<...My neighbor is one who is adamant that there is a deaf culture, and things like cochlear implants are not OK and designed to eradicate that culture. After having been around them I can see his point. Couldn't before, though, and don't know how much I agree. He does fine.

This sounds a little bizarre to me, and dangerously close to our current Culture of the Victim which seems to attract so many groups. Would a cure for AIDS eradicate an "AIDS culture?" I can't understand this kind of thinking at all. Maybe this helps him mentally get around some kind of complex about being "handicapped." Beats me.



A little background: I have a friend whose daughter was born profoundly deaf, and another whose youngest is hard of hearing because of a staph infection in infancy. Also, a priest in my family was the hearing clergyman for a group of deaf parishoners, and learned AmSLan to better serve his parish. He remarked repeatedly on the beauty and versatility of the language.

Both sets of parents have had an uphill struggle trying to get their children educated. The deaf child is going to get cochlear implants because her parents think it would be best for her, even though the schools have been most understanding. (I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of her mother, either.) The child who's hard of hearing was written off (partly because of her parents' economic status) as distracted and "not too bright". Her mother had to fight the schools -- same schools -- tooth and nail to get her recognized as needing special education for the hearing impaired, in spite of numerous trips to doctors to document her hearing loss. Deaf people, especially children, are often accused of being rude, inattentive, or stupid. One will still read about cases even today in which someone who's deaf is mistakenly involuntarily committed to a mental institution as severely retarded.

One never sees this kind of discrimination practiced against the blind. Their handicap is so, um, visible. Observe the multitude of helps available to them, beginning with the characteristic glasses and cane, the dogs (though dogs for the deaf are becoming more accepted), Braille and large-print books, computer magnification software, radio broadcasts of people reading the newspapers, books on tape and CD, even machines that read documents aloud in mechanized voices. The blind also have a whole separate tax deduction. The deaf consider themselves lucky just to find TTY capability.

In view of this history of misunderstanding, misdiagnosis and mistreatment, it doesn't surprise me that the deaf should have become militant about their condition: that it's not a choice, but it's not a handicap, and doesn't make one less intelligent. In this way the deaf are more affected by the way they are treated than by their lack of hearing.

Also, deaf people who learn AmSLan do, in fact, have two first languages: the written language (whichever one it is) that they use to read and write, and AmSLan, with its unique and expressive grammar, with which they converse. It's obvious why the deaf consider themselves as a culture apart: they have a different language and a set of customs predetermined by their physical condition and the hearing world's treatment of them as a group. They do have a separate culture, a quite unique one.

The trouble with cochlear implants is not that they bestow hearing, but that they don't work for everyone. The deaf people who remain deaf become an even smaller group of even more profoundly isolated, more "defective" people than before.

The answer to the militant defence of deaf culture, it seems to me, is not to deny the validity of the deaf community's response to its challenges, but to improve diagnosis of hearing problems and improve public awareness of the challenges of being deaf. It will be a lot easier for the deaf to accept diverse responses among their own group if the greater group around them can accept the deaf as neither antisocial nor mentally deficient.

Regards--
Mary Anne