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Deaf community and Deaf culture are two phrases used to refer to persons who are culturally Deaf as opposed to those who are deaf from the medical/audiological/pathological perspective. When used in the cultural sense, the word deaf is very often capitalized. Being unable to hear is only a part of being Deaf. In fact, when the word is used in the cultural sense, hearing is one of the least important criteria used to delineate membership within the group. Many persons that would be labeled as hearing or hard-of-hearing from the audiological/medical/pathological perspective would be labeled, or would label themselves Deaf from the cultural one. Similarly, a person who identifies themselves as Deaf may in fact have much more hearing than one who identified themselves as hearing or hard-of-hearing. The use of the cultural label is a question of personal identity much more than a question of hearing ability.
Culturally deaf people do not look on deafness as a disability. There is a simple explanation for this: Within the community of deaf people, deafness isn't a disability but an asset in much the same way it is an asset to be a Navajo within the Navajo tribe or Korean within the community of Koreans of Los Angeles. In short, it's a distinction about language. Since the Navajo or Korean views their language as no more than a social disability within the larger majority culture, so do members of the signing deaf community. They consider deafness a positive trait, because it is tightly connected to other aspects of Deaf culture which they experience as positive. Deaf unity and community is strong. The fact that deafness excludes deaf people from some aspects of hearing culture reinforces cohesion within the community. As an example of how thouroughly deafness is seen as a positive attribute, many Deaf individuals wish for their children to be born deaf. This can be hard or even impossible for hearing people to understand but there is also a simple explanation for this when one considers how difficult it is for hearing parents of deaf children to raise them. It is no less difficult for deaf parents to raise hearing children. Both hearing and deaf parents who have children unlike them understand how much more simple life is when they fully understand the needs of their children and can communicate with and relate to their child's experience in the world. As hearing parents seek out resources to help them in the nurturing and education of their deaf children, so, too, must deaf parents take extraordinary steps to ensure their hearing children, whose mother tongue is sign language, are exposed to hearing people and culture. So it comes as no surprise that both hearing and deaf parents see their best abilities and skills being utilized on children who are like them. Hearing people who treat deafness as a disability or subscribe to a pathological perspective of deafness are sometimes met with hostility by those in the Deaf community. As rare an instance as it is, it is sadly a reaction to the hostility the deaf experience from hearing people throughout their lives. Although hearing people can and do participate in and belong to the Deaf community, their different life experiences tend to set them apart. Of course, hearing Children Of Deaf Adults or CODA's experience full acceptance within the Deaf-World, the term deaf people use to describe their social network. But acceptance into this world extends to both hearing and deaf friends and relatives who cherish the easy flow of communication within the group and uphold the hard-earned values, history, mores and dignity of deaf people.
Is the Deaf community a real culture?
Culture is expressed by the inter-relatedness and interdependent traits, behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, values, mores, history, and, often, language of a group. The determination as to one's membership in a particular cultural group is not determined by vote or election to the group by its constituent members, but by individual election to embrace the the core values of the group. In this regard the community of deaf people, because they have a language and history that binds them, thus have a conceptual framework in which to be viewed as a culture. Well known cultural group such as women, gays and lesbians, African-Americans and indigenous peoples such as the Inuit tribe of Alaska represent minority cultures that are embedded within a larger majority culture. Each group has culturally devised behaviors, beliefs and values that serve as markers for whom does or does not embrace the overall worldview of the group. When comparing the community of deaf people with these groups the commonalities are consistent with all of them. In many respects, minority cultures can be described as groups who are bound together because they are disadvantaged by the beliefes and practices of the majority culture in which they are embedded. This is true of languague minorities such as the community of deaf people and Hispanic-Americans, ethnic and racial minorities such as Turkish Armenians, religious minorities such as Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses, and sexual minorities such as women and gays and lesibians. Deaf culture has its own values, mores, history, organizations, art and behaviors that mark those indivduals who embrace the group. So for the deaf, it is not by diagnosis, but by individual identification that determines membership. Yet unlike all of these group, with the exception of the indigenous Inuit Tribe, Turkish Armenians and Hispanic-Americans, the deaf world finds its center, primarily, in a shared language; sign language, and secondarily in shared values. In the conceptual framework of culture, then, deaf culture shares its closest parallel with minority language groups, a scale of human experience much smaller than the majority culture in which it is embedded, but nonetheless, deaf culture possesses every single aspect of culture that the defines cultural groups at all; minority or majority.
Group Attributes
As with any other culture, there exists a set of shared experiences, attitudes and cultural norms that serve to identify and bring together members of the Deaf community while simultaneously excluding outsiders from entering the core group. To be fully included in the Deaf community, one must at least have the following attributes and possibly others not mentioned.
- Fluency in sign language and a positive attitude toward the language. Sign language is the centralmost valued aspect of Deaf culture and having a shared language sets up a powerful affinity among the Deaf as it does in hearing cultures. Language is often a central, indeed required, component of a culture. In hearing cultures foreigners are expected to learn the language of the land of their residence in order to successfully assimilate into the culture. Use of the majority language is desirable, but the grave difficulty of acquiring spoken language for the prelingually deaf has been balanced by the community's genius in creating original, indigenous sign languages that are truly "of" the nation that nurtures the signing deaf as citizens, embodying both their national culture and the culture of the deaf community itself.
- Knowledge and respect for the cultural norms of the Deaf community. For example, the Deaf community has attention-getting behaviors: waving a hand or creating a vibration with an object to gain attention; pointing at people is not considered rude behavior. Direct eye contact is insisted on to glean meaning. There are Deaf culture norms for introductions and leave-taking, which are prolonged and physical with much contact, humor, self-deprecation and wit. Many other cultural norms are different from those of the hearing culture within which Deaf culture is embedded.
- Adaptations to deafness. Deafness may present both liabilities and assets in the interaction of the Deaf with the surrounding world. While one cannot attract the attention of a deaf person by calling their name, deaf people can communicate freely where ambient noise prohibits communication, or even comfort, among the hearing. This is one reason deaf people are highly sought after as employees in large-scale manufacturing and publishing where the noise of machinery is a serious concern. Two deaf people can converse through a closed window or glass office wall, or across a space too large for a voice to carry, so long as they can see one another.
- Many Deaf do not see themselves as disabled. A hearing person may not understand why some deaf people express no sense of loss over being unable to experience sound. Since experiencing sound is something some deaf people never had, there may be no loss or associated emotions with not having it. Deaf people are aware of the things they cannot succeed in and may be adept at ferreting out the range of activities in which they can occupy or create an established niche. This may seem unusual to some hearing people because they are aware of the abundance of opportunities afforded to people who hear sounds. Hearing persons who are members of the Deaf community are aware of and share this Deaf-World view not so much because they are expected to, but because they have witnessed the common-sense practicality of deaf methods of problem solving.
Mainstream recognition of Deaf culture
For much of history deaf people were expected to adapt to hearing culture as best they were able or to be hidden or invisible. Recently, especially in the United States, the existence of a Deaf culture has been increasingly recognized.
Deaf President Now: A watershed point in the awareness of Deaf culture by the dominant hearing culture was the student strike at Gallaudet University starting March 9, 1988. Deaf students began campaigning for a deaf president when Jerry Lee, who had been president sice 1984, resigned in 1987. The board of trustees considered three finalists, one hearing and two deaf, and on March 6, 1988, after a large rally on March 1, and a candelight vigil on March 5th, chose Elisabeth Ann Zinser, Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro--the hearing candidate.
Students closed the University and barricaded the campus, issuing four demands, which were supported by faculty and staff:
1) that a new deaf president be named immediately;
2) that Jane Bassett Spilman, chair of the board of trustees (who announced the board's choice with the comment that "the deaf are not yet ready to function in the hearing world.") resign immediately;
3) that the board of trustees, at that time composed of 17 hearing members and four deaf, be constituted with a 51% majority of deaf members;
4) that there be no reprisals.
Students were joined by deaf and hearing supporters from all over the country. Three hundred deaf students from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf came to Washington by bus, and others came from all over the U.S. and Europe. Dr. Zinser resigned on the evening of March 10th. On Friday, March 11, about 2,500 demonstrators, a thousand Gallaudet students and supporters, marched to the Capital, where there were speeches, spoken and signed. On Sunday, March 13, 1988, the board of trustees met for nine hours. Philip Bravin, the new (deaf) chair of the board, announced that Spilman had resigned, and that King Jordan, the deaf dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Gallaudet, had been elected President.
Reference for Deaf Prez Now: Sacks, Oliver (1989) Seeing Voices: A journey into the world of the deaf, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-097347-1.
In the UK a charity called the Dorothy Miles Cultural Centre (DMCC), based in Guildford, exists to bridge the gap between deaf and hearing people through social, cultural and educational activities. The Centre also offers courses in British Sign Language (BSL) which are accredited by the Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People (CACDP). DMCC runs drama workshops involving professional actors and organises sporting events, including an annual cricket match. There is also widespread availability of of BSL courses from other providers across the UK. Nearly all terrestrial television is closed captioned.
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