How Stupid Can People Be…?
Jamie Berke and Mishka Zena broke the story on the blogs about a Deaf man in Texas who was assaulted by a store clerk. The news story is found here.
I am just boggled at the sheer stupidity of some people. What is wrong with this clerk? Assaulting someone with a crowbar because they did not say hello back? Clearly, this clerk has some mental stability issues. This, however, is not the first time it’s happened to a Deaf person. If you read MZ’s blog, you will see a story about how a Radio Shack clerk assaulted a Deaf customer several years ago.
As a Deaf person, I always hate interacting with hearing strangers in public. I like to go in, get my thing, then right out with the interaction done at a minimum. I’m always careful to look around, to make sure nobody’s talking at me, and if the cashier talks to me, I just smile politely. If I’m asked a question, I just usually give a questioning look then they’ll say it again. I can usually lipread those simple sentences.
But I’m just generally uncomfortable when I go out in public. There are far too many opportunities for misunderstandings. People will get annoyed with you, sneer derisively at you because they think you’re the one who’s stupid or rude, when half of the time, it’s them!
I’ve even dealt with people who were at a near-panic when they realized I was Deaf. Verbal altercations are never fun, and believe me, it happens far too often for us Deaf. Ask any Deaf person, and they can tell you stories all night long about hearing people who just do not know how to deal with us.
An incident that happened to me, and while this is nothing like the poor dude in Texas, it sure as heck annoyed me. I was lost, so I pulled over at a gas station. I went up to the clerk to ask where the maps were. So I signed writing. It’s a very simple sign, and any hearing person should be able to understand it. You hold your left palm up, and with your right hand, you mime the act of writing on the left palm.
I do that to the gas station clerk, and he stares at me like I’m an alien. He looked a bit afraid of me too, which I found bizarre since he was twice my size. So I sign it again. Same response. Then I gesture it – like I’m writing in the air… His stare deepens. After repeating this two more times, I lost it. I snapped with my voice, ‘Pen and paper, dude!’
At that point, the light bulb finally went off over his head and he gave me a pen and paper so I could ask him my question. I don’t know if my speech was intelligible to him – ironically enough, I’ve been told that my speech gets clearer when I’m angry. But that’s beside the point…
Like that guy in Texas, I don’t like using my voice. I don’t see the need for me to use it, either. Why do I have to use my voice so people won’t think I’m rude, an idiot, or whatever they’re thinking?
And like Jamie Berke wrote in her blog, there’s always a little, tiny voice in the back of my head warning me often when I go out in public – I could end up in a physical altercation with some hearing person because they don’t get it. The odds of that happening are extremely low, but it’s higher than for the average hearing person.
So if a hearing person is wondering why Deaf people are always looking around at their surroundings in public, you know why now.
Revolution
Someone asked me today, “Do you think Deaf Culture is dying?”
I told her, “No… I think it’s undergoing a revolution. We are in the middle of a cultural revolution, in my humble opinion. I don’t know what the end result will be… Will it be the same? No… But it’ll still be there.”
It’s not very often that people can recognize that they’re in a moment of time that will have historical significance. What I am witnessing will definitely go down in the history books – the deaf history ones. It remains to be seen whether we actually make it in the mainstream history books. Only when it is over, will we be able to know.
I’m not speaking of how the advent of the blogs and vlogs has changed Deaf Culture… because there is absolutely no question that the v/blogs have had a drastic impact on the exchange of knowledge and interaction amongst ourselves and our relationship with society at large.
I’m speaking about the increasingly polar opposites that are arising from this revolution. I have mixed feelings as I watch this unfold. It vacillates between hope and despair, wonderment and repulsion.
On one side, you have the oral deaf who claim there is an oral deaf culture, because in their minds, if Deaf Culture is real, so is oral deaf culture. They therefore, have a stake in Deaf Culture and supposedly have a say in how it will evolve.
The oral deaf consider themselves to have a disability, and cannot live without hearing aids or cochlear implants, but deem to have a right to have their say in how Deaf Culture operates. Never mind the fact that those who consider themselves culturally Deaf, do not consider themselves to be disabled, or to even have a disability.
Never mind the fact that culturally Deaf persons’ norms are different than hearing norms in the sense where we would celebrate having a deaf baby, pass down language, traditions, and folklore that is not hearing. Do oral deaf do that? No. They pass down hearing norms – spoken English, the notion that they have a disability, horror at the thought of having a deaf baby, hearing traditions and folklore.
Never mind the fact that when a Deaf person encounters a person who doesn’t want to deal with them, such as a store clerk suddenly becoming inscrutable and cold upon the discovery of the person’s deafness… the Deaf person’s reaction is anger and the desire to be understood and respected by the clerk, whereas an oral deaf person’s reaction is, “I gotta speak better. I gotta fit in better, so this won’t happen next time. Are my hearing aid or cochlear implant batteries fully charged? Maybe this is why they didn’t understand me? Maybe I should’ve done something differently…”
Culturally Deaf people refuse to be supplicants. But the oral deaf insist upon telling us that we do have a disability and that if we are wise, we must fit in with mainstream society. We must conform to hearing society.
Then you have the opposite of the oral deaf… Culturally Deaf people who are so enamored of our culture and language that they now are claiming that we are a race of our own. Screams of how the hearing people have caused a holocaust in the education of the deaf, and how subjugated we have been, and the hearing must be emotionally punished for this.
Exhortation after exhortation for us to rise up, protest and commit emotional violence at every turn about how the hearing are committing cultural and linguistic genocide by implanting deaf babies, denying them American Sign Language and brainwashing the parents into thinking anything Deaf is evil. Any deaf person who does not know American Sign Language is considered to be dead, because their souls have been murdered by the hearing.
If one dares to disagree or plead for moderation, the person is labeled as a colonized deaf person. A person who internalizes audism, and is trying to oppress their fellow Deaf. There must be no room for individualism. We all must think and speak alike, because that is the only way Deaf Culture will ensure its’ survival in the wake of the genocidal cochlear implants and audio-verbal therapy philosophy.
As a self-proclaimed moderate, I am chilled and often despair at both of their mentalities. But I also rue at the painful irony … both of them are screaming for conformity.
But what gives me hope are the people who recognize where individualism is necessary and often a good thing. Hearing parents who might initially weep at the fact that their baby is deaf, but seek out us Deaf, and learn our language so that they may bridge that communication and cultural gap. Hope at seeing vlog after vlog, blog after blog, engaging in often painful, but authentic dialogue with both Deaf and hearing.
Hope at seeing hearing people recognizing the fact that they will never truly understand what being Deaf is all about, recognizing the fact that our educational system is in shambles and that we need to do something about it. Recognizing the fact that too many of us have been denied American Sign Language for far too long and having the courage to stand by and let us grieve at the injustices committed to us instead of trying to pacify us because it’s just too damn uncomfortable for them to witness.
I have hope because I also see other Deaf standing up and saying, “No, I refuse to conform to hearing society’s expectations of what I should be, but I will not conform to the notion that I am a race apart from the human race. Only I will determine who I am.” I smile at seeing us demanding critical thinking, being willing to question authority, whether it be hearing or Deaf, and standing up to condescension, willful ignorance, prejudice and discrimination.
Because of those things, I hold out hope that we all will recognize that we all are individuals but also as a collective – an unique thread in the fabric that makes up humanity. I hold out hope that in the end, our cultural revolution will go down in the ages as the beginning of something great for all of us, Deaf and hearing.
