Hole Gente
I often subscribe to many youtube channels and end up finding great people on there. I've been fortunate enough to find Erik's channel and loved watching all the songs he has interpreted, but through that channel he has posted many more videos that discuss important issues. This video has definitely been one that has made me really think of what our role is and the influence I have for simply being a hearing interpreter. As a self identified Queer Xicano, privilege is something I often discuss, but it's important that this dialogue go beyond the Xicano studies and Queer studies courses. We have to bring this kind of dialogue in to the interpreting field and realize that whether or not hearing interpreters acknowledge it, a huge power dynamic exist within the interpreting field and our d/Deaf consumer. Let's recognize this and begin educating ourselves because we are just perpetuating the same oppressive cycle that the Deaf Community is continuously fighting against. Erik brings up some great points in his video, yet I know that many Deaf folks have brought up this issue at R.I.D conferences but the hearing majority just brushes them off. It's time we begin to understand!
Gil
Showing posts with label Deaf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deaf. Show all posts
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Monday, May 9, 2011
Racism at Gallaudet
Hola Gente!
I am posting a great article that was written for the Buff and Blue by Elena Ruiz. Let's continue this dialogue about race relations and begin to create change at all educational institutions. I really encourage interpreters to read this as well and think about the impact of racism on our field and the Deaf Community as a whole. We have a lot of progress to be made but I truly believe we can accomplish a more inclusive environment for all.
Gilberto Partida
Gallaudet's hidden crisis: racism
Lately, I’ve been sensing a different sort of tension at Gallaudet.
Racism.
This word can evoke an array of images of appalling, stomach-turning incidents predating the Civil Rights Movement — separate drinking fountains, whites at the front of the bus; black people at the back, segregated schools, and so on. But I wonder how many of us are able to point out the inequality that’s happening right in front of us: the inequality that is still based on race and is under the ever-safe cover of colorblind racism.
Colorblind racism is the continued racism that denies its existence. Colorblind racism denies that racism exists because it is not the same racism that we can easily recognize like what went on before the Civil Rights era; it doesn’t want to discuss the racism that isn’t as obvious and shocking as “it used to be.” But anyone who takes a walk down 8th Street can see the obvious residential segregation that continues today — to give one example out of many. But we just don’t talk about it — and many of us just don’t want to.
By denying it, ignoring it, pushing it into the corner, racism continues to breathe and live on. Most of us don’t want to see it, at any cost. And sadly, obviously, Gallaudet is not immune to this. From what I see here on campus, racism is a dirty little secret that’s so often thrown out the window, swept under the rug, or suffocated into non-existence. So now I am lifting the rug.
Recently, while spending some time on Facebook, I came across a picture of some students on campus from Halloween 2010. This picture had a group of young, white deaf men with brown make-up all over their faces and necks to depict a team of black athletes. Or to put it more bluntly, a group of misguided young, white deaf men in blackface. Yes, blackface.
Scrolling down to the comments section, I was hoping to see posts that shared my disbelief and outrage. But all I saw were comments that cheered on the misguided young men and many “LOLs.” I didn’t see anyone brave enough to simply say, “This isn’t right.” No one mentioned the awful, racist history of blackface, and how it was a way to demean and oppress black people by using the cover of comedy and entertainment. Looking at the images, I was reminded of Frederick Douglass’s condemning description of blackface performers as “…the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens.”* I wonder why Douglass’s stark expression hasn’t been even remotely considered here, and how this neglect leads to scores of white college students approaching the act of applying brown paint lightly, as it is only for humorous value. Did they/we realize how they/we demean an entire group of people when we fail to recall such a horrid era of history?
After seeing that picture, I truly wonder how many of my deaf peers think about these questions, and if we deaf people of color have emotional, psychological, and physical safety on campus as I hoped we did. I often think to myself: “Why and how is white privilege everywhere here at Gallaudet? How can we, the deaf community, be a part of an oppressed minority, yet still commit horrifying acts that harm other oppressed communities?” It’s a contradiction that I struggle with daily, and I am beginning to see so much of it here on campus.
I’ve listened to countless accounts from students of color about their feelings of academic and social exclusion, and of being the painfully obvious, brown-skinned “token” for a variety of events and programs. Really, how many performances or panels have we gone to that predominantly consisted of all-white students/staff with maybe one person of color sitting on the outskirts? Imagine being welcomed into a group solely based on the bullshit “diversity” points the group thinks it’ll receive from the larger campus community. But that’s just tokenism and not promoting equitable representation. “Tokenism,” or adding in one lone person of color in any group to ensure that “diversity” is being upheld is a widespread trend at Gallaudet, with students, staff, and faculty being the victims of such a practice. If we think about it, it’s utterly debasing.
Yet I’ve seen many white students roll their eyes when we students of color want to express what we go through, chalking us up to being “negative” and/or “obsessive” about what we experience, making a final, dismissive sweep towards our pain. I’m tired of seeing my classmates say, “But there’s been so much progress with racism! It barely exists anymore like it used to, and back then it was really bad! So let’s not talk about it.” I don’t like being made out to seem hysterical and over-the-top in my struggle to express my experience and the experiences of other deaf people of color. I do not think we deserve that. And guess what? We need to talk about it.
Following such discussions with my classmates, I’ve experienced professors who constantly redirect classroom discourse to audism as our primary, and even only, community struggle as deaf people. Many times, I have seen a professor reply to my attempts to discuss the deaf person of color’s experience by saying, “But really, deaf identity comes first… the deaf person experiences audism before all else.” But our struggles with audism do not automatically mean that all deaf people experience primarily audism. Just claiming audism does not grant the (oftentimes white) leaders of our community the right to rank which “-ism” should be first, second, or third, or so on in the daily struggles of all deaf people. We can’t rank audism as number one as a way to ignore the racism happening in our community.
When white deaf people wish to turn a blind eye to the racism that happens in our deaf community, they dismiss the painful experiences that many deaf people of color go through. By denying that such experiences happen, these experiences will continue to happen. And our deaf community will continue to be a broken one. I believe that it is shameful that we’re following the oppressive patterns of white, male, hearing society — the exact same thinking that creates our own oppression. Yes, it is a shameful irony.
We need to have the issue of racism in our community emerge at the forefront. I believe we can finally address racism, audism, sexism, ableism, and so on in each and every one of ourselves. I believe it is okay to challenge one another to look inside ourselves, see how we have committed acts of racism, or sexism, audism, and so forth. What if we didn’t? This can be uncomfortable for so many of us, but what about the daily struggle that many deaf people of color have to endure based on so many people’s unwillingness to confront our inner –isms? I encourage us to ask ourselves these questions:
-When I try to avoid topics about racism, am I trying to avoid being uncomfortable?
-Am I conscious about different forms of racism in history and in today’s society?
-What are some of the things I do and say that could contribute to racism?
-How can I be careful to not reject a person’s expression of pain based on their experienced racism?
(Note that these questions can be asked of ourselves about other –isms such as sexism, classism, audism, and so on.)
This will be a difficult journey for many of us, but a worthy one. Why? Because we will truly be unable to be free ourselves if we continue to allow others in our community not be free. Let us begin “…[a] revolution capable of healing our wounds. If we’re the ones who can imagine it, if we’re the ones who can dream about it, if we’re the ones who need it most, then no one else can do it. We’re the ones.”** * Douglass, Frederick. “The Hutchinson Family.—Hunkerism.”
I am posting a great article that was written for the Buff and Blue by Elena Ruiz. Let's continue this dialogue about race relations and begin to create change at all educational institutions. I really encourage interpreters to read this as well and think about the impact of racism on our field and the Deaf Community as a whole. We have a lot of progress to be made but I truly believe we can accomplish a more inclusive environment for all.
Gilberto Partida
Gallaudet's hidden crisis: racism
Lately, I’ve been sensing a different sort of tension at Gallaudet.
Racism.
This word can evoke an array of images of appalling, stomach-turning incidents predating the Civil Rights Movement — separate drinking fountains, whites at the front of the bus; black people at the back, segregated schools, and so on. But I wonder how many of us are able to point out the inequality that’s happening right in front of us: the inequality that is still based on race and is under the ever-safe cover of colorblind racism.
Colorblind racism is the continued racism that denies its existence. Colorblind racism denies that racism exists because it is not the same racism that we can easily recognize like what went on before the Civil Rights era; it doesn’t want to discuss the racism that isn’t as obvious and shocking as “it used to be.” But anyone who takes a walk down 8th Street can see the obvious residential segregation that continues today — to give one example out of many. But we just don’t talk about it — and many of us just don’t want to.
By denying it, ignoring it, pushing it into the corner, racism continues to breathe and live on. Most of us don’t want to see it, at any cost. And sadly, obviously, Gallaudet is not immune to this. From what I see here on campus, racism is a dirty little secret that’s so often thrown out the window, swept under the rug, or suffocated into non-existence. So now I am lifting the rug.
Recently, while spending some time on Facebook, I came across a picture of some students on campus from Halloween 2010. This picture had a group of young, white deaf men with brown make-up all over their faces and necks to depict a team of black athletes. Or to put it more bluntly, a group of misguided young, white deaf men in blackface. Yes, blackface.
Scrolling down to the comments section, I was hoping to see posts that shared my disbelief and outrage. But all I saw were comments that cheered on the misguided young men and many “LOLs.” I didn’t see anyone brave enough to simply say, “This isn’t right.” No one mentioned the awful, racist history of blackface, and how it was a way to demean and oppress black people by using the cover of comedy and entertainment. Looking at the images, I was reminded of Frederick Douglass’s condemning description of blackface performers as “…the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens.”* I wonder why Douglass’s stark expression hasn’t been even remotely considered here, and how this neglect leads to scores of white college students approaching the act of applying brown paint lightly, as it is only for humorous value. Did they/we realize how they/we demean an entire group of people when we fail to recall such a horrid era of history?
After seeing that picture, I truly wonder how many of my deaf peers think about these questions, and if we deaf people of color have emotional, psychological, and physical safety on campus as I hoped we did. I often think to myself: “Why and how is white privilege everywhere here at Gallaudet? How can we, the deaf community, be a part of an oppressed minority, yet still commit horrifying acts that harm other oppressed communities?” It’s a contradiction that I struggle with daily, and I am beginning to see so much of it here on campus.
I’ve listened to countless accounts from students of color about their feelings of academic and social exclusion, and of being the painfully obvious, brown-skinned “token” for a variety of events and programs. Really, how many performances or panels have we gone to that predominantly consisted of all-white students/staff with maybe one person of color sitting on the outskirts? Imagine being welcomed into a group solely based on the bullshit “diversity” points the group thinks it’ll receive from the larger campus community. But that’s just tokenism and not promoting equitable representation. “Tokenism,” or adding in one lone person of color in any group to ensure that “diversity” is being upheld is a widespread trend at Gallaudet, with students, staff, and faculty being the victims of such a practice. If we think about it, it’s utterly debasing.
Yet I’ve seen many white students roll their eyes when we students of color want to express what we go through, chalking us up to being “negative” and/or “obsessive” about what we experience, making a final, dismissive sweep towards our pain. I’m tired of seeing my classmates say, “But there’s been so much progress with racism! It barely exists anymore like it used to, and back then it was really bad! So let’s not talk about it.” I don’t like being made out to seem hysterical and over-the-top in my struggle to express my experience and the experiences of other deaf people of color. I do not think we deserve that. And guess what? We need to talk about it.
Following such discussions with my classmates, I’ve experienced professors who constantly redirect classroom discourse to audism as our primary, and even only, community struggle as deaf people. Many times, I have seen a professor reply to my attempts to discuss the deaf person of color’s experience by saying, “But really, deaf identity comes first… the deaf person experiences audism before all else.” But our struggles with audism do not automatically mean that all deaf people experience primarily audism. Just claiming audism does not grant the (oftentimes white) leaders of our community the right to rank which “-ism” should be first, second, or third, or so on in the daily struggles of all deaf people. We can’t rank audism as number one as a way to ignore the racism happening in our community.
When white deaf people wish to turn a blind eye to the racism that happens in our deaf community, they dismiss the painful experiences that many deaf people of color go through. By denying that such experiences happen, these experiences will continue to happen. And our deaf community will continue to be a broken one. I believe that it is shameful that we’re following the oppressive patterns of white, male, hearing society — the exact same thinking that creates our own oppression. Yes, it is a shameful irony.
We need to have the issue of racism in our community emerge at the forefront. I believe we can finally address racism, audism, sexism, ableism, and so on in each and every one of ourselves. I believe it is okay to challenge one another to look inside ourselves, see how we have committed acts of racism, or sexism, audism, and so forth. What if we didn’t? This can be uncomfortable for so many of us, but what about the daily struggle that many deaf people of color have to endure based on so many people’s unwillingness to confront our inner –isms? I encourage us to ask ourselves these questions:
-When I try to avoid topics about racism, am I trying to avoid being uncomfortable?
-Am I conscious about different forms of racism in history and in today’s society?
-What are some of the things I do and say that could contribute to racism?
-How can I be careful to not reject a person’s expression of pain based on their experienced racism?
(Note that these questions can be asked of ourselves about other –isms such as sexism, classism, audism, and so on.)
This will be a difficult journey for many of us, but a worthy one. Why? Because we will truly be unable to be free ourselves if we continue to allow others in our community not be free. Let us begin “…[a] revolution capable of healing our wounds. If we’re the ones who can imagine it, if we’re the ones who can dream about it, if we’re the ones who need it most, then no one else can do it. We’re the ones.”** * Douglass, Frederick. “The Hutchinson Family.—Hunkerism.”
Thursday, March 17, 2011
California Mano A Mano Chapter Update
I just want to give you all an update as to where we are with the CA Mano a Mano Chapter. We recently sent in some paperwork that we needed to submit in order to become an official organization here in California. The board has been working hard on getting ready to introduce the organization as well as preparing to bring some great workshops to California. In the next few days you will be all be receiving an email from the CA Mano a Mano Board as well as two videos that will be in Spanish and English but both will be interpreted in to American Sign Language. We are hoping to send out the email and the Videos by this weekend. Looking forward to get this rolling and get everyone involved. Thanks everyone! Please feel free to email me if you have any questions in regards to Mano a Mano.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Gilberto Partida
CA Mano a Mano President
CAmanoPrez@gmail.com
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Gilberto Partida
CA Mano a Mano President
CAmanoPrez@gmail.com
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Deaf Immigrant Center Established
Hey Pueblo
Check out this great article about a Deaf Immigrant center that was established in Minnesota. Hopefully we can start seeing these kinds of resources to begin popping up. If any of you know of any other resources please let me know. Thanks to Mathew Call for sending me over this article.
Si Se Puede!
Gilberto Partida
Community program confronts challenges of caring for immigrants with hearing loss
By Cynthia Boyd, MinnPost
January 23, 2011
Say a hospital patient needs an x-ray, typically a procedure that is widely understood in American culture. No problem.
But what if that patient is Russian, once lived near Chernobyl in the Ukraine, site of a terrible nuclear accident in the 1980s, and is terrified at the thought of radiation, plus that person not only does not speak English, but does not speak because he is deaf?
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Explaining becomes a major task.
That "what-if" is a real life example of the challenges facing Minnesota hospitals these days as staffs encounter increasing numbers of immigrants, including deaf immigrants, thought to be about 10 percent of both general and immigrant populations. The story helps explain why Hennepin County Medical Center is expanding its services by opening the Deaf Immigrant Center for Education this week.
Community Sketchbook focuses on the economic and social challenges facing communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and how people are trying to address them.
It is made possible by support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, and some Minneapolis Foundation donor advisors.
Community Sketchbook articles may be republished or distributed, in print or online, with credit to MinnPost and the foundations.
Having a language barrier as well as hearing loss multiplies the challenges of explaining health information, says Nathan Ellis, coordinator of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services at HCMC.
The hospital marks the official opening of the center and a place called "Easy Street" with an open house today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Easy Street is an interactive area, a mini teaching village, you could say. It's about 1,000 square feet of space boasting the stuff of everyday American life on a small scale: a couple of bus seats, a corner grocery with produce bins, a theater ticket booth, a restaurant table, a mailbox and pedestrian crossing lights.
Why should it function in a medical setting? Hint: if you don't know how to ride a public bus you may not be able to get to a doctor's appointment. More rationale ahead.
Funded by the Hennepin Health Foundation, the center is open not only to HCMC patients, but also to local programs for deaf students and persons enrolled in the Adult Bilingual Education program in St. Paul. As part of the project a public video phone has been installed in HCMC's emergency department and on order are two iPads to use as visual aids to explain medical diagnosis and procedure.
Many barriers
Still, there are other barriers between the hearing and the deaf. There are, of course, different versions of sign language, depending on a person's country of origin, as well as people who lack language acquisition.
Keep in mind, says Nancy Meyers, program and development consultant to the project, that some of these people were deaf before they acquired a language and the only sign language they know is their own home-grown vocabulary, a series of gestures only family members understand.
In some cultures, the deaf are kept at home, mostly hidden away from the larger society. Imagine, then, these people leaving their insular worlds and coming to the United States.
"Deaf immigrants,'' explains Anita Buel, a Deaf Community Health Worker, "arrive with NO LANGUAGE. If they are 5 or 25, they have missed out on any language input. This means they are missing concepts, not simply a language.... Without language, communication is through mime, gestures and pictures. But if concepts are missing, you can't just start talking about cancer if they don't understand the concept of illness or disease.
"A conversation with a hearing immigrant and an interpreter may take an hour or more. A 'conversation' with a deaf immigrant can take three or four times as long,'' Buel said.
In fact, my reaching Buel, who is deaf, took about a day after I'd finally located an email address for her and written her with questions. Some deaf persons also communicate by text over their smartphones.
But, Buel, who is among Deaf Community Health Workers who will help staff Easy Street, and I communicated in a round-about way. She called Meyers, using iChat, then signed answers to the questions I'd emailed her. Meyers transcribed Buel's answers, emailing them to me.
On Easy Street, the deaf can practice skills like shopping and getting in and out of cars and buses and learning to cross streets safely, for instance.
Bottom line, the aim is to teach language and culture, thus improving communication and bettering health outcomes, says Ellis.
A physician can tell a patient, Ellis says, change your diet; eat more broccoli and apples. But a deaf person with no verbal or sign language won't understand, unless he or she sees the object being talked about, as with fruits and vegetables in the Easy Street grocery.
Number of immigrants on the rise
As the numbers of immigrants relocating to Minnesota continues to rise - reaching 11.9 percent of people who are foreign born in Hennepin County, and 11.7 percent in Ramsey County, according to the government's official American Community Survey estimates released last month - so does the need for interpreters and other services.
Statewide, the need for hospital interpreters is growing, a service mandated by the federal government under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Representatives from Twin Cities area hospitals meet monthly to discuss challenges. As of Jan. 1, 2011, health care interpreters are required to register with the state, a step toward standardizing training requirements.
"Interpreters in my view are a basic necessity for hospitals to be able to provide safe, equitable care to our patients who are non-English speaking or those not able to hear,'' asserts Annie Listiak, manager of interpreter services at HCMC, which boasts a language interpreter staff of 70 people speaking 22 languages, including American Sign Language. Among those are 60 to 80 deaf patients receiving service monthly.
Regions Hospital in St. Paul employs more than 80 interpreters and contracts with six local agencies for in-person services as well as contracts "24/7 telephonic services in 170 languages,'' for the hospital and Health Partners clinics, says Sidney Van Dyke, director of interpreter services at Regions. They're trying out video language service as well.
Last year, 10 percent of the hospital's 25,000 admissions had a preferred language other than English and required language assistance. Of those, 49 different languages were spoken, including Nepali and Karen.
Costs for interpreters can range from $20 to $70 per hour, depending on the language required and whether the translations are done in person or via telephone, for instance, Van Dyke says, but it's the cost of doing business.
"It is an investment very much worth making,'' says Van Dyke. "There is quite a bit of research that shows [the value of] of having an interpreter available. Removing the barrier between the provider and the patient reduces length of stay, and improves care in a number of ways,'' she said, including reducing the number of emergency room visits.
Miscommunication, on the other hand, has resulted in tragedy. For instance, a legal case arising at a Florida hospital years ago involved a physician who spoke some Spanish, assuming the phrase "intoxicado" meant intoxicated rather than "feeling sick to the stomach," Van Dyke says. A misdiagnosis led to a $71 million malpractice settlement involving a preventable case of quadriplegia.
There is a moral obligation as well to provide language assistance. "Ignoring this population is unethical. It is a matter of social justice for those of us who understand and know their issues," says Meyers.
Copyright:
©2011 MinnPost
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Who is Gallaudet?
Hola Gente
This is an article that was posted on the Buff and Blue by the Wonderful Elena Ruiz. I have posted a video of her experience at the Deaf People of Color Conference in previous blog entries. Thanks Elena for another great contribution to this blog and we look forward to many more.
Si Se Puede!
Gilberto Partida
Who is Gallaudet?
As we Gallaudet students amble around campus, going through the dull routines of everyday life, brushing our teeth, dressing in whatever ambivalent clothes we choose to portray our moods of the day, running through multitudes of files in our minds about the endless tasks that we are to complete before the day is over, I ask us—how often do we pause and take stock in what is really happening before our eyes?
Yes, you DID just walk by a throng of hearing students who either barely pick up their hands to communicate their words in a pathetic, half-assed way, using the ever-glorified term of “simultaneous communication” as a reliable fallback defense, or did not bother to make any attempt at making their words at all accommodating to the deaf majority here on campus.
Yes, you DID just enter a classroom where your “highly-educated” professor ekes out barely understandable manual signs to the deaf students s/he already constrains OR uses interpreters of usually questionable quality to educate you while your student loan net amount increases as you go through receiving a dubious level of education.
Yes, you DID just friggin’ walk by a desperate, inappropriate poster for the “Walk4Hearing” fundraiser. Yes, you did. In the same academic space that represents the heart of Gallaudet—the ASL/Deaf Studies department. Why? Why is this happening? Why are we allowing this to happen?When are we going to wake up and take action?
A shift is needed from the most recent question of how are we representing Gallaudet to the world; rather, we must ask how we are embodying Gallaudet and representing the community to each other as we constantly confront a long-embedded hearing system within our educational and social institution. Yes, let us admit it: Gallaudet is hearing-ized.
What are we to do with the ever-constant invasion and regime of hearing bodies and institution that maintain and impose audistic systems? Why are we wasting our time kowtowing to the needs of ASL-inept and unwilling students rather than taking them by the collar and demanding to know why they are infiltrating our cultural grounds with their spoken language and visible resistance to ASL? Why are we allowing our deaf peers who grew up under such unfortunate hearing systems to come here and act as empty vessels that only serve as justifications for the aforementioned hearing students’ unconscious agenda? And worse, we’re allowing these deaf peers to feel rejected by the rest of us because they continue to operate under the hearing system, under the infallible protection of audism.
How do we reclaim, nurture, and revive the deaf center here at Gallaudet? Before I make my proposal, a brief, personal narrative is necessary. In September, I attended one of my graduate-level courses. The hearing professor explained a recent, about-to-be-released research project on the academic levels and performances of Gallaudet freshmen. The research was to be presented to a national education organization. The freshmen were divided into three categories based on their American College Testing (ACT) scores and predictors of their academic performance at Gallaudet. The first group who barely passed or failed the ACT were considered unable to academically compete with their peers at Gallaudet. The second group of students who managed to pass the ACT were considered to be only able to academically compete with their fellow Gallaudet students. The third group consisted of students who were Gallaudet’s top-performing, stellar students who were capable of competing with students from, and I quote, “other low-tier universities and community colleges.”
“Low-tier?” What the hell is that supposed to mean? Naturally, I raised my hand and asked, “Does that mean our top-performing Gallaudet students are unable to academically compete with students from the Universities of California or other ‘high-tier’ universities?” To which the professor replied, “If our top Gallaudet students could compete with those students from the rest of the country, there would be no need for Gallaudet.”
Pause. The heart drops. Yes. That DID just happen.
As our lead hearing researchers presented slanted data about Deaf students to nationwide institutions of education, the numbers of HUGs on campus have increased exponentially. The interpreting, audiology, and speech therapy departments continue to thrive with many of its students being resistant to becoming fluent ASL users, competent in deaf culture—but, of course, such resistance can be found among a variety of graduate students, to my painful realization. What is wrong with this picture? As Aubrecht and Commerson (2010) identified, what we are seeing are features of the Gallaudet Syndrome*, a vicious cycle that is renewing itself every year through our continuing to bow down to the false ideal of a hearing-ized Gallaudet. Are we to continue participating in this cycle, submitting before the system of oppression that is permeating our daily lives on this campus?
This is my proposal. Gallaudet is a bilingual university. Gallaudet is the one deaf space we can have in this country. As members of an oppressed cultural-linguistic group, we deserve a space that is based on our right to express our language and for our true allies to fully participate in that expression without any whining about their own language that is a direct representation of the system that constantly ruins so many of our deaf lives through cultural and linguistic denial.
Thus, a language policy must be accepted. ASL at all times. Language immersion at all times. Cultural representation at all times. No more wasting time coddling the hearing students or the Deaf students victimized by the hearing system who are not yet fluent users of ASL. It is time to rise up and unite, to recreate Gallaudet as a deaf embodiment.
Who is Gallaudet? We are. Who are we? Deaf, deaf-allies, and ASL-users. Finish.
Elena Ruiz
Gallaudet Grad Student
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
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