why do hearing people think they better than us?

I think part of it is the stereotype/caricature of Deaf people that hearing people are taught. Growing up, the image of deaf people that I gleaned from media and my culture was that Deaf people were "hearing people that lacked hearing." They were a people that lacked, were less than, diminished, reduced, beneath us, pitiable. You get the idea.

You also get the fact that being Deaf is often associated with being mentally handicapped in hearing media and culture. It all adds up to a really screwed up picture of Deaf people that hearing people get fed. And because of the communication divides between much of hearing and Deaf culture, there is little opportunity for this image to be corrected.

Even now, after everything I learned, it wasn't until I went to a Deaf story/poetry/etc event that I really ousted a lot of the unconscious perceptions about who and what Deaf people are. For the first time in my life, I saw Deaf people not as less than or diminished, but as full and whole people in their own right. It was so deeply ingrained in me on an unconscious level that it took seeing Deaf people in their own environment to really root it out and destroy it.

So... I think that's why hearing people think they're better than Deaf. Their only understanding of what it means to be Deaf comes from caricatures and stereotypes fed to them by a Deaf-unfriendly media, and we don't get a lot of contact with actual Deaf folks to undo those images.
 
"Furthermore, for some reason in hearing culture, it is important to mock people that are different, unusual or strange."

I am sorry you grew up in a culture that feels this way. However, the 'hearing culture' I grew up in, and still live in, believes mocking anyone is rude, close-minded and unacceptable.
 
Journey said:
"Furthermore, for some reason in hearing culture, it is important to mock people that are different, unusual or strange."

I am sorry you grew up in a culture that feels this way. However, the 'hearing culture' I grew up in, and still live in, believes mocking anyone is rude, close-minded and unacceptable.
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I wish I could have grown up in your culture. I grew up in a very backwards place with really narrow minded and unpleasant people.
 
Well Joyce it looks like you have an important purpose to your life already ... to open the minds and hearts of the people you grew up with. With patience. a warm smile and some gentle educating, I bet you could do a great job in making that place a little more 'forward' :).
 
ignorance

and ego....

I think JOurney's right, Joyce. Even if your meeting with someone affects them so that they understand differently, that's still one person different.
I grew up same as Journey and that has given me a lot of perspectives to go on. Still even with that, sometimes people I know put things out there mostly cuz they don't know any better, regarding d/Deaf/hearing
 
If hearing people are so uptight about our deafness and think we can not make the right decision.

I remembered watching the video from DeafTV about a Deaf couple with one Deaf daughter. The Deaf couple had trouble trying to make his hearing parents understand that the Deaf couple had the right to make decision whether they want their daughter to have CI or not. They had researched about CI and decided they don't want their daughter to have CI. Also they have asked their daughter if she want CI or what. They had explained about the CI to her. She would rather not have CI.

But the hearing parents of the Deaf couple want their granddaughter to get CI. The Deaf couple and the hearing grandparents had a big fight about it. The grandparents thought that the grandparents had the right to make the decision on their granddaughter. The Deaf couple had tried and tried to tell them that the Deaf couple had the right to make the decision, not the hearing grandparents. They are so stubborn not seeing that Deaf parents are capable of making the decision on their own.

That is what bugged me about having us be like little children not making the right decision. We are suppose to be grown up and not retarded. We are not stupid.

I guess that the grandparents think they are better than their own son and daughter-in-law just because they are deaf. No wonder the Deaf mother cried at trying to make them understand that her husband and she can do anything except to hear but the grandparents of the deaf girl don't seem to see the light or not understand at all.

It just made me upset watching that video about it. I have mix feeling about trying to explain to hearing people what I can do and what I can not do but still I am like everyone and it is not fair for them to tell us that we can not do anything at all. :mad:
 
Bebonang, it seemed to me that the grandparents in the video were not willing to learn sign language nor willing to learn about deaf culture. I am a hearing person and am learning sign language, deaf culture, etc. I don't think I am better than deaf people. I have great respect for deaf people and their culture. Some hearing people could be ignorant.
 
I'm hearing and I don't think I'm better than any one, regardless of hearing status, class, religious affiliation, gender, race etc. I think it's unfair to overgeneralize that way and say "all hearing people feel this way". No group of people, whether majority or minority hold all of the same beliefs. I think that a lot hearing people simply don't understand deafness, and when are confronted with it make up random assumptions to fill in the blanks to which they have no answers. I myself will never know the world from my boyfriend's perspective, who is deaf and grew up with hearing parents in a hearing world. Just as he'll never know the world from my perspective, just as someone who is Deaf raised by Deaf parents will never know the world from my boyfriend's perspective, or mine, and so on. We all have different upbringings and see the world through different paradigms.

People who are ignorant, that is people who haven't been presented with the proper tools or learning experiences yet often go about making assumptions, I think that is what it boils down to, a lack of experience with something/a kind of person. I'm really open to all kinds of people with all sorts of backgrounds, and I really don't believe any person is better than another. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have been raised by open minded people who taught me to think for myself instead of going by what society tells us is right.
 
Was at a neighbor's house helping her today and she brought up this very subject. I mentioned how we had a thread here about it and she was amazed.

She was fostering a bunch of children over the years and among them were 2-3 deaf children. They still keep in touch with her. All I can say is, this neighbor flat out asked me why most hearing people have no patience or understanding of the deaf or hoh. She actually broke out in tears while asking me this. I told her, there were numerous reasons, but mostly it would be either ignorance of the subject, being raised that the deaf or hoh are "inferior", or just total lack of understanding. She tries to get different people once in a while to go to the Deaf church to help educate them. The members of the church are quite willing to help teach them that we are in fact able bodied and viable human beings no different than them, with the exception that our ears are different and we use a different language.
 
Bebonang said:
If hearing people are so uptight about our deafness and think we can not make the right decision.

I remembered watching the video from DeafTV about a Deaf couple with one Deaf daughter. The Deaf couple had trouble trying to make his hearing parents understand that the Deaf couple had the right to make decision whether they want their daughter to have CI or not. They had researched about CI and decided they don't want their daughter to have CI. Also they have asked their daughter if she want CI or what. They had explained about the CI to her. She would rather not have CI.

But the hearing parents of the Deaf couple want their granddaughter to get CI. The Deaf couple and the hearing grandparents had a big fight about it. The grandparents thought that the grandparents had the right to make the decision on their granddaughter. The Deaf couple had tried and tried to tell them that the Deaf couple had the right to make the decision, not the hearing grandparents. They are so stubborn not seeing that Deaf parents are capable of making the decision on their own.

That is what bugged me about having us be like little children not making the right decision. We are suppose to be grown up and not retarded. We are not stupid.

I guess that the grandparents think they are better than their own son and daughter-in-law just because they are deaf. No wonder the Deaf mother cried at trying to make them understand that her husband and she can do anything except to hear but the grandparents of the deaf girl don't seem to see the light or not understand at all.

It just made me upset watching that video about it. I have mix feeling about trying to explain to hearing people what I can do and what I can not do but still I am like everyone and it is not fair for them to tell us that we can not do anything at all. :mad:
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Are you talking about Sound and Fury - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia If so, they eventually do get the daughter the implant, along with their other kids, as well as the mother.
 
I just read The Mask of Benevolence and realized how long this debate has been raging....Napoleon's Admin Director of the Paris National Institute for Deaf-Mute described deaf children as "isolated, detached, fickle, capricious, superficial, unimaginative, complacement...." and the list goes on. So, the fact that there are hearing people who think they are better than the deaf, they have been hearing it for a long damn time.
You want to break a pattern start by educating them...........if they don't want to listen then they are jerks who are going to probably die alone because they have to be "right" as opposed to a human, frailty and all.
 
I'm sure part of the problem, too, is simply rooted in the words people use. We call ourselves d/Deaf, or Hard of Hearing. But hearing people will often refer to us as "hearing impaired". When someone hears a work like "impaired", they are- unfortunately- likely to feel like there's something wrong with that person.
 
When I see 'hearing-impaired' I feel like a little boy running around flapping his arms trying to fly, but he just can't do it.

Why? Because the hearing people tell us we can do it but when we try, they hold us down because we're 'impaired'.
 
My son glanced at the screen as he was going by to the bathroom, he saw the title of this thread and his answer just popped out and both shocked me and still made me think.

He said,"Probably because they are jealous and have nothing else to complain about."
 
Dixie said:
When I see 'hearing-impaired' I feel like a little boy running around flapping his arms trying to fly, but he just can't do it.

Why? Because the hearing people tell us we can do it but when we try, they hold us down because we're 'impaired'.
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What kills me the most is that most people think "hearing-impaired" is politically correct. I referred to my boyfriend/his housemates as Deaf in front of my old boss one, and she corrected me very snottily, "Oh it's hearing-impaired, dear." :ugh:
 
Let's not forget... there are deaf people who think they're better than hearing people.

I've often seen deaf people try to do what hearing people do, but overdo it because they think it makes them better than the hearies.

For instance, a hearing person swears once every few sentences. A deaf person thinks that if he/she swears more often (once in every sentence), he's better and would be more acknowledged. Then it gets annoying when you're trying to have a conversation with that deaf person and they're swearing in every sentence when it's not necessary.
 
melindajanet said:
What kills me the most is that most people think "hearing-impaired" is politically correct. I referred to my boyfriend/his housemates as Deaf in front of my old boss one, and she corrected me very snottily, "Oh it's hearing-impaired, dear." :ugh:
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This is very odd to me. Years ago before I even had met a deaf person, I knew that "hearing impared" wasn't a good term to use. Even now, my dad will sometimes ask me about my "hearing impaired" friends and I have to correct him on that. For reasons i cannot understand, he thinks calling them "deaf" is offensive. *facepalm*
 
society's_child said:
This is very odd to me. Years ago before I even had met a deaf person, I knew that "hearing impared" wasn't a good term to use. Even now, my dad will sometimes ask me about my "hearing impaired" friends and I have to correct him on that. For reasons i cannot understand, he thinks calling them "deaf" is offensive. *facepalm*
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As someone up in years, I, too, used to think as your Dad does and I am hearing im......deaf. :lol:
 
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