and that’s why I feel as an educator and always with

the state government, I guess I have a job. So I’ll stand out more.

Joy strategically used her gender, Deafness, and ethnicity to fulfill the diversity gap at her institution. This was echoed by Susanna, who knew her institution would “benefit” having her with her Hispanic identity because

a lot of people don’t understand our different identities, [and] how we contribute to

society at large, contributing my experience of what I went through. And how I’m able

to accommodate other students and what they may be going through, and a lot of other

professors don’t have that because they haven’t gone through similar experiences.

This firmly supports the concepts of deaf ontology (Kusters, De Maartje, & O’Brien,

2017) and racial/ethnic epistemology (Ladson-Billings, 2000), which are both understood by a shared body of experiences. Both concepts argue that those DFOC offered their authenticity of being Deaf and POC and their native knowledge of these identities, which overlaps with

“cultural intuition” (Delgado Bernal, 1998). The intersectional identity of DFOC carried a responsibility of representing and building a sense of belonging from shared experiences and epistemologies. Susanna added another privilege of being a full-time DFOC:

You know, I was just your regular part-time teacher and just kind of overlooked. Finally,

I’m in the system as full time [Lecturer]. Now, people are looking at me and contacting

me to give workshops and presentations. And I’m like, “Well,…”

Susanna closed that line with a smirk of glee referencing that she could contribute to her local community using her faculty status. Her job promotion allowed her to give to the university as well as her signing community. This was an exciting time for her local Spanish-speaking and signing community to have her represent and educate through workshops supporting the needs of

Latinx Deaf or signing people. This is crucially needed, most especially for trilingual interpreting services translating ASL, English, and Spanish.

Audistic, Linguistic, and Racial Battle Fatigue

Many of the DFOC experienced microaggressions (Sue, 2010), as mentioned earlier, that specifically affected their retention in negative ways. Their stories complimented the notion of

“racial battle fatigue” (Smith, 2004), which is defined as exhaustion from work stress dealing with racial microaggression. In addition to racial fatigue, most DFOC also suffered from the additional layer of a Deaf tax by experiencing linguicism, which is termed in this study as audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue. This type of depletion is defined as the exhaustive

impact of a nexus of racism, audism, and linguicism with all of these types of marginalization in effect simultaneously. This theme appeared repeatedly across the narratives in different forms of wording or actions of signing. There was a pattern of responses that referenced feeling exhausted, burnt out, jaded, emotionally drained, overburdened (signing with two handed of a handshape with “open-C” on top of both shoulders), and actions of huge exasperated sighs and slouched-over positions. For example, Antonio expressed his deep disappointment at being excluded from a collaboration at his institution with a local Deaf program while being the only

Deaf full-time faculty member on campus:

They didn’t even bother to type up a note and even email. Nope, nothing. They didn’t

tell me anything. I just went kind of like, “Thank you for informing me” and that’s it, but

that they didn’t give me any information [in advance]. […] They didn’t contact me.

They sent me nothing about this collaboration […] so my attitude was kind of like, “All

right, whatever.” You know, people are meeting together and getting together and

they’re not including me. Nobody could have found the time or respect to come up to

me. I’m not chasing after those people, you know? “Thank you for sharing that.” And I

watch those teachers show up and then leave. I do what I have to do. You know, I’m not

doing anything extra. That’s not…, it’s just not appropriate.

As a result of experiencing multiple microaggressions, DFOC have learned to cope and adapt in various ways. Cesar, another Latino faculty member, admitted to “role-playing” and code-switching using standard ASL for his high number of white students. He explained:

I admitted I’m going to act white, you know? I had to change, you know? Keeping my

job is what I wanted to do, going through that, yes, that’s what I had to do. So I had to

make those changes and put on that white mask and the white gestures and all of that.

And after work, I’d be so exhausted—I get to finally be myself and be who I am. It’s

pretty intense that it goes [down] deeply.

This adjunct faculty member constantly worried about his job security so he wanted to “behave” in a white manner—or in his words, “putting on a white mask”—to keep his job. In ASL,

“putting on a mask” can be translated as “role-playing,” a performance also reflected as

“compulsory whiteness” (Tehranian, 2007).

In another example, Antonio confessed how he felt like “throwing in the towel” when it came to him being faculty:

So, if I were to leave, you know, don’t be surprised. And it’s worse that I’m alone. I’m

fighting this fight by myself—you know the part-time teachers show up and they’re gone.

You know, there is nobody fighting for rights, fighting for interpreters, fighting for

equality. Every day I’m doing this, and it’s exhausting. Somebody used the words…

“emotional labor.” That phrase, “emotional labor”—constantly giving of yourself, and

we don’t get paid for this as teachers—that’s emotional labor that we put in. We don’t

[get any in] return. It’s not reciprocated, you know, people come and go, they don’t stay

at jobs they teach they leave, and that’s it. And now I’m kind of not bothered by that

anymore. I’m jaded. I’m actually jaded now, and hearing people have that same attitude

like “Yeah, whatever. Okay,” so you know they just assume, you know, and I assume

that as you grow, just the same cycles are repeated.

The “emotional labor” Antonio discussed resulted in his feeling jaded about the high turnover of adjunct faculty members. The low retention rate meant repetitive preparation through training incoming ignorant hearing and white faculty members who may conduct microaggressions or marginalize other Deaf and DPOC faculty members. His motivation of staying at work and

teaching has been depleted and that endangered his retention by putting up with the continuation of oppression and low retention of dedicated and supportive faculty members.

The next example is from a faculty member who had to go home to re-fuel on a daily basis before returning to his university. Marcus explained:

I know that I’m different. And it’s lonely, even though we’re all Deaf you would think

that all Deaf people just connected with me get it, but in my experience that hasn’t been

the case. And I feel burnt out from that often. I feel that my energy levels are dropping.

Before it was okay, but now it’s like, you know, at the end of the day I’m ready to go

home and when I do get home I have no energy to do the things for myself—just want to

kind of lay there and watch TV. It’s almost like imposter syndrome. It was strong for me

at the university at that time, I felt…you know, “I shouldn’t be here. I’m not worthy of

this, this is not right for me. I don’t have a right to be here,” and I got more support that

helped me to deal with the imposter syndrome. I know that other individuals were not so

fortunate.

The depletion of self-worth is a constant battle with what Marcus called “imposter syndrome,” and is supported by other Deaf scholars’ research (Chua et al., forthcoming; Clance & Imes,

1978). This describes feelings of “intellectual phoniness” while working in isolation or with interpreters, compounded by being emotionally depleted from dealing with hearing peers. This phenomenon can overlap with racial battle fatigue and self-doubt, which was also expressed through the participants’ debate of whether their intellectual contribution was being valued at their institution. Marcus also explained later that receiving multiple emails from different people across the nation requesting his feedback as one of the only Black Deaf scholars in the country was already exhausting.

Next, Desiree shared a “triggering” incident when she was asked to pass on her intellectual property to another white Deaf colleague to teach her materials. She described this incident:

Those stories, that content, these are my memories, my knowledge, my skill. You want

me to hand all this over to someone else? So I can be taken advantage of and not fitting

into the community—are you serious? I’m emotionally drained. And I need to prepare

to make sure that nobody’s triggered in the room. [That] I’m not triggered. [That] I’m

not triggering my boss. I have a right to be angry with them taking advantage of me.

The responsibilities become heavier. The emotional responsibility becomes heavier. I

have that workload that’s heavy. And you’ve got that burden on both shoulders, and I’m

expected and supposed to maintain and keep going? […Being overwhelmed is] when

you release one burden, more comes on the other side. When that side releases, there are

more burdens, more responsibility, more ways that you have to prove yourself. There’s

never a balance.

That very last line echoed in my head repeatedly. I confess here, when listening to Desiree pouring out her raw emotions I felt helpless and truly sympathetic. From her narrative, her

“emotional responsibility” appeared endearing when she had to maintain politeness or

“compulsory whiteness” to not lose her cool in meetings with her colleagues. All of those narratives can be triggering for any POC experiencing racism and any DPOC experiencing both racism and audism. As the colloquialism goes, “the struggle is real!” Each of these participants explained the depletion of their energy and limited powers to maintain an equitable teaching experience and safe space in their classrooms—for everyone, students and themselves, as a

DFOC member.

DFOC Peer Support System

Another facet related to the retention of DFOC is the presence or absence of DFOC peers.

Having the ability to interact with other DFOC at their institutions provides security and validation through shared intersectional experiences even while experiencing racial battle fatigue. These shared intersectional experiences are in direct contrast to the controversial concept, “DEAF-SAME,” (Friedner & Kusters, 2015) which is framed as a shared universal

Deaf experience by any Deaf body in hearing societies without including the critical lenses of race, gender, ability, and more. When asked if having other DFOC supported their retention, Lee replied:

Oh, definitely I do [agree]. One of them [DFOC], their parents are [from the same

country]. They’re close at a similar age and we’re similar in age. We use ASL and [an

Asian] sign language. And we’ve connected that way as well. You know, we celebrate

the [same events] in different cultural events. And that’s very important [to us].

This DFOC was able to enjoy his male counterpart’s shared life experiences outside of their campus life. As a Latino DFOC, Cesar was extremely fortunate to have another male Latino peer to seek guidance from. He shared:

There was one, yes […] a full-time professor. He was Latino Deaf, […] And he was

truly an inspiration to me [and] very supportive of me. Anytime when I had any type of

issues, I could go to him. He had the experience [and] the knowledge. He gets (got) it,

and we were on the same page. He understood the frustration. And I was shocked to say

like, “Wow, I’m not the only one.” So yeah, he was great, very supportive, very

inspiring.

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That was also echoed by seven other participants who felt relieved or safe to be working with another DFOC at their institution(s). In the next excerpt, a Black female faculty member dismantled the misconception of “DEAF-SAME” by sharing an example of white(-Deaf) privilege. When asked the same question about how it felt to have another DFOC at her campus,

Jacqueline remarked about her Deaf white colleagues:

This is so important for me having other People of Color, the diversity… just… I’m over

the whiteness taking over. And that’s just my personality. I’m… [There’s] just too much

whiteness out there. And it’s nice to see [POC] because it’s important because of my

perspective [about] Deaf culture. You know, so but everybody I see is white. And it

doesn’t apply much to me. Sorry, it just didn’t. You have your own cultures of white

individuals. For example, they may act a certain way. And there’s no empathy there.

And they just blurt things out without thinking, you know? Depending upon the

situation, I believe you need to be careful who you’re talking to. Not just anyone. I’m

Deaf. They’d reply, “That’s Deaf culture. I’m just going to be blunt with you. I’m just

going to be rude and that doesn’t apply to me.” [While] the white individuals can get

away with that, I cannot get away with that. And it’s not general Deaf culture because

for me, that won’t apply [to me] but I [see] them being white is so difficult. That [is

why] I’m speaking up.

Here Jacqueline shares how frustrating it can be at times to have Deaf white colleagues who believe there is a shared Deaf experience and make statements and claims towards a neutral

“Deaf culture.” Thus, having a white (Deaf) peer’s support may not equate to having a DFOC peer support.

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The next quote describes the needed support of another DFOC’s presence in order to feel validation. Keller recalled a conversation with another DFOC member at her institution, “And the other individual was very thankful as another Person of Color. You know, she said that,

‘You’re not the only one. And we have to stand up for each other.’ And I felt that was an important experience.” On an important note, each of those participants who enjoyed the presence of their DFOC colleagues (except Jacqueline above) also shared the same gender or sex identity, which is another issue to consider regarding shared intersectionalities.

Conclusion and Summary of Findings

From the interview with 15 DFOCs, the participants shared some common ground in their intersectional and retention experiences. The participants showed resilience in continuing their profession as faculty even with limited job opportunities despite their qualifications and advanced degrees. Many of them were aware of their tokenism and tokenized committee service, which had both benefits and disadvantages. Within the time limit of the interviews, many of them took up most of the time pouring out narratives about their job challenges, which revealed audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue. In sum, there is no balance in dealing with imposter syndrome, emotional labor, and white masks. Finally, in some examples of DFOC peer support, they portrayed optimism in providing support systems and resources, which will be explored in the next chapter, alongside some recommendations and suggestions for future studies.

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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

Introduction

Using a qualitative design method with critical grounded theoretical frameworks, this study gathered 15 interview participants who identified themselves as Deaf People of Color,

ASL-fluent, and higher education faculty. With my deepest gratitude, I acknowledge these participants’ courageousness and willingness to open up and share their feelings about being underrepresented, under-privileged, and marginalized as faculty member. The research questions they assisted in answering are as follows: 1) What are the intersectional experiences of

DFOC? 2) What are their retention experiences? This final chapter first provides a summary of findings from Chapter 4 alongside implications and recommendations for practice, policy, and future research. Finally, this chapter concludes with some significant takeaways from this study, outlines some limitations, and offers some closing words.

Summary of Findings

Intersectional Experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color

The intersectional experiences of DFOC were similar to sentiments shared by Faculty of

Color in general, which include serving a great number of Students of Color and incorporating

Indigenous and POC perspectives to Eurocentric curricula (Villalpando & Delgado Bernal,

2002). DFOC offer their DPOC knowledge through deaf ontology (Kusters et al., 2017) and racial or ethnic epistemology (Ladson-Billing, 2000). Furthermore, DFOC bring an additional abundance of knowledge about DPOC culture, history, and linguistic variations to dismantle white-centric Deaf-related disciplines.

Unfortunately, DFOC also experienced multiple forms of microaggressions. These include the following: other faculty and staff trivializing or dismissing their credentials;

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experiencing hyper-scrutiny; being presumed to be unapproachable; xenophobia; having a non- native ASL accent and the use of a non-native voiced accent. Hyper-scrutiny resulted in increased “scolding fingers” and infantilization from leadership due to DFOC’s presence, which also drew extra unwanted attention. Third, their racialized identities or appearances presented some irrational assumptions that their qualifications are not equal to their white colleagues.

Another prejudice DFOC experienced that escalated to a type of macroaggression is xenophobia.

Due to the immigrant backgrounds of some of my participants, xenophobia was apparent toward their second- or third-language acquisition, which interfered with their signing or voicing skills.

Thus, their accents in both modalities drew unwanted exclusion or malice.

Finally, due to institutionalized racism, the inefficacy of DFOCs’ authority regularly prevents their access to accurate voice representation for their racialized identities. Without the option for Interpreter of Colors, what I identified as inconspicuous voice accessibility, this led to

“whitewashing” their word choice or articulation of non-U.S. American names. Ultimately, this detrimental effect can create an unsafe space for DFOC in various academic environments.

Retention Experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color

In regard to retention, the participants shared what helped them stay but also what risked their retention as DFOC. Multiple themes were raised in both contexts: being overburdened with committee service; marking their ground with their resilience; audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue; and DFOC Peer Support.

First, the resilience of DFOC kept them in the workforce to maintain their representation, as they all shared the same hope and inspiration that kept them working—their students. More than two-thirds of the participants had no DFOC during their postsecondary education; thus, they wanted to break that cycle and create substantial representation, enlightening their students of

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their existence and sharing their “standpoint epistemologies,” which deconstruct dominant

Eurocentric knowledge through Black feminist theories (Collins, 2000; Schwandt, 2007). In addition, regarding the issue of underrepresentation, there is another challenge Deaf people in general must overcome: limited job opportunities and, sometimes, being easily attracted to the

“cash cow” business of ASL education (Brueggeman, 2016). This idea of a “cash cow” refers to the surge of ASL classes after 2004, proliferating throughout postsecondary institutions nationwide and amassing a great number of enrollments, seats, and funds from other language- learning classes.

Overlapping with their resilience and goal to maintain their existence at their institutions,

DFOC were aware of their tokenized committee service; however, this also at times enabled them to provide input by using their position to express their thoughts and opinions on various matters. Their committee service led to some optimism, but also had negative results. The optimism came from making a difference; whereas, the negative result was to tokenize their presence while they served their institution due to their ethnicity and Deaf identity helping to meet the “diversity effort” (Arnold, Crawford, & Khalifa, 2016). The actions of DFOC are not tokenized if they do not feel exploited and their involvement creates a positive change for diverse populations and greater inclusion.

The next retention experience reflected the challenge of DFOC’s energy being depleted due to their linguistic differences, different abilities, and different racial or ethnic identities.

These differences present the nexus, which is termed in this study “audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue,” acknowledging the impact and weight of DFOC’s intersectionalities and their epistemologies and ontological experiences.

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Finally, those participants who were fortunate to have a DFOC Peer Support system at their institution commented on how resourceful and useful that space, created by their colleagues, was. This support is crucial to DFOC retention, enabling them to cease forced pleasantries (Keller) and smiles (Desiree), seeming lighthearted (Marcus), or signing white

(Cesar) and, finally, to relax. Such brave and safe spaces assure DFOC that they are amongst their peers, treating each other with respect after having knowingly shared mutual struggles. The next section outlines what this study has contributed to gaps in the literature.

Discussion of the Literature

Returning to my methodology and findings, this study connects with a large body of literature and general fields of scholarship related to the topic of DFOC. The narratives of

DFOC in my study contribute significantly to the gaps in the literature. In Chapter 2, I covered four themes for the literature review: general Deaf education, Deaf faculty members, retention of

FOC, and Deaf Critical Race theories. I concentrate on the last three for this section.

Most of the literature that has focused on Deaf faculty reviews detrimental factors in their working environments, limited access to qualified interpreting services, and the dichotomy between hearing and Deaf faculty members in their departments (Brueggeman, 2016; Burke &

Nicodemus, 2013; McDermid, 2009; Robinson & Henner, 2018; Schornstein, 2005; Smith &

Andrews, 2015; Stapleton, 2015; Tidwell, 2004; Trowler & Turner, 2001; Woodcock, Rohan, &

Campbell, 2007). This study has expanded that dichotomy, increasing its complexity by involving the intersectional experiences of DFOC who have lived through the multiple oppressions of racism and linguicism (and at times, sexism). For example, as Jacqueline’s narrative revealed, sometimes white Deaf cultural behavior or customs “did not apply to” her, which recognized the white privilege of white Deaf faculty members being able to be “blunt” in

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their communication. As a DFOC, Jacqueline knew that she was not afforded this same style of communication as faculty, staff, and students may misinterpret her intentions. In addition, even highly qualified white interpreters were incompatible with DFOC due to their cultural incompetence or presented a threat to Students of Color feeling safe in the classroom. In sum, a multitude of microaggressions that DFOC in particular face have been overlooked in previous studies on Deaf faculty.

Similar to the previous theme, the second theme focused only on FOC in retention without any consideration of different intersectional backgrounds of those who experienced ableism or audism. Nevertheless, there has been much scholarship on the intersectionality of

Women of Color in academia experiencing both racism and sexism (Ford, 2012; Jain & Turner,

2011; Muhs, Niemann, González, & Harris, 2012; Niemann, Muhs, & González, 2020; Pittman,

2012). However, none of these studies include any coverage on disabled or Deaf intersectional lived experiences and narratives.

Some narratives from DFOC highlight what Aguirre (2000) referred to as being a “model citizen” or “shining example” falling into an “ethnic mobility trap,” where FOC are forced to represent their institution and/or committee and are pressured with greater responsibilities.

Findings from this study showed a pattern of unjust treatment from colleagues and leadership, as well as tokenization in the form of committee service. DFOC often felt they were forced into participating in committee service not just because of how their ethnic or racial identity contributed to the membership, but also their Deaf or disabled identity. The DFOC narratives reinforced scholars’ arguments regarding how institutions put forth “diversity action plans”

(Iverson, 2007) or a “diversity effort” (Arnold, Crawford, & Khalifa, 2016) in their hiring and retention efforts towards FOC. Both of those articles warned that this effort might backfire,

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resulting in inequality, as the microaggressions revealed in the data findings. Finally, the lived experiences of DFOC complement Smith’s (2004) concept of “racial battle fatigue,” which is defined as depleted energy and other physiological effects from work stress dealing with racial microaggressions. Added to racial battle fatigue is audistic and linguistic battle fatigue, which I define as a depletion and profound impact from the nexus of racism, audism, and linguicism with all of these types of marginalization and discrimination experienced simultaneously. Finally, regarding the scholarship that covers both Deaf faculty and FOC retention, this study incorporated DFOC’s standpoint epistemologies, where they were no longer willing to consider themselves, as Stanley (2006a) wrote, “an outsider in [Deaf] academia” (p. 14), similarly to how

FOC were treated in their academic fields.

For this study I utilized three critical theories: intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989, 1991;

Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013), Critical Race Theory in education (Ladson-Billings & Tate,

1995) and Deaf Latinx Critical Theory (García-Fernández, 2014, 2020). The DFOC in this study aligned with intersectionality in that they experienced more than two types of oppression: audism, linguicism, racism, and sometimes, sexism. The second research question answered the issues of Critical Race Theory in (higher) education by exposing how institutionalized racism shaped the lack of support that that DFOC received from their colleagues, or the lack of representation in their prior studies and the lack of Interpreters of Color.

Lastly, García-Fernández’s four tenets of Deaf Latinx Critical Theory (intersectionality, ideologies, consciousness, and counter-narratives) framed the answers to both research questions. As an initial example of intersectionality, Susanna mentioned her opportunity to represent her Deaf and Spanish-speaking communities due to her intersectional identities. For ideologies, Jacqueline wanted to overthrow the dominant ideologies that white Deaf cultural

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behaviors should be applicable for their entire Deaf communities. Also, Nancy dismantled how students would “perceive Deaf Women of Color in academia” by setting high standards in academic achievement. For consciousness, Cesar admitted that he used a “white mask” when code-switching his signing styles to protect himself from his mostly white students. Secondly,

Marcus realized that his white interpreters endangered the POC spaces at academic conferences, instead of his deafness alienating his potential POC peers. In addition, Lee recognized his non- native ASL accent bringing more diversity to his ASL teaching experience for the students to learn different styles of signing. Finally, for counter-narratives, Ann explained how she did not originally think of herself as a professor due to her terminal degree and has not been exposed to or had any DFOC during her postsecondary education, but she was determined to prove that she could be a DFOC without a doctorate. Furthermore, Joy exposed how as an adjunct faculty member she was still expected to commit to university service despite her meager compensation of a Subway sandwich. Her story indicates that it is not only tenured/tenure-earning faculty members’ who have the issue of a heavy workload, but how her intersectional background had tokenized her for committee service.

To apply these findings to existing scholarship, I recommend broadening the theoretical framework from Deaf LatCrit by incorporating the experiences of audism, deaf ontology, and racial and ethnic epistemology instead of limiting it to Deaf-Latinx epistemology. This leads to the next section, which provides some implications and recommendations with contributions of theory from the data findings.

Implications and Recommendations

The findings from this study addressed gaps in the literature regarding the underrepresentation of DFOC and their intersectional backgrounds, along with problems related

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to retention. Bringing in the previous discussions from the literature, I first offer some contributions to theoretical frameworks.

In the interviews, DFOC also offered ideas, advice, and recommendations about how to mitigate their underrepresentation and the risk of low retention. Thus, this section will secondly synthesize their suggestions for practice, policy, and future research.

Contributions to Theory

I originally designed this research plan with a grounded theory while using the three frameworks of intersectionality, CRT in education, and DeafLat Crit. Given the data analysis and findings, instead of grounding a new framework, I re-ground the previous theories by using the same tenets and principles while incorporating the lens of deaf ontology and racial and ethnic epistemologies. For the first theoretical framework, intersectionality is already embedded within the first tenet of DeafLat Crit. Most importantly, within that tenet, it re-centralizes the POC- focus by centering on the race/racism experienced in the Deaf community, unlike the original

Deaf-Crit Theory (Gertz, 2009).

Concerning Critical Race Theory in education, it has recognized not only the nexus between structural racism and schooling but also incorporated the intersections of audism and linguicism. Several examples show that DFOC, without any model of Deaf Teachers of Color or

DFOC during their (post)secondary education, must endure and overcome memories of being neglected and marginalized by their past white (Deaf) professors. In addition, the lack of DFOC peer support shows the relative paucity of graduate Deaf Students of Color in the postsecondary education pipeline. Finally, through DFOC’s standpoint knowledge, they recognize the need to reform their curricula or be exploited for revising their curriculum with added education about cultural and linguistic diversity, without due credit.

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Following up the discussions of using the literature of DeafLat Crit and examples from this study, I now explain how each tenet was re-grounded in this framework. The first tenet

(intersectionality) already focuses on multiple oppressions experienced by Deaf POC. The second tenet highlights the multiple ideologies of cultural, lingual, and racial and ethnic diversity, diverging from monolithic Eurocentric Deaf or speaking values. The third tenet set the analysis based on the consciousness of Deaf ontology and racial/ethnic epistemologies of DFOC, aware of their tokenized profession and (expiring) resilience during their faculty positions.

Lastly, the fourth tenet of storytelling finally allows DFOC the needed space that they yearn for to express grave concerns about their occupations and past experiences, which proved to be a counter-narrative as the rare DFOC of their institution. Most of their narratives were thankfully accessed due to the built trust and shared identities between the participants and myself, which again highlights Deaf ontology and standpoint knowledge.

In closing, while it makes sense to utilize DeafLat Crit theory for Deaf Latinx communities, and with all due respect for the Deaf Latinx population, I propose renaming Deaf

LatCrit as Deaf POC-Critical Theory, or simply reframed as Deaf Critical Theory, as a reclamation of an authentic DPOC scholarship that generally explores the experiences of DPOC.

However, this renaming requires more collaborative research by other Deaf Scholars of Color utilizing their cultural intuition, which is further explicated in the next section that recommends future research.

Implications for Practice

One of the interview questions asked the participants to name other DFOC outside of their institutions. The answers were astonishing. The first five names were the same since those members (not named here) are highly visible in Deaf education across the nation. Often, some

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names were those of deceased scholars. Others could think of those with doctorates but who were not faculty. Finally, and most intriguing of all, each participant first named those sharing the same racial identity as their own before thinking of others. When asked what they thought of the small list of DFOC, most replied that they were “sad but not surprised.” They recognized that they themselves were part of a short list and this was largely attributed to their resilience as faculty and a desire to maintain their existence in the academy.

DFOC registry and media presence. The lack of DFOC across the nation and the lack of support they receive may encourage some type of national database to identify who DFOC are and where they are located. As Marcus stated, receiving too many emails from outside his institution caused weariness when people asked for his assistance with items such as creating more diversity-centric curricula. We need to be cautious about releasing such a list of DFOC, which may have some negative consequences. For example, such public information may exacerbate the DFOC feeling of being “burned out” (Andrews & Covell, 2006; Parasnis &

Fischer, 2005) or what I have referred to as audistic, linguistic, and racial battle fatigue.

Thus, to avoid this hazard, a private registry should be maintained at an educational organization, such as the National Deaf Education Conference (NDEC), which is often associated with the National Association for the Deaf (NAD). This registry should be accessible through a secure account of any member registered with either the NDEC (or the NAD). This approach will allow for more control to prevent harm or trolling from the public by limiting information access, for example, to three email addresses per day. If there is any improper conduct or nuisance, the NDEC can decide what type of action to pursue, such as terminating membership access.

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Although DFOC wanted to keep their identities confidential from a distributed database or listserv, they did recommend greater media representations of different DPOC faces among educational leaders and faculty members. They would also like to see more video productions spotlighting various DFOC in order to inspire Students of Color and our future DPOC leaders.

The next recommendation to mitigate the underrepresentation in media is to increase media highlights from an organization such as the National Deaf Center (NDC), a research center at the

University of Texas, Austin that focuses on postsecondary outcomes in Deaf communities across the nation. The NDC has great resources and funding to highlight student success and career involvement after graduation; it also collects meticulous statistics about matriculation, and distributes media representations of successful models in Deaf communities. It would be wonderful if the NDC incorporated a report on DFOC statistics and highlighted various DFOC who are willing to represent their group online. Perhaps the NDC and the NDEC can form a partnership, embarking on this project together for greater access to DFOC across the nation.

DFOC mentoring advice. Along with media representation, the idea of a mentorship network was also discussed. There were recommendations for a large structured DFOC peer support group within these various national Deaf organizations. Other participants had an issue with the idea of mentoring; it may be overwhelming for them since they are already so busy.

Therefore, I include below an excerpt from Nancy, who shared some words of wisdom for junior

DFOC to rely on:

Specifically resilience. It’s important [to have] resilience […] First, [to] validate their

[own] feelings. Then, [to] find support to help them to navigate. I think there’s a need

for conversations about Persons of Color who will always have a perception of you. […]

And that can affect, unfortunately—and should not—can affect your career or grad

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school. You have to keep that in mind. Navigate to get your tenure. Get your respect.

Then you can say whatever you want throughout until then. Be careful how you behave

around others. Resilience and Mentoring, we need to talk about those two

reinforcements. (Emphasis added as originally expressed in ASL by the interviewee)

Nancy raised an important point about other perceptions of oneself as a DPOC, which is so difficult to overcome and can be seen as epistemological racism, which means “racially biased ways of knowing” (Scheurich & Young, 1997, p. 4; Delgado Bernal, 1998) or a Eurocentric dominant ideology (Solórzano, 1997; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) that benefits those groups with power and greater privilege. Another participant, Joy, stated that one needs “to have grit” similar to Duckworth’s (2016) concept of grit, which resembles a combination of passion and perseverance. Joy suggested creating relationships with many people nearby, regardless of them being Deaf or hearing, POC or white, as they eventually will be your support system for navigating the career ladder. She continued by stating that DFOC should not wait for other

DFOC to appear and rescue them, and to learn to build resilience and trust oneself to endure difficult times in employment.

Implications for Policy

As there is no specific site or institution under study, the policy implications for institutional changes and recommendations may be complicated due to various state, regional, and institutional policies. Thus, the idea of policy recommendations is general in nature for administrators, such as suggested guidelines when conducting diversity-hiring and requiring certain resources to support DFOC retention. The first recommendation for future junior DFOC is to have a mentor of their choice, either from the same institution or from the nationwide private registry of DFOC as previously discussed. Often, junior faculty members have an in-

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department mentoring support system for two years, and this should be written into their pre- tenure contract.

In addition to that contract agreement, as Turner, Myers, and Creswell (1999) have identified, are barriers to both the recruitment and retention of FOC, one of which concerns publications. Due to the different (visual-spatial) modality of sign languages and the limited options of peer-reviewed journals accepting the narrowed focus on Deaf populations, a policy should be written in contracts to allow a larger range of academic publications for DFOC (or

Deaf faculty in general) to be counted towards their tenure scholarship requirements. Text-based publications, sometimes, do not welcome visual-modality media, and DFOC’s research focuses are often too narrow to be approved by highly-ranked journals. Thus, it would be valuable for

DFOC to have a broad range of academic journals to publish in as a part of their institutions’ expectations. In addition to their evaluations, DFOC’s preparation of curricula, their search for available local Interpreters of Color, and, as Stapleton (2015) and Woodcock et al. (2007) discuss, the extra time invested in preparing their (temporarily) hired IOC or white interpreters for their “diverse” curricula, ought to be recognized as extra responsibilities specifically for

DFOC due to their intersectionalities.

The next recommendation is to offer support to DFOC by allowing them to request interpreters from a group or registry of IOC. This will mitigate the problem of “inconspicuous voice accessibility,” which is one of the data findings concerning DFOC’s intersectional issues.

However, there are some barriers at an administrative level regarding hiring full-time or part- time interpreting staff or incompetent signing members working in the same department, such as a coordinator or secretary (Stapleton, 2015; Trowler & Turner, 2002; Woodcock et al., 2007).

Therefore, it may be unreasonable to require the university or college to hire more staff, but it is

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feasible to request an IOC from an interpreting agency for temporary appointments and special events.

The difficulty with policy recommendations is figuring out how we can institutionalize them nationwide. I turn to organizations to recommend that institutional policies be enforced— national or local—backed with evidence of DFOC’s needs for shared identity support and peer support. The first example is the Registry of Interpreters (RID), a national organization that holds the certificates that every interpreter needs to be considered highly qualified at different levels. A white paper authored by RID stated that their organization has 1,195 IOC registered among 14,284 total members nationwide (RID, 2018). Thus, IOC form 8% of the entire national registry, and this statistic may include Deaf Interpreters of Color, which a total of general Deaf interpreters number up to 234 but requires further research on the subject. It would be beneficial for the RID to provide a private list for DFOC or academicians to access a registry of IOC and their locations. As Marcus discussed regarding national conferences mobilized across the country, there is no way for him or any DFOC to know immediately of all the sources through which to find a highly qualified IOC. The emphasis on “highly” is meant to indicate that not all

IOC are suited to interpret at the postsecondary level or for specific disciplines, just as we cannot expect all interpreters to be knowledgeable about every subject.

For a situation such as Antonio’s, who benefited from working with a Latina interpreter in his classroom, Latinx-identified interpreters should have a stronger networking system with

Deaf Latinx faculty members. The interpreters need not necessarily be Spanish-fluent or trilingual but be culturally competent with Latinx cultures. A good start in this direction is a trilingual sign language interpreter agency called Mano a Mano, with approximately 30+ members registered on its public list. Like García-Fernández’s (2014) study, using Deaf Latinx

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epistemology, it would be useful for both Deaf Latinx faculty members and Latinx interpreters to connect and become familiarized with different community providers.

Organizations that can implement a policy to support DFOC at Deaf-related educational conferences, either large or small-scale, such as the American Educational Research Association

(AERA), which has a specific Special Interest Group on Deaf topics), the NDEC, the ASL

Teacher Association (ASLTA), and the American College Education-Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing

(ACE-DHH). The recommended policy is to hold or offer ad-hoc meetings or committees to create a new space for DFOC to gather and foster greater solidarity among themselves. The other type of national Deaf-related conferences are those specifically designed as DPOC spaces, such as National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA), Council de Manos, or National Deaf People of

Color (NDPC). These organizations could host pre-conferences or summits for those DFOC who already plan to attend DPOC conferences. Lastly, it would be important for DFOC’s teaching or service evaluations that attending and participating in those small-scale summits or conferences count as community service or professional development.

Future Research

There are many potential research topics that stem from this study on DFOC. I name just three in this section. The first area occurred to me when writing about the insufficiency of

DFOC and mentors. It would be good to investigate coordinators of ASL or Deaf-related studies programs regarding how they conduct the hiring process. This study would allow one to determine where they promote job postings and announcements and/or to explore the network connections among certain agencies, groups, or individuals. It is vital to know whether there are

DPOC being represented at any of those agencies. In addition to understanding the details of

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retention of DFOC, I would like the opportunity to interview DFOC who left their occupations so we can see what kind of retention strategies need to improve.

Parasnis et al. (2005) advocate the disaggregation of racial data, and I agree with their closing point that each racial group needs be respected and honored for its different experiences of varying oppression and marginalization in higher education. Therefore, another potential research area is to focus on each racial or ethnic group of DFOC separately and to co-research with scholars from those specific groups. Finally, it would be beneficial to study the relationship between DFOC or Deaf Scholars of Color working with IOC. A more in-depth exploration of this topic may or may not be aligned with the findings from this research regarding the lack of

IOC representing the authentic voice of DFOC or presenting proper cultural competency in particular situations.

Significant Takeaways

In this section, I discuss the lessons learned from my research on DFOC, who are part of an extremely small community of Deaf scholars. I consider all of them to be my distinguished colleagues. Therefore, it was particularly important for me to approach their narratives with extreme respect. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the member-checking process sometimes turned into collaborative participation, allowing the participants more control and greater clarity as to their original intentions. Throughout my data analysis, I realized that my research positioning amplified Deaf ontological research experiences. This practice reminded me of the discussion in which Delgado Bernal introduced “cultural intuition” (1998), which incorporates one’s personal and professional experience, existing literature, and analytical research as part of the research process. Drawing on my cultural intuition allowed me to practice decolonizing methodologies to

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dismantle rigid binary thinking (Calderón, Delgado Bernal, Pérez Huber, Malagón, & Vélez,

2012).

Second, one of my interview questions asked for the participants’ definitions of intersectionality to ensure they knew the purpose of my study, specifically my first research question. From one participant, I learned that intersectionality has been applied differently for dark-skinned Latino men. One of the responses came from Lorenzo and I asked him to elaborate about being a Latino man because I wanted to learn more about his position toward sexism and/or his sex privilege. He explained the following:

Because I’m Latino, I present as Latino. I do feel that I’m oppressed for that reason. As

a man, because they think I’m dangerous, and that’s a form of oppression. They think

I’m going to steal from them; I’m a gangster or a gang banger. For example, I was

walking in a mall. It was here locally, and as I’m walking, I saw two women and we

made eye contact as humans do. You look at somebody coming towards you, and you

make eye contact. And this woman grabs her purse and puts her body in front of her

purse as if I was going to hurt her or steal her purse because she saw [someone], who

resembles a Mexican man, and assumed that I was going to steal from her. So, those

stereotypes and labels are put on me, and that’s a form of oppression. She doesn’t realize

that I have another culture. I have a [terminal degree]. All of those things. She just saw

the way I was dressed, the way I looked. It was on a weekend. I was just being myself. I

wasn’t dressed as formally as I would be in a classroom teaching at a collegiate level.

Listening to Lorenzo’s anecdote was a humbling experience and made me realize the unhealthy, toxic climate that our current president has created toward Latino men in the U.S. This is not to emphasize various intersectional experiences having more impact than others, but it is a sobering

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truth that a variety of bodies can experience different oppressions which may easily be overlooked. In Lorenzo’s case, he experienced audism, colorism, and xenophobia simultaneously.

Another takeaway was the interview with Susanna, who caught me off-guard at the beginning of the first interview question, after I asked her to explain her racial/ethnic identity.

She blurted out, “White!” With my cultural intuition, I recalled that some POC never consider themselves this way, despite being treated as such. Maintaining my cool, I eventually asked how other people view her, and she started to open up: “Brown.” This correspondence made me realize that some Latinx do not share the same values as all POC, but during the interview we both saw that we had some mutual struggles as DFOC. At the same time, I did wonder why she signed up for this research on DFOC in the first place, and I got my answer at the end of our interview. After expressing my gratitude for her time, she finished by saying, “Any time for my

Brown people!” This summed up the essences of Deaf ontology and POC epistemology that made this encounter a success.

Limitations

As planned in my methodological design, I succeeded in gathering exactly 15 participants; however, I wish that I had had more time to collect up to another five to ten interviews with DFOC. I had only a short time for data collection, and the challenges of the

Educational Doctoral program included multitasking studying, teaching, and researching simultaneously. I originally wanted to use two focus groups but realized that this was asking too much of my busy participants, and the minuscule community of DFOC could mean some unknown or unrevealed discomfort among themselves. I considered setting up a focus group

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during a conference but felt guilty about impinging on the social time of my peers. In the end, I decided to stick with individual interviews and forego focus group interviews.

Nine of my participants were female, outnumbering my male participants. Deaf female educators dominate Deaf-related education, which posed a minor limitation regarding finding more male participants, which could be achieved in future research as a focused topic. Finally, I was unable to locate or contact more interested participants in the Midwest. This small sample was already a limitation, and furthermore, was sourced mainly in the East.

Conclusion

The importance of this study is that it provided a rare opportunity to listen to the expressions of DFOC regarding their intersectional and retention experiences at their postsecondary institutions. This study allowed DFOC to relate their struggles and ambitions regarding continuing teaching and their love for the profession. For example, Jacqueline commented that she wanted to provide her students with what she did not receive in her own education. This ambition is an effective and admirable method of breaking the cycle of oppression in education and dismantling racial inequity.

The data obtained from the DFOC interviews reveal the crucial significance of how their narratives expand the fields of higher education, CRT, and racial/ethnic epistemologies by incorporating Deaf ontology. Listening to more stories and lived experiences will contribute further to our understanding of various bodily realities in different spaces. Thus, DFOC narratives are a pushback for greater inclusion in multiple fields of FOC, Deaf education, and

Critical Race studies. Finally, the framework of this study re-channeled Deaf Critical Race

Theory to a more POC-centralized grounded theory by using Deaf LatCrit Theory as a correction and reclamation of scholarship that belongs to the community of DPOC.

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Epilogue

This year of 2020 will be an extremely memorable era for this country (and worldwide)

because we are currently fighting both through a global pandemic of COVID-19 and against racism by protesting racial violence, especially police brutality. During this current period, I am writing my dissertation, which I see as an extremely significant contribution to a greater understanding of a need within higher education to value and to retain Deaf Faculty of Color.

These data findings present that DFOC will support and educate both students and peers through an intersectional lens from having experienced institutional audism, linguicism, and systemic racism. As a final note, higher education should be a place that provides diverse education about cultural, linguistic, and racial differences and different abilities, not only to check a box or to fulfill an institutional diversity action plan but to strive for the greater good of society in this country and beyond.

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APPENDIX A

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

DEAF FACULTY OF COLOR INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH

Email from Rezenet Moges-Riedel to Deaf faculty members on different Listservs, “Deaf Academics,” and a national registry of Deaf Scholars. Also posted on Facebook in a Deaf Scholars of Color group:

To Whom It May Concern—

I am writing to inform you about a dissertation study that is being conducted at CSUN regarding Deaf Faculty of Color in postsecondary institutions. Rezenet Moges-Riedel, a doctoral candidate is conducting the study as part of the Ed. D. degree requirements.

The purpose of Rezenet Moges-Riedel’s dissertation study is to learn more about Deaf Faculty of Color and their intersectional and retention experiences. This study will add new knowledge to existing information regarding Deaf experiences in academia. The participants would identify as a Deaf Person of Color, be ASL-fluent, and be a faculty member at any postsecondary institution. This applies to you if you are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing and if you identify yourself as a Person of Color and a faculty member. Your participation in this study would be to participate in one 60 to 75 minute interview.

Any personally identifiable characteristics such as your name or institution will not appear in the study. Participating in this study is completely voluntary and you may withdraw at any time.

Your time and investment in this study is greatly appreciated. If you would like to participate, please contact Rezenet Moges-Riedel at [email protected] or 562-370- 1350. Thank you in advance for considering participation in this study.

Sincerely,

Rezenet Moges-Riedel, Educational Doctoral Candidate, CSUN

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APPENDIX B Deaf Faculty of Color Study General Interview Guide

I. Pre-interview Session: Introduction/Background

Welcome and introduction: Good morning/afternoon/evening. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. Before we begin the interview session, I’d like to give you the opportunity to read and sign the Consent to Participate in Research.

Purpose of the interview: This interview is intended to collect information for a research study that examines the intersectional and retention experiences of Deaf Faculty of Color. During this interview, we will talk about your educational background, teaching experiences, and relations with students, faculty colleagues, and administrators.

Consent: Please review, sign, and date the written informed consent form. I’d be pleased to respond to your questions about the form.

Timing: Today’s interview will last approximately 60 to 75 minutes. Are there any questions before I get started?

II. Interview Session

Main Questions

1. What is your racial identity and ethnic background(s)? a. Is this a major part of your social identity?

2. Where did you get your education? a. What motivated you to start your MA/PhD/EdD? b. Deaf program? Size? Interpreters? c. Describe your past teachers. Any Deaf or POC?

3. Did your family sign to you in your upbringing? Do you have any deaf family members? a. How is the communication between you and parents? b. How many languages do you and your family know? c. What are their educational backgrounds?

4. Walk me through your former and current faculty jobs. a. What did you enjoy the most about each? b. Why did you end some of those jobs?

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5. What does intersectionality mean to you? a. What do you think are your intersectional identities? b. How does intersectionality function for you in the classroom? During office hours? Around your campus(es)?

6. How many others are DFOC at your institution? Provide demographics if you can. a. Is this an important issue to you? Why or why not? b. Do you think this is also an important issue for your white colleagues?

7. Explain to me how it feels to be Deaf [specific race identity] in your faculty groups. a. What’s the advantage of identifying this way? b. What’s the disadvantage?

8. Do you get together with other faculty members? Deaf, hearing, POC? a. If yes, do any of those gatherings help you in any positive way? b. If no, do you wish to have that gathering opportunity? c. If no, would you try to arrange one for your shared identities?

9. If there was an association (or union) of Faculty-of-Color at your institution, would you join? Why or why not?

10. Can you name other full-time Deaf Faculty of Color? Deaf Professors of Color? Name them all in your state/city. a. How do you feel about that? If a low number or none: b. Why do you think there is a low number? Or if zero, why is that? c. What needs to change to increase more DFOC?

11. Can you describe your faculty-student relationships? a. Have you experienced any comments from Student of Color basing on your racial identity? b. Have you built any strong connections with your Students of Color? Stronger than others? c. Any emotional toil involved with your students, especially Students of Color? Feeling any exhaustion for any specific reason?

12. Have you experienced any oppression or microaggressions, as a faculty member, due to your Deaf and POC identities? If yes, please explain an example you feel comfortable sharing. a. If any, what keeps you resilient to those microaggressions? b. If no, was there any time when you have felt underestimated/trivialized?

13. What would you suggest to increase or maintain the retention of Deaf Faculty of Color?

14. How important is it for a community college or university to have a DFOC teaching there? How come?

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15. What kind of supporting resources have you had or would like to have to make your job easier?

16. Who has been influential and/or supportive in pursuing your academic position and career?

17. Do you feel like you owe it to someone to succeed?

18. What experiences have prepared you for a teaching career at college or university?

19. Did you feel like a token or being a part of “diversity efforts” at your college/university?

Closing Questions I would like give you a final opportunity to help us examine these issues. Before I end today, is there anything that I missed? Do you have anything else to add at this time? Have you said everything that you wanted to say but didn’t get a chance to say? Have you shared everything that is significant about these interactions with me? If there’s anything else that you recall after our interview session, I invite you to share it by contacting me at either email or videophone (VP).

Compensation: As a thank-you for your participation in this interview, I would like to offer you a $20.00 Visa gift card.

III. Post-Interview Session: Debriefing and Closing Thank you for participating in today’s interview session. I appreciate you taking the time and sharing your ideas with me. I also want to restate that what you have shared with me is confidential. No part of our discussion that includes names or other identifying information will be used in any report or document. Finally, I want to provide you with a chance to ask any questions that you might have about this interview. Do you have any questions at this time?

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APPENDIX C

California State University, Northridge CONSENT TO ACT AS A HUMAN RESEARCH PARTICIPANT

“Few and Far Between: Deaf Faculty of Color at Postsecondary Institutions”

You are being asked to participate in a research study. “Few and Far Between: Deaf Faculty of Color at Postsecondary Institutions,” is a study conducted by Rezenet T. Moges-Riedel as part of the requirements for the Ed.D. degree in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Participation in this study is completely voluntary. Please read the information below and ask questions about anything that you do not understand before deciding if you want to participate. A researcher listed below will be available to answer your questions.

RESEARCH TEAM Researcher: Rezenet T. Moges-Riedel Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 18111 Nordhoff St. Northridge, CA 91330-8265 562-370-1350 [email protected]

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Dimpal Jain Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 18111 Nordhoff St. Northridge, CA 91330-8265 818-677-7895 [email protected]

PURPOSE OF STUDY The purpose of this research study is to learn more about Deaf Faculty of Color and their intersectional and retention experiences. This study will add knowledge to existing information regarding Deaf academia, especially in higher educational fields.

SUBJECTS Inclusion Requirements You are eligible to participate in this study if you identify as a Person of Color, Deaf using American Sign Language and work at any postsecondary institution with two years of teaching experience.

Exclusion Requirements You are not eligible to participate in this study if you are hearing or non-Person of Color or do not work at any postsecondary institution.

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Time Commitment This study will involve approximately 60-90 minutes of your time within one day.

PROCEDURES The following procedures will occur: You will complete a set of 48 possible interview questions and prompts.

RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS The possible risks and/or discomforts associated with the procedures described in this study include: mild emotional discomfort, embarrassment, or social stigma. To minimizing each risk identified, the plan is to ensure you have a safe and brave space to express your minoritized and marginalized experiences. There will be no rush or pressure for you to answer all of the questions. Your narratives will be anonymous and your institutional and racial backgrounds will be withheld in the study.

BENEFITS Subject Benefits The possible benefits you may experience from the procedures described in this study include learning about your social stance and ways to reaffirm your knowledge about DFOC experiences and your resilience.

Benefits to Others or Society This study will add new knowledge to existing information regarding Deaf academia, especially in higher educational fields.

ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION The only alternative to participation in this study is not to participate.

COMPENSATION, COSTS AND REIMBURSEMENT Compensation for Participation You will receive $20 Visa gift card.

WITHDRAWAL OR TERMINATION FROM THE STUDY AND CONSEQUENCES

You are free to withdraw from this study at any time. If you decide to withdraw from this study you should notify the researcher immediately. The researcher may also end your participation in this study if you do not follow instructions, miss scheduled visits, or if your safety and welfare are at risk.

CONFIDENTIALITY Subject Identifiable Data All identifiable information that will be collected about you will be removed and replaced with a code. A list linking the code and your identifiable information will be kept separate from the research data.

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Data Storage The video recordings will also be preserved on an external drive and stored in a locked storage at the researcher’s residence and transcribed. The recordings will be retained with the other research data.

Data Access The researcher and faculty advisor named on the first page of this form will have access to your study records. Any information derived from this research project that personally identifies you will not be voluntarily released or disclosed without your separate consent, except as specifically required by law. Publications and/or presentations that result from this study will not include identifiable information about you.

Data Retention The researcher intends to keep the research data for approximately 5 years and then it will be destroyed.

Mandated Reporting Under California law, the researcher is required to report known or reasonably suspected incidents of abuse or neglect of a child, dependent adult or elder, including, but not limited to, physical, sexual, emotional, and financial abuse or neglect. If any researcher has or is given such information in the course of conducting this study, she may be required to report it to the authorities.

IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS If you have any comments, concerns, or questions regarding the conduct of this research please contact the research team listed on the first page of this form.

If you have concerns or complaints about the research study, research team, or questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Research and Sponsored Programs office, 18111 Nordhoff Street, California State University, Northridge, Northridge, CA 91330-8232, by phone at (818) 677-2901 or email at [email protected].

VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION STATEMENT You should not sign this form unless you have read it and been given a copy of it to keep. Participation in this study is voluntary. You may refuse to answer any question or discontinue your involvement at any time without penalty or loss of benefits to which you might otherwise be entitled. Your decision will not affect your relationship with California State University, Northridge. Your signature below indicates that you have read the information in this consent form and have had a chance to ask any questions that you have about the study.

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I agree to participate in the study.

___ I agree to be video recorded ___ I do not wish to be video recorded

______Participant Signature Date

______Printed Name of Participant

______Researcher Signature Date

______Printed Name of Researcher

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APPENDIX D

Confidentiality Agreement for use with Interpreter/Transcription Services

Research Study Title: “Few and Far Between: Deaf Faculty of Color at Postsecondary

Institutions”

1. I, ______interpreter/transcriptionist, agree to maintain full confidentiality of all research data received from the research team related to this research study.

2. I will hold in strictest confidence the identity of any individual that may be revealed during the transcription of interviews or in any associated documents.

3. I will not make copies of any audio-recordings, video-recordings, or other research data, unless specifically requested to do so by the researcher.

4. I will not provide the research data to any third parties without the client’s consent.

5. I will store all study-related data in a safe, secure location as long as they are in my possession. All video and audio recordings will be stored in an encrypted format.

6. All data provided or created for purposes of this agreement, including any back-up records, will be returned to the research team or permanently deleted. When I have received confirmation that the transcription work I performed has been satisfactorily completed, any of the research data that remains with me will be returned to the research team or destroyed, pursuant to the instructions of the research team.

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7. I understand that California State University, Northridge has the right to take legal action against any breach of confidentiality that occurs in my handling of the research data.

Interpreter/Transcriber’s name (printed)______

Interpreter/Transcriber’s signature ______

Date ______

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