The Deaf Community and the Hearing World

Stacey Spear

Comm 141

April 19, 2000

The Deaf Community and The Hearing World

The world in which we live in, is for the most part, geared towards people who are considered “normal” by society.It’s true that this world is visually dominated, but being without hearing is still a significant disadvantage.The Deaf community has an ongoing conflict that they struggle with.The fight continues to be the value of sound.What kind of importance does society place on hearing?Does society dismiss the Deaf culture?The Deaf face the problem of dealing with their own “subculture” versus the hearing world and the pressure of their hearing technologies.

A very famous quote by Helen Keller says that “Blindness cuts people off from things, deafness cuts people off from people.”(Jones)They are isolated from the hearing world because of differences in communication.Therefore, the Deaf must find solace in a stable, close-knit community.Deaf people were considered to be unreachable and their intelligence was suspect.Deafness is still seen as a dreadful fate.One dispute is that some people refer to Deaf people as handicapped, which they argue is not a disability, but actually a subculture.They believe they are a linguistic minority, just like Hispanics or Asians. (Dolnick) The Deaf share abond that goes beyond a medical condition.

The hearing world doesn’t understand the cultural aspects of the Deaf community.They feelthat not to embrace the values of regular society is somewhat perverse.If you ask someone witha disability, like someone who is blind or a physically challenged person, if they could see orwalk again if they would want to and the answer most of the times would be yes.If you asked a Deaf person whether or not they would prefer to hear or not the answer is usually a resounding no.Even the president of the Nation Association of the Deaf, Roslyn Rosen, is vehemently against any kind of talk of hearing and says she doesn’t want “to be fixed.”Deafness is not the lack of hearing but the community and culture based on American Sign Language.Deaf culture is not a denial but an affirmation.Deaf people should not deny their roots when every other cultural group is proud to celebrate its history and traditions.

They compare their way life to being part of an ethnic group. (Higgins & Nash) Typically, Deaf people will take another Deaf person as a mate and they will usually have Deaf children because of the genetics involved, but ninety percent of all deaf children are born to hearing parents.In that situation the parents are thrown into a culture where they have no cultural identity.Children have problems relating to some kind of mentor or any identity because people who are in a world where sound is first nature surround them.Some experts refer to this situation as teenagers who come to realize that they are homosexuals.They are in a world dominated by heterosexuality, therefore they feel isolated and without a culture to identify with.Their parents a lot of times can’t understand because they are part of a different culture.(Higgins & Nash)

Parents of deaf children don’t understand sign language and the children don’t understand thespoken word.This whole situation becomes quite frustrating and a laborious feat.There are many alternatives for communication for deaf people.Obviously, sound is not an alternative without the medical field getting involved.The majority of deaf people use American Sign Language, which is called “the natural language of the deaf.”Just because certain people can’t use their auditory senses doesn’t mean they can’t use other parts such as the face, hands, tongue and throat.In the past, critics have dismissed signing as a poor substitute for language, but ASL is a full-fledged language with all the little grammar points, puns, and inside jokes.This is the everyday language of about a half a million Americans.Parents must decide quickly which way of communicating they wish their child to use.Children who learn a language late are at a lifelong disadvantage, unfortunately deaf people will always be at a disadvantage when learning skills are concerned because the average sixteen year old reads at the hearing level of an eight year old. (Dolnick)Sometimes parents get this tremendous disappointment of the potential their child could have had if they had only been born with hearing.Parents have mixed reactions when they receive the diagnosis of their child.Some have even felt that their child had died because their hopes and expectations have been shattered. (Levitan & Moore)

Another form of communication for the Deaf community is called cued speech.This form was invented at Gallaudet University, Washington D.C. in the 1960’s.This is where English is accompanied by hand signals.This will make it easier for deaf people to distinguish certainwords that looks alike.This method seems to be easier to learn for parents and the children.You can learn this form in a couple months as opposed to years when learning ASL.Of course, with any communication in the Deaf community there’s going to be objections.These seem tobe of a political nature and to be unsubstantiated.The deaf community feels that cued speech is some sort of “oralism”, which is greatly offensive to them.There are a few problems with cued speech that one must consider for the sake of their deaf son or daughter.One of the major problems is that their child can learn to communicate very well at school and with his or her family, but when it comes to interaction with the hearing world they are helpless.They couldn’t go into a store and order something or get directions from a complete stranger on the street.They are putting themselves into greater isolation where they cut themselves from anything, even any human contact. (Dolnick)

The last form of communication that I’m going to be talking about is called Total Communication.This came about in the 1970’s as a reaction to oralism.Back then people weren’t as understanding of the deaf community and signing was actually forbidden.This is the idea that teachers use any means of communication with their students.This includes speech, ASL, and finger spelling.Overall, no one is happy with the level of education for the deaf in America.Congress sited all these problems in the late 1980’s and called it “unsatisfactory.”Some people call total communication a farce that consists of a teacher who mostly teaches English and from time to time accompanies this speech with some signs and then the grammar doesn’t correlate. (Jones)There always seems to be arguments over everything in this culture.

Another important aspect of the deaf community is the tenuous relationship between those who can’t hear and those who can.It seems that when a child is born hearing parents then that child has no one toidentify with or have to guide them.Usually the deaf community would encourage the parents to have the child in contact with the deaf community.Of course, the parents feel quite threatened and try to resist the deaf culture because they feel that they were losing their child and wouldn’t be raising them anymore.They would strangers invading their territory and relinquish important ties.The reason that the hearing world and the deaf community have so much trouble is because they get very possessive of the child in between them.There must be understanding between the two so they can get along and produce the best results for the deaf.The two parties seem to be relatively apprehensive about one another.MJ Bienvenu, a deaf activist who talked about a hypothetical situation where she just happened to strike up a relationship with a hearing person. She said “I’d have considerable trepidation about my (deaf parents’) reaction.They’d ask. “What’s the matter?Aren’t your own people good enough for you?” and they’d warn, “They’ll take advantage of you.You don’t know what they’re going to do behind your back.”(Dolnick) The politics of it all has worsened the strains of the delicate balance between the two sides.A prime example with the politics of the struggle between the two sides was in 1988 when the deaf protested the hiring of a hearing person for the presidency at Gallaudet University, which is a deaf university.The man was very qualified, yet the deaf community couldn’t handle the infiltration of the hearing world into one of their leading educational facilities.The press treated the story as disabled people fighting for rights.They were treated as if they were physically challenged or even blind.Somedeaf students in a couple of Rhode Island schools had some opinions on the situation.Sarah Halpert, who studied at Brown University, said that “I have been mainstreamed my entire life.I feel that since this is a hearing world, the best way to function is to be able to successfully communicate and work with those who are hearing.”(Jones)Although Halpert attended a predominantly hearing school all of her life, and often identified more with the hearing world than the deaf world, she still wants to form bonds with other deaf students.Thomas Darden, who attended the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, would have appreciated a more cohesive deaf community on campus.“Many deaf people I met wanted a strong community that would solidify as a deaf world, completely separated from the hearing world, but I did not want that,” I wanted and still want to be a part of both worlds.”(Jones)The hearing-impaired students at Brown did want to experience the world in which the hearing students were apart of, but they also wanted to keep tight bonds with their smaller community.Other deaf people think that attempts to integrate deaf people into hearing society may actually imprison them in a zone of silence.They are in a crowd but unable to communicate, they are alone.

The new technologies available to people with hearing problems have become very advanced in this era.They can range from special hearing aids to something more sophisticated, such as surgery to bring sound to the deaf.The implants that deaf people can receive are called cochlear implants.This is where an electronic device is implanted in the inner ear of a profoundly deaf person.It stimulates the auditory nerve and allows the individual to be aware of sounds.This does not help them hear speech clearly, but they can hear sounds. (Health Central)This does help deaf people learn language skills quicker and betterthan if they didn’t have anything.Research has found that when the cochlear is received, the child begins to develop language skills at about the same rate as a child with normal hearing.Dr. Mario Svirsky, leadresearcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine, said that “Although we agree that the parents of children seeking cochlear implants should seriously consider the perspective of the Deaf community…we also think that parents have a right to make decisions on behalf of their children.”(Health Central)The medical community and the deaf community have long since clashed.The deaf want acknowledgement that they share a culture rather than simply a medical condition.A surprising bit of information is to learn that medical treatment does mean advancement, but it’s not exactly treated with open arms.I thought this was truly amazing that all this medical technology would be given a cold shoulder, but, as a hearing person, I don’t fully understand all the ramifications that these technologies come with.The medical community talks about the subject of breakthroughs and the deaf community basically find it all offensive.A prime example of the cochlear implant dispute is a story that ran on “60 Minutes” about a deaf child who got this implant and they talked about how it changed her life.The people in the deaf community were absolutely enraged.They even went to the extremes of calling it “child abuse, pathological, and genocide.”(Dolnick)There were also comments that took on a milder form.The editors of “Deaf Life” wrote, “An implant is the ultimate invasion of the ear, the ultimate denial of deafness, the ultimate refusal to let deaf children be Deaf…Parents who choose to have their children implanted, are in effect saying, “I don’t respect the Deaf community, and I certainly don’t want my child to be part of it.I want him/her to be part of the hearing world, not the Deaf world.”(Jones)There aresome deep seeded roots for this kind of hostility.One reason is that when parents find out that their child is in need of help, they automatically run towards the medical field and don’t even consider the Deaf community, which should have been one of their first choices.They are the people who are affected by the loss and know so much more than medical people.Yet, parents always end up at speech therapist and audiologists.A truly amazing statistic is that 86% of deaf adults said that they wouldn’t want cochlear implants even if they were giving them away on the corner of the street.Those are some pretty strong feelings.Roslyn Rosen stated that she is really not against these new technologies, but she is totally against the cochlear implant.She says, “An implant alters me.It changes me instead of changing the environment.Therefore the problem is seen as belonging to the deaf person, and that’s a problem.”(Dolnick)Even though this device restores sound into a person that at one point had it and lost it or to someone who never had it, the one community in which people should have been overjoyed does not embrace it.

If you really listen to the deaf community’s thoughts then one can understand how and what they think.Since they don’t believe that having no sound is a disability then there really is nothing to fix.Anyone trying to tell you and your culture that there’s something wrong with you, that needs to be fixed is so horrendous that’s it’s not surprising there’s immense hostility when it comes to relations with people outside their subculture.For people who were born deaf, how can you miss something that you never had?How can you miss something that has no meaning or concept to you?Any type of sound would be such an invasion to one’s body.I believe that deaf people must have there own type of sounds in thereheads and that is what they’re used to.Some hearing people “envy” the peace and quiet that deaf people have in their “silent world”, but they don’t seem to understand the visual noise that their lives are filled with.When a person is lacking a sense then the other senses take over and become quite acute.The main sense that deaf people have to rely on is their vision, so that becomes their noise.

The two main arguments in this issue is deafness as a disability versus deafness as a culture and whether or not aids and implants are help or an offensive hindrance towards the deaf community.People don’t seem to understand that being deaf is like speaking a different language; it’s comparable to being part of an ethnicity.Why would someone tell another person that being Italian doesn’t make them part of a shared culture?This probably wouldn’t happen.So, how could you tell deaf people that they don’t have a culture?They share the same type of language, are a small group, and have the same problems.They need to be treated as if they are a part of something.By not acknowledging their identity, it’s as if they as human beings don’t exist.This society places too much emphasis on whether or not one has the ability to hear.If someone can’t then they are automatically treated as if they have this huge disability where they could never function in the mainstream perception of the world.The Deaf community has struggling relationships between a lots of groups.They have problems with the hearing world, the medical field, and even groups who are advocating for disabled groups.This is quite understandable because the Deaf community has never been treated with the respect and intelligence in which it desires or deserves.If they were treated like people with a shared culture rather than a group of people who share a disability then there wouldn’t be as many strained relationships and the process of understanding a new culture could begin.

Works Cited

Dolnick, Edward.“Deafness As Culture.”The Atlantic Monthly, September 1993:37-53.

Higgins Paul C. & Nash Jeffrey E.Understanding Deafness Socially:Continuities in Research and

Theory.Springfield, Illinois:Charles C. Thomas-Publisher. 1996.

Levitan, Linda & Moore, Matthew S.For Hearing People Only.Rochester, New York:Deaf Life Press, 1993.

Jones, Niya.(1996, November).Listening Without Hearing.Independent.Retrieved April 17, 2000from the World Wide Web:http://www.netspace.org/indy/issues/11-21-96/features4.html

“Cochlear Implants Help Deaf Children Learn Speech.”(2000, March).Health Central.RetrievedApril 17, 2000 from the World Wide Web:http://www.healthcentral.com/News/…cfm?Id=2960&storytype=ReauterNews