Deaf “Culture” · 28 February 07 by Heather Voss Barta
This is an excellent article about the challenges of the deaf world, politics, and identity.
Many of you know that I worked with 2 deaf boys and 2 hard of hearing girls during the 2000-2001 school year. I had some great interpreters that helped me understand deaf culture and gave me lots of information (and, the biggest, taught me to sign).
Recently, it seems that I’ve been asked a lot of questions about deaf people and deaf culture. While I mostly feel inadequate to answer, it seems that I really do have some information to share (and more experienced people as references and resources for the questioners). This article came to me from one of those people and it is pretty challenging to the idea of deaf culture, and the difficulty in defining identity in this group. While a long article, it is really interesting when thinking about people who have different hearing levels, and when considering how groups get identified and labeled.
commenting closed for this article
Great article. I got a lot out of the discussion of “not deaf enough”. I don’t think I agree with his dismissal of the ethnic label – as someone who often thinks of himself as an “ethnic” Episcopalian. Ethnicities are not so clearly defined as he would like. But overall, very helpful piece.
— Mike 1 March 07 #
Okay, this is a completely different blog article but related to deafness http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1165429248.shtml
And it’s the 2nd time it’s come up today so I’ve been thinking about it today. (I got my hair cut and she’s going Dead).
— Gary LaPointe 5 March 07 #