The ugliness of deaf politics: When survival of a culture is at stake...

Off Berke's blog, two recent examples:
- Bickering between two prominent deaf bloggers
- Twisted comments about an article on cochlear implants

As a hearing person, you may not be aware that cochlear implants (CI) are a big big hot potato in the deaf community. They are no replacement ears and CIs have issues of their own, but their benefits can not be ignored. CI is perceived as a threat to the deaf culture. Why learning Sign Language... if you can "hear" ? That's the rationale...

Before going further, some definitions according to Mr. Webstah (emphasis is mine):

LANGUAGE:
A systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings by a community.

CULTURE:
a) The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group shared by people in a place or time.

b) The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.

So you see the link between language and culture. Also the most important point about culture, any culture: Survival.

This is why ASL (American Sign Language) is paramount. If a language become threatened, it is the culture of a community that is at risk of disappearing.

There's something extremely intimate about a culture, and this is why you see verbal inflation, and sometimes violence. Case in point, the riot on the campus at Gallaudet last fall.

Gallaudet is the only deaf university in the US (Considering the size and population of the United States, it makes you wondering!). At stake, the survival of the university.

If you think this is happening only in the deaf community... substitute ASL with French. Location? My homeland, Québec. Same battle for survival. If you happened to have read our press at one time or another from the mid 70s up to early 90s, when we were passing language laws (Bill 22, 101, 178, etc...) up to our last referendum on secession, it wasn't pretty. Not pretty at all.

(We also fought hard for our universities, to a point Gallaudet students might be proud of us, but I digress. :-) )

It is the battle of a minority culture drowned in an overwhelming culture and fighting for its survival. I could go on with other examples. Similar battle... one common issue: The survival of a culture.

Back to the deaf culture, CIs are a red herring. In my opinion, Sign Language is here to stay and its culture is *NOT* at risk.

There will always be deaf people learning Sign Language, even with CI, and there will be hearing persons like me who will also learn Sign Language. For a slew of reasons.

The problem, and it was also similar in Québec at the height of our verbal inflation... the tone is so militant, so vitriolic... it drives away their natural allies.

I just wish that the deaf community would evolve. Visibly, it is in "survival mode", and this is why you see such inflation of words (and at times squarely violence, ie, Gallaudet). I wish the deaf culture would evolve into a mature phase, like many cultures.

I have been on both sides of the issue. In my younger years, being militant and fighting for my culture, and now, I'm learning sign language and discovering its rich culture...

I'm going to say in the same way what people have said about my own culture back then:

The deaf culture is here to stay.

Somehow, it is a message that will fall on deaf ears, sadly...

Cheers,

-E