Snubbing the Deaf community?

shel90

shel90

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The other day, I was talking to my friend and she told me meeting this girl who is deaf but didnt know sign language. My friend told her about the Deaf community and ASL and the girl told her that she already knew about it but wasnt interested. She told my friend that she doesnt need the Deaf community and is not interested in meeting members of the Deaf community. Now, my question is...why say something like that? To me, this person and whoever else says that are snubbing the Deaf community for no reason. There are many of us who are part of it who want to be considered as equal humans so when people say stuff like that, they are looking down on us and basically saying that we arent worthy enough of their time.

I know I have my issues with the hearing world but I would never say "I dont need the hearing world and not interested in meeting any members of the hearing community." If I did, I would have missed out on great friendships with many hearing people, my hubby for one.

What do you think?
 
I think that this person lacks social skills. She could have declined the invitation in a diplomatic way without insulting anyone.
 
She might not feel comfortable among the deaf people since she didn't know any sign language.
 
She might have felt like the person thought she was inferior. It might be like when someone says they don't like one small part of what the Deaf community does, and the other person fires back quickly, " Well if you don't like it you don't have to hang out with us."

Unfortunately the Deaf community has kind of a bad rap for a few bad apples who act that way.
 
It's also possible she just doesn't have any interest in Deaf culture, at least not in this point of her life.
 
I socialize with both hearies and deafies. I've met a lot of deafies who have said "I don't want deafies to know where I live, my VP #, etc."...When I asked "Why?"...They said because deafies cause too much drama & back-stabbing & gossip....

Some deafies are suspicious too...

I don't know if this would be called "snubbing", some people are more social than others.
 
And it's also possible (since we have alot of theories already :) ) that the person invited her in a way she perceived as offensive and so she got defensive. Maybe the person made it sound like no deaf person could possibly function and be happy without involvement int he Deaf Community, that she was somehow less for not being involved. I'm sure that probably wasn't their intention, but its possible she heard that. And maybe what she thinks she heard made her defensive and assert that she doesn't need it to be complete and happy.
 
Another theory... she could be thinking that hearing is better than deaf so she don't want to hang out with other deaf people, prefering to think of herself as a "hearing".
 
One day an oral deaf lady with CI came into my work and my co-worker got all excited and said "she(pointing at me) knows sign language!". My co-workers get so gitty to see me signing when I get the chance. Anyway, the lady was like "so?, I don't use that!!". We got to talking and I learned she was raised strictly oral method. Her parents never approved of using sign or meeting the Deaf community, they viewed it as a 'diability' and it seemed she had adopted the same attitude. I think children learn what they are taught, what they are taught becomes believes and they grow up to follow their believes. That was my impression of what happen in my situation, but I wonder if it could be similar to Shel's experience??
 
We learned there are 18,000 deaf students attending hearing/oral schools while only 9000 deaf students attend deaf residential schools in the USA nowadays. That is about 66% deaf student population attending hearing, mainstream, and oral schools so assume some numbers, not all of them, would be mere like her. That woman might not be a student but already out of school, I assume but lot of them out there are quite like her that we have seen or heard. I think it's rather sad but what can we do?
 
Unfortunately I had experinced the deaf community rejecting me for being too oral (even I can sign but I rely on lipreading not full BSL), since then I tried to be part of the community but sadly over few years i stopped going. The said person in OP may had encounter this experince.
After I was implanted I became more intergated into the community where there is many CI users, they are deaf, sign/speaks and lipreads.
I am now a TA at deaf school I remind them that Oral deafs, Signing deafs, Late deafen HA,CI, BAHA users etc all have same thing in common.... They are deaf and will need each other so they need to be more open minded and help each other regardless their experince.
 
omegaman said:
I wonder if she is late deafened?
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Definitely possible. I know as late-deafened HOH, it took me a while to adjust to identifying myself as HOH and not hearing. I imagine there are people that never really make the adjustment from identifying as hearing to identifying as Deaf/HOH.
 
CJB said:
It's also possible she just doesn't have any interest in Deaf culture, at least not in this point of her life.
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My point is that we are all people..let's say that all hearing people say that they arent interested in the Deaf community and dont want to meet us so that would mean several of us would be rejected as a group instead of as individuals. We arent of one personality, u know? It just got me thinking because I have heard of that phrase several times but never thought much into it until now. Then, I was like, "Wait a min...why reject all of us as a whole group?" If someone has a bad experience with the Deaf community because of a few people, reject THOSE people, not the rest of us because I for one, have no responsibility for those people who caused problems. Like people who refuse to befriend black people simply because of their color not because of personality clashes. It just makes me really sad because I work with Deaf children so these children are basically being rejected by society by no fault of their own. A big shame.
 
Buffalo said:
She might not feel comfortable among the deaf people since she didn't know any sign language.
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I was thinking the same, that may be the reason.

I know one of my deaf friends had turned his back on the hearing society, he had chosen not to become a part of the hearing society by he refusing to get a job working with hearing people, he refused to use his speaking skills. He claimed that lip-reading and speech is tiring and he doesn't like to do such unnatural things so he would rather to be surrounded by deaf people because they share the same visual language.
 
Buffalo said:
She might not feel comfortable among the deaf people since she didn't know any sign language.
Click to expand...

My friend told me that she complains about being left out all the time, not understanding what people are saying most of the time and so on. That was why my friend told her about the Deaf community and ASL. My friend thinks it is not because she is uncomfortable..she thinks she is not interested and doesnt need "us".

I have heard of that comment again and again from both deaf and hearing people so I just got to thinking...is that snubbing us and is that seeing us as a whole group rather than as individuals? Also, what angers me is those parents who say that their deaf children dont need the Deaf community or dont need to meet other deaf children. For God's sake..these are people with feelings!
 
I think if she spent most of her life around hearing people, then I can understand why she may feel that she doesn't need to learn ASL or be part of the deaf community. But, I wonder if her attitude would change if she visited this forum?
 
I'm thinking she is repeating what she has been taught. If she has never had contact with the Deaf Community, she has no idea whether it would be beneficial for her or not. I'd say she has probably been taught that the hearing world offers "more opportunities", etc. and that to be a "normal person" she has to act as much like a hearing person as possible. That is the message audism gives to people, deaf and hearing alike.
 
I think it happens daily with people who don't want to see reality. for example me as a mexican.. theres plenty of people who are mexican (or their family may be maybe their parents are Mexican) but they don't admit to people they're mexican or simply just deny it.. they want nothing to do with that race and so on and so forth. some people deny they speak spanish. It angers me. Because they bring up many issues in our culture.

Why they do it I dont know. maybe they see all the negativity..and not see the postive in who we are..
same with the deaf. .maybe when they think of themselves as deaf they think.. Oh i have a "disability" (thinking like the hearing world) and they may also think oh well I can "be normal" if I stay in the hearing world and associate with the hearing world and have nothing to do with the deaf"

could be various ideas.
 
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