[Ohio-talk] Braille Monitor article concerning deafblind cultures

[meandthedog at oberlin.net]

Hello Kaiti. What a post. Hurray. I am so tired of the devision in this
country , and most important
between the disabled. Our power is minima to those struggling fork their
righties.
You story was a blessing.
I heard about the procure that helps deaf and dread blind people to hear.
I also understand that
the deaf community apposes the procedure. What a shame.
I am blind and have a guide dog. There are those who profess the white
cain, but I have never
been told that my do is an intrusion into the convention of the NFB.,

I am quite ambivalent about the changes in having a DB. school. If we
tried to learn from each
other we could really gain  a lot about our disabilities.
thank you very much for your Post. Megan and my guide MS. P.






 Hi all,
>
> Though I am a deafblind coordinator and this article is therefore of
> particular interest to me, I think it is one we should all read so
> that we can better understand the dilemma we're facing when we say we
> want to start a deafblind division.  I've pasted it here for your
> convenience.
>
> In the community we have a very rich history, including two distinct
> cultures which have been so severely separated from one another by
> their language that there doesn't seem to be any evidence they were
> even aware of one another's existence until sometime after the rise of
> the information age.
>
>
> First there is the Deaf-blind, with a capital D. These are folks from
> the Deaf culture who, for one reason or another, have become blind.
> They may have been born into deaf families and later experienced the
> loss of vision. People who self-identify as Deaf with a capital D
> consider themselves part of a relatively isolated nondisabled
> community. They are isolated by their language from the community at
> large. They often are able to communicate with members of the hearing
> community through various adaptive means but choose to maintain close
> association among themselves.
>
>
> Part of the reason for their choice to isolate themselves lies in the
> history of Deaf people in this country. At one time educators believed
> that using hand signs was a lower form of communication--not fit for
> humans. Hearing teachers at residential schools for the Deaf forced
> Deaf children to read lips and to practice using their voices. Deaf
> students spent long, weary hours working with speech therapists and
> were forbidden from using their language of choice. Because of this
> oppression, which continued for years, American Sign Language (ASL)
> was nearly extinguished. A whole generation of Deaf students kept the
> language alive by sneaking signs with each other at night in their
> dormitory rooms.
>
>
> If a student had any amount of residual hearing, he or she was forced
> to wear hearing aids. Hearing aid technology was not very evolved
> during this time; the devices were not very useful, plus they were
> highly uncomfortable. It was a tradition among Deaf children upon
> completing school to throw away their hearing aids in celebration of
> their new freedom.
>
>
> Because of all the oppression by the hearing educators, this
> generation of Deaf people learned to distrust the hearing community.
> That distrust continues today and is perpetuated by incidents such as
> the failure of institutions such as hospitals and the judicial system
> to hire qualified interpreters when serving a Deaf person, resulting
> in horror stories about wrongful incarceration, withheld medical
> treatment, etc. A common cruelty involves police officers restraining
> the wrists of a Deaf person, who then is unable to use his or her
> hands to communicate with an interpreter if one is present.
>
>
> Such distrust and animosity between the Deaf and hearing cultures
> extends to blind folks who, for various reasons, have lost their
> hearing. This group of deaf-blind people [deaf-blind being hyphenated
> but in lower case] do not naturally self-identify as deaf-blind. They
> have likely started to come to terms with their blindness through
> association with groups such as the NFB. The tragedy here is that, in
> the past, the true model of the independent vanilla blind did not
> include anyone who had "something else wrong with them." If one had a
> hearing loss, one might as well remain in an institution or on the
> street corner holding out a hat. The "hearing" deaf-blind person was
> not likely to speak out and self-advocate. The deaf-blind from the
> hearing culture were not seen any differently from the hearing
> population in general in the eyes of the Deaf and Deaf-blind from the
> Deaf culture.
>
>
> Furthermore, since the deaf-blind with a lower-case D did not learn to
> use ASL, communication between the two deaf-blind cultures was, for
> all intents and purposes, impossible. In rare circumstances, where the
> two groups were placed together, the result was extremely
> uncomfortable. Each group ignored the other. The act of ignoring was
> interpreted by the other group as snobbery.
>
>
> I am a deaf-blind person who is from the hearing culture. My hearing
> loss was so severe that I made the choice to study at a total
> immersion facility for several months in order to learn sign language.
> All my teachers were Deaf. Upon completing my course of study, I had
> regained the ability to communicate; yet I could still not communicate
> with anyone I had known before I began my study. Hence I would need to
> choose the culture to which I would belong. Should I say good-bye to
> all my friends and family? They were not about to learn to sign.
>
>
> I was very fortunate that, within two or three years of learning ASL,
> I was given the opportunity to qualify for cochlear implants. They
> were both successful, and I have my life back as a blind person. But
> most others are not so fortunate.
>
>
> So now we have two different groups of DB [deaf blind] folks who can't
> communicate with each other. They have the same disability. Both have
> a combined vision and hearing loss, both can benefit from an SSP
> [Support Service Provider], and both can benefit from Braille. There
> are some DB folks who cross over the culture line. We see them at our
> DB Seminar during our NFB Convention. We cannot ignore them. They
> cannot ignore us. They need the NFB philosophy. We need them behind us
> and with us when we go to Capitol Hill someday to ask for a national
> SSP Program. When I go to one of their meetings, because they know me
> as one of their supporters, they provide me with a voice interpreter.
> The NFB has begun providing interpreters for DB attendees who use ASL.
> The DB Division is agonizing over the cost of ASL interpreters.
>
> But relationships between these two groups are very difficult to
> forge. These relationships must be developed over time, with patience
> enough to allow the formulation of trust. As Pam Allen has said to me
> regarding the differences that set us apart, the key is education. We
> will not overcome the damage that history has done unless we first
> understand what will be required to heal the wounds.
>
> --
> Kaiti Shelton
> University of Dayton 2016.
> Music Therapy, Psychology, Philosophy
> President, Ohio Association of Blind Students
> Sigma Alpha Iota-Delta Sigma
>
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