me_punctured
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2006
- Messages
- 363
- Reaction score
- 0
Rick, u said something about oral deaf people...I am sorry I dont think your daughter and her friends are really a part of the deaf community if they dont know sign language...
It made me think if all these children who get CIs and do well with them which is great but are not exposed to sign language, they wont be part of the deaf community even though they are still deaf themselves. Maybe it is not important to you or to the oral deaf people not to be a part of the deaf community but to say that u dont need us is kinda hurtful in a way. Like we are beneath u all.
Very interesting to see how you define what constitutes the deaf community, though no one should be surprised at the social circumstances leading to the exclusivity through the process of requirements and qualification for membership. I personally consider any oral deaf person to be part of the deaf community, whether they elected it or not and whether they know or not, and even more, part of an invisible minority group threaded to a colorful history. Often, it seems more deafies who use ASL know more about deaf history than deafies who don't, unless the latter happen to be well-educated.
If I meet another deaf person who doesn't know any sign language, it doesn't stop me from communicating with her. Nor does it influence my judgment of that person. But it does produce a gap, one I'm conscious of, as it would with a monolingual and a bilingual speaker, the latter forced to accommodate the former with no language choices. I am at my best when I can code-switch in both ASL and English.
Last edited: