A fascinating two days!

Joe Murray from America, currently residing in Norway, worked with us for two long days. We covered a wide range of subjects such as eugenics and genetic engineering, what it means to be a Deaf person and Deaf history. We also presented three articles that shows different perspectives about the Deaf Community as a whole and had a great discussion!

First, we focused on the history of Deaf people and eugenics, how intermarriage between Deaf persons were discouraged. Alexander Graham Bell, ironically the inventor of the telephone, was a pioneer in the eugenics movement against Deaf people. Joe shared some personal information about Bell and his life; it was amazing to actually view Bell as a human being who himself had personal doubts about what he was doing. It was also interesting to learn about the reactions Deaf people had toward the eugenics movement and campaign to keep Deaf persons from marrying one another. The movement can be considered a failure because approximately 90% of Deaf still marry other Deaf, one of the highest ratings of a minority group. As I said before, in order to understand life as it is now, it is important to understand the past, to learn from mistakes and to find strategies for the future.

My group presented Harlan Lane's article Ethnicity, Ethics and the Deaf-World. This was a fascinating article where the argument that Deaf people belong to an ethnic group is a strong one. He explained how we can't be identified with other disability groups because of several reasons: our needs are very different, we have a high percentage of intermarriage and we do not view ourselves as disabled. After presenting this article and learning about different perspectives as presented by the other groups, we had a heated discussion about which group we should belong to: Disabled or Minority (linguistic, ethnic, etc). We also discussed whether we can belong to BOTH. Some of us were unsure what we could do- like me for example. In America, we've been classified as disabled for many years- many of our privileges, rights and protection are under disability laws. I can't help but wonder if it IS possible to make a transition from being a disability group to a minority group completely. What would happen with all the laws that protect us from discrimination and provide us with access to interpreters, captioning, etc. When I think about it... almost everything I do in America is somehow related to being "disabled"- at the University, I use Disability Services, my government monetary support is from Disability funds and I am a licensed Special Education teacher, meaning I teach "disabled" children. I feel the concept is already so much rooted into the system that I must wonder how we can make the transition to being protected as a minority group. What about using both labels? Harlan Lane argues against using both labels; he believes that would make our fight weaker and offers those involved in oralism/pathology the opportunity to continue and try to fix our disability. What a dilemma!

We ended our two rewarding days with Joe by discussing how we should view ourselves and what argument we should use against the oralism/cochlear implant movement. Many Deaf activist groups have steered away from the ear, having nothing to do with our inability to hear. Many people supporting oralism tend to focus on the 5 senses and how Deaf people lack one sense: hearing. We discussed embracing this concept and using it against them! Why don't we declare that YES, we do lack one sense but that does not make us any less than anyone else. Our other senses are enhanced and we have adapted to living without the sense of hearing. We ARE different and there's nothing wrong with that! I must agree with this... I was raised with this perspective. My parents always told me that EVERYONE is different or unique in their own ways. If it is not deafness, it could be a particular skill or ability to do something. For me, I am a visual person who uses a beautiful visual language and live in a rich culture. I am different and accept myself just the way I am! Maybe if we used this perspective and jumped over to the same "side" as our enemies, we would be able to accomplish much more. Maybe we would be able to preserve our rich heritage, culture and language, helping countless Deaf children have a positive view of themselves!