Come to a workshop on June 8! This is open to all, especially interpreters, allies and Deaf people.
{Click on the flyer for a larger image, or e-mail me for the original file.}
Deaf Disempowerment and Today’s Interpreter
December 12, 2012
Originally appeared at Street Leverage. Presentation given at Potomac Chapter of RID, Columbia, MD, November 2012.
In the spirit of being transparent, the stories I’m about to share might be uncomfortable for some of you. While I would like to speak my truth, I recognize that you have your own truth as well. I trust that you will evaluate the stories I share and recognize the value in them. I actually was, and am, reluctant about presenting today because like many deaf people who speak out, I’ve had to endure a lot of negative feedback for being a “strong personality,” “angry deaf person,” and so on. My goal today is for you, as interpreters, to be open to possibly uncomfortable topics, uncomfortable truths, and uncomfortable analyses—whether they apply to you or not.
I believe that the best way to become bona fide allies is to embrace difficult ideas, opinions and, yes, facts. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.
Four weeks ago, my two-year-old son fell and broke his leg. A week later, I took him, along with my one-year-old, to the orthopedic doctor for a check-up. Now, I live in a town where there are 250 to 300 deaf people living among 23,000 people; we have the deaf school, so everyone knows how to sign or how to work with interpreters. After about 45 minutes of waiting in the lobby—very unusual for a town of this size—I asked the receptionist about the severe delay. The receptionist never once looked up from her computer, saying that the doctor was backed up. I asked if we could see the doctor since my children were restless, hungry and my son, in a body cast from chest to toe, needed his medicine—which was at home. She said no. I said, “Could you please speak to the doctor or nurse?” She replied, “Oh, no, I can’t do that,” and I repeated my request. She adamantly refused. [Read more…]
A Deaf Perspective: Cultural Respect in Sign Language Interpreting
August 7, 2012
Originally appeared at Street Leverage.
A chip on her shoulder.
An angry Deaf person.
I will definitely NOT be attending her workshops in the future.
The workshop seemed to be a venting session for the Deaf people.
These were just some of the evaluation responses to a workshop I presented at a state-level sign language interpreting conference recently. I had been asked to do three workshops at this conference, and the first workshop went fabulously.
The second workshop was after lunch, a notoriously difficult time slot because participants are often tired from the morning and lunch. Even so, I expected this workshop—which I had presented many times before—would be fun and invigorating. I was especially pumped by the participants’ awesome energy that morning, and was excited to see that many who attended the morning workshop had joined this afternoon session. The Deaf participants were renowned advocates and leaders. However, as the session got underway, I became a bit perplexed by the mood before me. Perhaps it was the lighting, the room set-up, or fatigue, but the room seemed tense, almost foreboding. Still, I figured the energy level would quickly rise. [Read more…]
Far away, indeed.
November 18, 2010
Two incidents took place recently that made me think about the inherent, subconscious biases that we all carry and how they spill over into our interactions with others. The first incident was when I took my two-year-old daughter in for allergy testing. We went to a different clinic from the one we usually go to, so I wasn’t sure who the interpreter would be. The interpreter arrived a bit out of breath because he was late, but he was pleasant enough.
My daughter, as she usually does with anyone who even as much looks at her, started chatting away with the interpreter in American Sign Language (ASL). Keep in mind that the appointment was for my daughter, and so the interpreter was primarily there to facilitate communication for her, although he obviously was there for me also. I found it worthy of note that he never once asked what our communication preferences were.
Halfway through the appointment, as we were waiting for the nurse to return, the interpreter and I began chatting politely. He said, referring to my daughter, “I’m impressed by her language. Normally, with kids that age, I have difficulty understanding their ASL, but she’s so clear and easy to understand.” [Read more…]
Deaf Instructors in ITPs: An Investment in the Community
October 21, 2006
This article originally appeared at i711.com.
There’s a new interpreter training/preparation program (ITP) in Quincy, Ill., at Quincy University where my grandmother worked for 35 years. When I learned of this ITP’s establishment, I was flabbergasted for a number of reasons.
First, Quincy only has about 20-30 deaf people in a population of 40,000. The town is also surrounded by farmland and the Mississippi River; it’s not a bustling metropolis or anything of that nature. What this means is that students in the ITP base their skills on a very small handful of Deaf people, who might not always have time to socialize for “silent suppers” or to be part of these students’ immersion in the language or culture. Besides, there’s MacMurray College in Jacksonville, which has a prominent ITP and is a short drive away on I-72. Jacksonville is also where the Illinois School for the Deaf is, and has a large community of native, fluent signers.
To add insult to injury, the Quincy University ITP has only one Deaf teacher. While I won’t get into the politics of the administration there, this trend of ITPs with a few or no Deaf teachers is disturbing. We’re in an age of awareness, where so much has been discovered about the wealth of American Sign Language (ASL), the Deaf community and its culture, and the profession of interpreting.
I recently learned about an ITP here in Minnesota with no deaf teachers; there are deaf teachers at the college, but they teach ASL, not in the ITP. In the past, this college had Deaf teachers in the ITP, but has pretty much pushed them aside in favor of hiring hearing teachers—some of whom don’t really have the best interpreting skills.
This again disturbs me. In an earlier column, I wrote about how ASL teachers must have three traits: fluency, the right attitude, and teaching skills; this, I believe, also applies to ITP instructors. Before I go into that, let’s get one thing clear: without the Deaf community, there would be no need for interpreters and no need for ITPs. Period.
ITP teachers—Deaf or hearing—should be fluent in ASL and English, have an intricate knowledge of the interpreting process, have an outstanding attitude of respect, and yes, teaching skills. Yet, ITPs (and ASL programs) around the country consistently hire hearing teachers over deaf teachers; many of those hearing teachers lack some or all of the aforementioned traits. This isn’t due to a lack of qualified Deaf teachers; there are plenty. And it’s not because deaf people don’t understand the finer points of interpreting and the process, either. There are plenty of Deaf people—Deaf interpreters, for instance—who have all the qualifications and qualities that an ITP instructor should have. Any ITP coordinator who believes otherwise shouldn’t be in that position.
Besides, Deaf instructors bring such valuable insight into the interpreting classroom. They can teach ethics courses, voice-to-sign courses, interpretation courses, and an array of other topics. In situations where they may need someone hearing to be involved—for instance, to listen to voiced interpretations—why not bring in a hearing team teacher? There are plenty of solutions to listening-based units or activities in these situations.
I’m not saying that Deaf instructors should always be chosen over hearing instructors; quite the contrary. I simply think that ITPs need to stop hiring for the sake of convenience, and begin to proactively recruit Deaf instructors. It’s so important to have a balanced, diverse staff. When an ITP has an all-hearing staff, regardless of the hearing staff’s involvement with the Deaf community (i.e., CODA or spouse of a deaf person), it’s imperative to bring in deaf instructors to alleviate this stark gap. We all can agree that Deaf people bring a unique perspective to an ITP, since they themselves are consumers of interpreting services and can bring distinctive insight to the hearing students’ perceptions of the Deaf community and ASL. More importantly, when an ITP has a balanced staff, the ITP invests in its own future and community.
It saddens me to see so many ITPs returning to the Dark Ages when Deaf people weren’t considered valuable parts of an ITP’s curriculum and identity. Without Deaf people, there is no need for interpreters. ITPs must remember this, and must practice what they teach students: that Deaf people are independent, intelligent and dare we say, typical people. How better to illustrate this than to employ Deaf people at every level?
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Prison Within a Prison
September 21, 2006
This article originally appeared at i711.com.
In 1995, I had to go to the police station after I was assaulted. I was pretty shaken up, and barely in the mood to deal with bureaucracy. I was put in a room where there were seven empty desks and one desk with a typewriter. The policeman said he’d be back in a minute.
Did I mention that this was at 3 a.m.? The station wasn’t exactly hopping, and I didn’t have a two-way pager back then. I sat there for the longest time all alone, with nothing but the walls to look at. After about 30 minutes, I walked to the front desk and asked what the deal was. “Yes, ma’am, sit down and someone will be with you in a minute,” I was told. I asked if an interpreter was coming; yes, one was. After two hours, I again asked. Same response.
I was in that room by myself for agonizing hours. Believing an interpreter was coming, I kept worrying about whether the interpreter was qualified, the situation that had just happened, the medical attention I had gotten but still needed, and a million other things. Eventually, even with my mind racing, I ran out of things to think about, and began debating about whether I should leave or stay. I could have gotten up and walked out, but I was badly hurt and needed to file the report if I wanted the others to be caught. So I decided to stay and put up with the isolation – and that’s what it was, isolation – for another hour. Finally, at the four-hour mark, the policeman came back and slowly typed up a report before sending me on my way. I left bewildered, because there had been no communication and no explanation of what would happen next. I did call back that following week, but nothing ever happened. Yes, I could have sued – and I would probably have won – but I didn’t.
That experience has never left me. Five years later, I visited a maximum security correctional facility in New York as part of a poetry series developed by Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner of The Flying Words Project developed. While there, I was impressed by the large deaf inmate population. They were inmates who were in for murder, rape, robbery, you name it – but what impressed me was how it seemed like an equal community in that prison. The deaf inmates had something valuable: access. The prison had American Sign Language classes for hearing inmates, interpreters, captioned television, and other accessible options for the deaf inmates.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago. A friend got sent to prison where he was the only deaf inmate out of about 700 inmates. The differences at that prison from the one I’d visited in New York were startling. For one thing, he didn’t have anyone to talk with in sign language, except for the occasional visitor. That, for me, is the most isolating act, in or out of prison – especially after what I went through in 1995. I became extremely lonely and isolated after only four hours. What would it be like for weeks upon months upon years? The emotional effects of that lack of sign language were almost immediately apparent with my friend.
Even though he was a convicted felon, he still needed the same basic rights as every other inmate to survive and to do his time. He didn’t have an interpreter for counseling sessions. When he did finally get a TTY, he had to ask for permission and then go into a locked room; however, the person whose office the TTY was located in wasn’t always in. Hearing inmates had more access to phones than he did.
He became increasingly isolated in this prison within the prison. His letters and phone calls became increasingly despondent. Fortunately, with the advocacy from community supporters, my friend was able to get a videophone installed at the prison. I’ll never forget that first phone call. He was absolutely thrilled, and was so much more motivated to serve his time with the new support system he had.
Another story: I remember going to a prison once as a deaf interpreter, and watching the sergeant at the front desk asking why we were there. When the lawyer said, “The consumer is deaf,” the sergeant went pale and said, “He’s deaf?!?!” and ran to a phone. It turns out the system had placed the deaf guy in a maximum security section filled with hardened criminals simply because he wouldn’t respond to their demands. They thought this guy was being difficult and decided to teach him a lesson, even though he was accused of a minor crime. By the time we were there, this guy had been inside for seven days. Later, the charges were dropped when evidence showed he didn’t commit the crime. But the emotional trauma inflicted upon him was permanent; he was terrified when he came out to meet us.
It’s frustrating to think of all the deaf inmates in the country who may be isolated simply because they think they have no rights as criminals or they don’t understand what’s happening. Regardless of the gravity of their crime, criminals are people and we need to ensure they receive full communication access and equal opportunities. It’s only humane.
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True Allies
August 9, 2006
This article originally appeared at i711.com.
I’ve never felt as deaf and alone as I did a few weekends ago.
That’s because I was at the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) Region III conference in Milwaukee. The conference itself was fabulous and the workshops were terrific. The committee must be applauded for pulling off such a well-coordinated conference.
There were signs everywhere reminding people that they should use American Sign Language (ASL) (which I think is perplexing — shouldn’t this be automatically the case in any situation involving deaf people or ASL? But that’s another article). The majority of attendees, of course, were hearing interpreters, although there were quite a few deaf people in attendance — like me, a Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI), and others who were supporters/allies of the interpreting community.
I’ve been to many RID events, sometimes as a presenter and sometimes as a participant. They’re an enjoyable way to see how far the interpreting profession has come, and a terrific place for me to learn new things about ASL and English. But this one was where I felt the loneliest in my life.
I arrived in Milwaukee on Thursday afternoon, and made my way into a workshop room. As I sat at the end of a row by the doors, five people — I counted — began to sit in the seats next to me. As they squeezed their way by me, they each spoke, “Excuse me.” None of them signed.
Later I walked the hallways browsing exhibits and looking for people I knew. I saw not one single person signing, except for deaf people. I sat down and watched all the conversations from afar. I couldn’t understand a thing because nobody was signing. It was the same on Friday. On Saturday, when I was again in the hallway, one of the exhibitors bumped into me and spoke , “I’m sorry!….blahblahblah.” I looked at his lips, analyzing how they looked while moving. When he had finished speaking a full minute later, I signed, “Maybe you’d like to sign that? I’m deaf.” His eyes widened, and his mouth formed a small “o” before he signed, “I’m so sorry!” I smiled, nodded and walked on.
I talked with several interpreters about this lack of access to communication. Most of them said, “Yeah, that’s what always happens at RID, although it’s usually not this bad.” I had a healthy dialogue with several of them, discussing about when it was necessary to sign and when it wasn’t. I don’t think it’s necessary for people to sign at all times if deaf people aren’t present. But how do they know if a deaf person is there? If you didn’t know me, you likely would not have known I was deaf at that conference. Yet, I didn’t sign because I didn’t know who signed other than the deaf people there. It was almost a catch-22 situation.
At a forum during the conference, deaf people were asked how we felt about the conference. I said I felt absolutely left out, and one of the few hearing interpreters in attendance looked guilty and shocked. Another deaf person said, “In this room, I’m normal. In that hallway, I have no arms because nobody is signing.” The shocked interpreter teared up as she said, “I’m so sorry. When I’m at these conferences, I see old friends and forget immediately about signing. I feel so awful.” An hour later, I saw her speaking to another interpreter without signing, even though a deaf person was within five feet.
A week later, I went to a five-day, intensive legal interpreting workshop. Again, the presenter, and the workshop coordination were fabulous. When the sponsoring agency let me know that this workshop was taking place, I immediately signed up. I then asked about interpreters. “You don’t need an interpreter; the workshop is going to be conducted in ASL only,” I was told.
I was thrilled. Upon arrival, I was disappointed to learn that the other CDI had backed out, making me the only deaf person out of about 30 interpreters. The presenter announced the communication policy, saying that in small groups, people could speak if there was no need to sign (translation: if I wasn’t in the group, they could speak). That was fair enough. I didn’t really want people to sign all the time just for the sake of signing if nobody deaf was there. One of the participants — a long-time community interpreter notorious for habitually signing and speaking at the same time — raised his hand and signed-spoke, “Can we sign and speak at the same time?”
The presenter said to him, “When you tell people that you interpret two languages — ASL and English — and that they’re separate languages, yet you sim-com, you’re contradicting yourself and not giving full credit to the languages.” I stood up and said, “I literally can’t understand when people sign and speak at the same time. I prefer one language at a time. If you prefer to speak, that’s fine, we can work with an interpreter.”
A few days later, one of the participants, a CODA who always signed in my presence — which made me gain so much respect for him — notified me that several interpreters were complaining about how I “demanded” that ASL be used at all times. They thought it was unfair that the entire workshop revolved around my communication needs. I was hurt, because this rule was established by the presenter before I signed up. Besides, as the presenter said, if they wanted to work in legal settings, they’d better be ready to use sign language for days on end.
I also, uncomfortably, had to often politely remind people not to use their voices during small groups, or I had to ask someone to interpret for me. I felt frustrated that I had to ask interpreters, of all people, to accommodate my communication needs when a policy had already been established by the organizers. They had the option of using one or the other language; I did not. Some of them asked me to join them at lunch or after the workshop for drinks, but I always declined, because I knew I’d be the factor that messed up their communication styles. It’s similar to when deaf people go out; it’s just easier for us to be together without having a person not fluent at our language be part of our group.
When I was told of the interpreters’ comments, I realized just how far we have not come in the interpreting profession. There is still that level of disrespect towards deaf people, and this realization is heartbreaking. Interpreters are such valuable allies, such assets to our community.
Even though I felt left out and even ostracized, there were some good things that evolved from these experiences. At both events, I learned who the true allies of our community were. They were interpreters who respected my experiences, my language needs, and my position as a deaf person. They went out of their way to accommodate my communication needs, knowing that I would work around theirs as well. It was a marvelous feeling to see these interpreters who had the right attitudes and levels of respect for such a fragile yet strong community, culture and language.
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Man upset over abuse, shot by police
May 1, 2001
Originally appeared in Silent News, May 2001.
“I give my life to free deaf people from hearing slaves” was the message written on James Levier’s white mini-van as he paced the parking lot of a grocery store in Scarborough, Maine, with a hunting rifle in hand.
Last month, yet another incident drew attention to the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf (GBSD) located in Falmouth. Levier, 60, paced with a rifle outside of a Shop ‘N’ Save grocery store. 200 people hid in the back of the store during the incident.
“Should I trust lawmakers?” he wrote on his van.
Governor Baxter has been plagued with proven accusations of sexual and physical abuse dating back to the 1950s. The state, in March, determined that victims of the sexual abuse would not be compensated due to a number of reasons, including a lack of specific definition of what ‘abuse’ consisted of.
Levier attended GBSD from the ages of 7 to 18, said Josie Little, Levier’s niece. “James was the first person to ever testify on the abuse that took place in front of legislature. He had been fighting for years to have things changed and the people punished for what they did.”
However, charges could not be pressed due to a statute of limitations. Levier was part of A Safer Place, a support group for victims of abuse at GBSD that meets monthly.
In an interview with News 8 WMTW (Portland) TV in June 1999, he said, “Deep inside, I feel like a prisoner. I feel like something’s controlling me, keeping me.”
The hopelessness that Levier apparently felt was what drove Levier to that parking lot on March 16, says his family.
Just exactly what happened in that Shop ‘N’ Save parking lot is where the differences in accounts begin to emerge.
The Maine Attorney General’s office released a report that labels Levier’s shooting by the Scarborough police as justifiable. “Several officers from Scarborough, the State Police, and other area departments quickly contained Mr. Levier to a confined area of the parking lot, while other officers evacuated shoppers and employees from the mall stores and other businesses, including a nearby day-care center. Attempts to persuade Mr. Levier to relinquish his rifle were unsuccessful, although it appeared to several officers that Mr. Levier understood the repeated commands to do so. On several occasions during the standoff, Mr. Levier shouted for the officers to shoot him,” the report outlined.
Levier’s niece Little explained, “He knew he had to bring something that would get attention, so he brought his rifle. He never threatened anyone in the parking lot or the stores. He stayed next to his van and passed back and forth, holding his rifle up in the air. He never fired his gun at all. The police came and after about a half hour, they called in the interpreter who was hearing, she knew James for about 12 years.”
The report continued, “The police were successful in getting an interpreter qualified in American Sign Language to the scene, but her attempts at communicating with Mr. Levier were unsuccessful because of the distance that had to be maintained between the two for her own protection. It was while the police were attempting to devise a plan that would safely allow for the interpreter to get closer to Mr. Levier that Levier threatened to shoot at a group of officers and was shot.”
Little disagrees with this. “They would not let [the interpreter] get close enough to talk with James. He did not know she was there. The police kept asking her what is he saying but she could not tell them even with looking through binoculars – she was that far away.”
The report also said, “Approximately one hour after the stand-off began, Mr. Levier advanced to within approximately 60 feet of a group of officers. Seconds later he assumed a shooter’s stance, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and sighted in on the group of officers.”
According to the attorney general’s office, Levier was armed with a .30-.30 caliber rifle that had a ballistic velocity that could easily penetrate vehicles. After the shooting, the state found that his rifle’s hammer had been fully cocked and his rifle was loaded with several live rounds, including one in the chamber.
Police initially claimed that Levier was the first to shoot, but several individuals later disputed this, including the interpreter and witnesses. A Scarborough officer’s single shot was the first, followed in quick succession by three rounds from a second officer, and then a single shot from each of two other officers.
“The police said that his gun was loaded, but the interpreter said he was cocking his rifle while he was marching – which I have been told kicks out the bullets. She says he did this about seven times while she was there, and that one of the officers told her he had done this a few times before she got there…if this is true, he would not have had anything in his rifle. This was also a one-shot rifle, so even if he had shot, they would have known he was done,” said Little.
Indeed, after investigating the matter further, the attorney’s office found that Levier never once fired his weapon. “The impression of several witnesses who told investigators that Mr. Levier discharged his weapon was attributed to the combination of hearing the sound of Trooper Sperrey’s shot, accompanied at the same moment by the observation of Mr. Levier’s gun shoulder recoiling, which was a result of being struck by the shot,” the report said.
With these details in place, it is quite difficult for Levier’s family to understand exactly why things happened the way they did. The family also learned of Levier’s death through secondhand information. Little said, “The family was never notified at all, [even though] the police had James’s daughter’s number on file because she was who they called when they arrested him [previously for an unrelated charge]. The family found out of his death on the news, and they showed him being shot on the 10:00 news.”
Sara Treat is a licensed counselor who works with A Safer Place. “It was well known that he was depressed a lot and felt a lot of pain from his past. We can never know exactly what he was thinking or going through the day he went to Shop ‘N’ Save,” she said in a recent talk at the New England Mental Health and Deafness conference in Maine.
“It seemed clear though that he wanted to get a message out that would wake people up about the Deaf community and the abuses and discrimination that they suffer. That day he apparently thought that by dying, he could to that,” Treat added.
The family of James Levier is still reeling from the chain of events. Little said, “There is no way to justify this in my eyes. We have to make sure this does not happen to another person.”
Perhaps, most fitting to this story is a note that Levier left on his door before he drove to the shopping plaza. In the note, he wrote, “I would rather die than suffer a slave to a hearing world. Please protect my deaf friends, family and children, etc. I go to war with lawmakers fail to protect me my rights. The end. James Levier.”
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Can I Speak Now?
October 1, 1997
This originally appeared in Who Speaks for the Deaf Community: A Deaf American Monogram, published by the National Association of the Deaf in 1997 (Volume 47).
(To read the epilogue to this article, click here.)
A year to the day I was born, PL 94-142 was created. That’s when bureaucrats began to speak for me.
My mother and father both graduated from deaf schools, although one grew up oralist and the other grew up in a very ASL-oriented environment. My parents used ASL with me from the very first minute of my birth. I started signing at six months of age, and learned to read at age two.
Because of this, it was determined I was ready for preschool. My mother was told by “experts” that placing me in self-contained classes at a hearing day school would be the least restrictive environment, in keeping with the new law PL 94-142.
When I started preschool in 1976, a year after the passage of that law, that’s when experts in the field of deafness (none were deaf) spoke for me.
It was determined by local school officials that using total communication, so to speak, would be best for me. My parents were encouraged to use voice when talking to me at home, even when they were using ASL. Mom’s daily interactions with me were brushed aside by these officials. I was also put in speech therapy, and spent hours learning to pronounce my name with the help of my hearing aid. I still can’t speak my name today, but I can say the letter “k” very well.
When I started being mainstreamed in the fourth grade, teachers of the hearing-impaired spoke for me. Also, because I was a “special needs” child, school psychologists spoke for me.
I oftentimes had to rely on classmates when my interpreter did not show up or was ill. Teachers felt it would be best for me if I were moved a few grades up in my mainstreamed endeavors. However, they lacked resources for my needs, such as support services. Psychologists took an IQ test from me annually, and proclaimed me a child that was well-adjusted to being among “normal peers.”
When I was about to enter the sixth grade, there were no remaining deaf peers in my age or grade group, because all of them had transferred to the Illinois School for the Deaf 30 minutes away. I decided I wanted to transfer to ISD, too. School administrators said I would fail in the hearing world if I continued to defy their wishes of learning speech and being as normal as possible instead of being institutionalized. That’s when school administrators again spoke for me.
The school principal, who had banned my mother from elementary school grounds after my mother got angry at my teacher-of-the-hearing-impaired for not providing me with more challenging schoolwork, suddenly asked my mother to come in for meetings and tried to convince Mom not to let me transfer to ISD. After years of having her feedback and knowledge about me being dismissed quickly. Mom was now a respected and coveted factor in making me stay at this public school
When I decided to leave ISD after their inability to meet my needs, that’s when deaf faculty and staff spoke for me.
At ISD, it was a whole new world. I felt at home there. Staff and teachers were family friends, or even neighbors. But I spent a great deal of the day wandering the school halls and campus because I would often finish the assigned work long before the due date. Teachers sent me on errands to keep me busy while the other students did their work.
Since Mom was moving due to a remarriage, I decided to move with her and entered a new public school system that had a large deaf program—which would fulfill my social needs—but also because this public school had a honors program that would meet my educational needs (the previous two schools I had attended—both hearing and deaf—did not have such a program aside from gifted programs).
Administrators and teachers, and houseparents as well, got very angry with me for leaving where I “belonged.” They said that I should think of my sports opportunities, of my socialization opportunities, and of my people. Near the end, a deaf printing teacher who was the father of my classmate, branded me by saying in front of several others that I was a true traitor and did not know how to be a real deaf person. I was 10 years old at the time.
When I re-entered the mainstreamed world, that’s when interpreters spoke for me.
I sat in the classroom, seeing my interpreters explain to the teachers and students how to talk to me. They would often voice what my deaf classmates in the hearing classroom and I were talking about, but refused to sign what hearing classmates were voicing. Interpreters would also approach the teachers and talk to them about our behavior, our grades, and other issues strictly reserved for teachers or appropriate personnel.
When I entered high school, that’s when interpreters didn’t just speak for me, they also spoke about me.
There was an interpreter named Lori who would constantly criticize my ASL in front of the other deaf kids. I signed “too fast” and “too ASL” for her. I was a 13-year-old. She laughed and mocked me, voicing her comments for the benefits of hearing listeners. This continued for a long time with repeated requests from me for her to stop (she didn’t), until I finally refused to attend class. My mother called a meeting with my guidance counselor, a CODA who was also responsible for coordinating interpreting services. He immediately set the interpreter straight and taught her a thing or two about native signers.
When my mother and I attended an Individualized Education Plan meeting, and my mother requested for me to stop participating in speech therapy, that’s when audiologists spoke for me.
My audiologist* got upset when I proclaimed my desire to stop wearing hearing aids, and my comments of realization that speech was of absolutely no use to me at this point in life. The audiologist called my attitudes as having been spoiled by my mother, pointing out that I only had a 35 dB loss with hearing aids (80-85 dB without). My mother reminded this audiologist that she was a deaf person who relied very much on her speaking skills, using the phone on a daily basis. The audiologist, soon after that incident, became very involved with the deaf culture and quit her profession. She currently is very fluent in ASL.
* Note: It was actually a speech pathologist, but back then, I called them all audiologists because I didn’t know the difference, nor did I care. —01/10/12
When I entered Gallaudet University, that’s when the deaf of deaf spoke for me, and the mainstreamed deaf spoke for me.
Whenever I met a deaf person from a deaf family and mentioned that I had been mainstreamed, I would often rush to add, “But I’m from a deaf family.” And then with mainstreamed people, who would sniff when they found out I was “deaf of deaf”—I would also be quick to add, “But I went to a public high school.” Even so, Gallaudet was home yet once again.
When I entered graduate school and was the first deaf for those in my particular program. That’s when hearing people continued to believe that they had to speak for me.
Professors would hem and haw whenever they saw my interpreters in class. These professors would also ask the interpreters to help me, but of course, my interpreters would set the teachers straight. Hearing students would either shy away or rush to my “aid” whenever group projects were assigned, and beam proudly when I agreed to do projects with them. I did not attend the graduation ceremony, choosing to attend a deaf event instead on that day.
When I graduated and had no more school people to speak for me, that’s when everybody in the deaf community spoke for me.
Hearing people sometimes accuse me of being militant because of automatic qualifiers of being a militant deaf person: I have a surplus of deaf relatives and am a native ASL user—and most of all, because I am very much a member of the deaf culture. I have to watch hearing people gasp at the level of my success because I am a “deaf-mute.” Particular organizations of the deaf focus mainly on legislative issues rather than grassroots issues that face deaf people—including me—on a daily basis, even though I pay to be a member of these organizations. I get accused of being part of a deaf cult. I get asked for my opinion on everything from cochlear implants to language. I get asked to represent my people. When do I get to speak for me, and only me?
Now.
I do not speak for other deaf people. I do not speak for my deaf parents, my deaf relatives, or my deaf friends. I speak based on my own experiences, but I do not make generalizations.
I can, and will, only speak for me now.
(To read the epilogue to this article, click here.)