Social Justice, Audism, and the D/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and Cultural Differences

Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and Cultural 65 Differences Timothy Reagan Contents Introduction ..................................................................................... 1480 An Introduction to the DEAF-WORLD ....................................................... 1482 Language .................................................................................... 1483 Cultural Identity ............................................................................. 1485 Behavioral Norms and Practices ............................................................ 1487 Endogamy ................................................................................... 1487 Cultural Artifacts ............................................................................ 1488 In-Group Historical Knowledge ............................................................ 1488 Voluntary Social Organizations ............................................................. 1489 Humor ....................................................................................... 1489 Literary and Artistic Tradition .............................................................. 1490 Becoming Deaf .............................................................................. 1494 The Duality of Deaf Identity ................................................................ 1494 Epistemology and the DEAF-WORLD ........................................................ 1495 Social Justice and the DEAF-WORLD ........................................................ 1498 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 1502 References ...................................................................................... 1503 Abstract In this chapter, it will be argued that there are two fundamentally different ways in which deafness can be conceptualized: as a pathological medical condition (deafness) and as a distinctive linguistic, cultural, and social identity (Deafness). The characteristics and attributes of the Deaf cultural community (called the DEAF-WORLD in American Sign Language) will be explored: the role and place of its vernacular language (ASL), the awareness of group identity shared by its members, its distinctive behavioral norms, its endogamous marital patterns, the cultural artifacts that are most closely associated with it, its shared, insider T. Reagan (*) The University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1479 R. Papa (ed.), Handbook on Promoting Social Justice in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14625-2_108 1480 T. Reagan historical knowledge, the network of voluntary social organizations that Deaf people have created and maintain, the body of jokes and humorous stories popular in the DEAF-WORLD, and finally, the literature, theatre, poetry, and visual art that has been produced by its members and which are reflective of its core values and concerns. The case for the existence and implications of a distinctively Deaf epistemology will then be discussed, and the implications of such an ethno-epistemology for deaf education will be offered. Next, it will be suggested that these two different ways of conceptualizing deafness lead to fundamentally incompatible approaches to addressing both the needs of deaf people in general and the special needs of deaf children in particular. For many deaf children, it will be argued that access to ASL and preparation for future membership and participation in the DEAF-WORLD is the most appropriate objective for education. Such an objective is, to a significant degree, incompatible with the goals of inclusive education and requires a very different kind of education. The elements of such an education for deaf children will then be outlined. Keywords American Sign Language (ASL) · Audism · Deaf education · Deaf epistemology · Deaf identity · d/Deafness · DEAF-WORLD · Residential schools for the deaf Introduction The most common way that deafness is understood is as a biomedical condition related to hearing; in essence, deafness refers to the absence of the ability to hear. It is thus a deficit condition: hearing is the normative condition for human beings, while a lack of hearing constitutes a disability. Such a view is not only common; it is also typically seen as common sense. Deaf people are basically seen as “broken” or as somehow “incomplete,” and the logical response to deafness is to attempt to do whatever can be done to provide remediation or even a cure for the unfortunate condition of deaf people. Traditionally, this has meant developing technology for hearing aids and other amplification devices, using oral methods in deaf education, encouraging the ability to lip read and speak, and most recently using cochlear implants in young children. Although the view that deafness is a pathological biomedical condition is indeed an extremely common one, it is by no means the only way in which deafness can be understood – nor, as will be argued in this chapter, is it necessarily the best or most fitting way to do so much of the time. Rather, it will be suggested that a very different perspective on both deafness and deaf people is appropriate for understanding many (though by no means all) deaf people. It will be argued here that such a deficit or pathological view of deafness is profoundly misguided and that it is grounded in ableist and linguicist biases and assumptions. It is a view widely rejected by many deaf people themselves, who see in it a denial of their identity, their language, and their culture – and indeed, of their humanity. It is thus hardly surprisingly that the 65 Social Justice, Audism, and the d/Deaf: Rethinking Linguistic and... 1481 hearing world and DEAF-WORLD often come into conflict, a conflict that Deaf people see as evidence of the repudiation of their worldview by the hearing world’s presumption of a “deafness as disability” perspective (Hoffmeister, 2008). The tension been these different ways of thinking about deafness is neither a minor nor a trivial one; it is fundamental to how deafness is conceived, what it means to be deaf, and how and by whom decisions should be made about deafness and deaf people educationally, medically, and socially. As Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister and Benjamin Bahan note, when hearing people think about Deaf people, they project their ...subtractive perspective onto Deaf people. The result is an inevitable collision with the values of the DEAF-WORLD, whose goal is to promote the unique heritage of Deaf language and culture. The disparity in decision-making power between the hearing world and the DEAF-WORLD renders this collision frightening for Deaf people. (1996, p. 371) The fundamental critique of the pathological perspective on deafness is that it is grounded in a very specific type of ableism and linguicism, called audism (see Bauman, 2004; Eckert & Rowley, 2013; Stapleton, 2016). Audism has been described as: the belief that life without hearing is futile and miserable, that hearing loss is a tragedy and the “scourage of mankind” and that deaf people should struggle to be as much like hearing people as possible. Deaf activists Heidi Reed and Hartmut Teuber ...consider audism to be “a special case of ableism.” Audists, hearing or deaf, shun Deaf culture and the use of sign language, and have what Reed and Teuber describe as “an obsession with the use of residual hearing, speech, and lip-reading by deaf people.” (Pelka, 1997, p. 33) Such a way of viewing deafness is perhaps understandable from a normative hearing perspective, but it is simply not the way that many deaf people understand what it means to be deaf. How deafness is understood, though, is an incredibly important matter, since many fundamental decisions about deaf people – and especially deaf children – are made by hearing professionals and hearing parents. To be sure, hearing parents of deaf children have (and should have) a significant role in making such decisions, and hearing professionals in many fields do have valuable insights to offer with respect to deafness, but most have had little if any contact with Deaf people or the DEAF-WORLD, and so are ill-informed about what the options available to the child actually are. To begin by assuming that hearing is “normal” and deaf is in some sense “abnormal” is profoundly problematic. Within the DEAF-WORLD, there is no interest or concern in remediating or curing deafness, any more than one might try to cure gender or race. As Roslyn Rose, a past president of the National Association of the Deaf, and herself a Deaf child of Deaf parents with Deaf children of her own, commented, “I don’t want to be ‘fixed’. Would an Italian-American rather be a WASP? In our society everyone agrees that whites have an easier time than blacks. But do you think that a black person would undergo operations to become white?” (quoted in Dolnick, 1993, p. 38). Precisely, the same point was made by I. King Jordan, the first deaf President of 1482 T. Reagan Gallaudet University. In an interview, Jordan was asked by the interviewer whether he wouldn’t like to have his hearing restored, to which Jordan replied, “That’s almost like asking a black person if he would rather be white ...I don’t think of myself as missing something or as incomplete ... It’s a common fallacy if you don’t know Deaf people or Deaf issues. You think it’s a limitation” (quoted in Lane, 1993a, p. 288). As alien as such a view might be to many hearing people,

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