(no subject)
Miguel Perez
Paper #4
Professor Ojikutu
Section 112 / English 103
Deaf Culture and its Stigmas
Harlan Lane put it well in her text when she spoke about the stigmas that come along with being deaf and that no one that isn’t that white, young, suburban, college educated male will actually know what it’s like to live completely free of being stigmatized in one way or another. Deaf people are stigmatized in the way that since they cannot hear or hear very little, they communicatively impaired; that by being deaf, they’re broken and considered to be less than human. In the deaf community, the deaf have a strong bond with each other. They respect each other and understand what they’re going through. It’s a sense and bond that people in the hearing world cannot even begin to understand or to analyze, for we, to them, are impaired with being able to hear. The problem that people in the hearing world have is the way we think see people that hear less than we do as having hearing disabilities. Perhaps to that person, not hearing isn’t a disability but more of a blessing. I, for one, wouldn’t like to hear what’s going on around me from time to time. Living in this world can seem like orderly chaos and it’d be nice to tune it our ever so often. Deaf people rely on their vision as being their most important tool to keeping in touch with the world, so a deaf person would, naturally, have a heightened sense of seeing than we do. They rely on their vision they way we rely on our hands and fingers. If we look at it this way, someone who is deaf is actually more “human” than the hearing person.
Deaf people, according to Harlan, even tend to shun other deaf people. For instance, a deaf person with a bit of hearing ability can be seen as an imposter. That deaf person that can hear a little can be seen as someone who is not comfortable with themselves and would rather pretend to be someone else than to embrace who they really are.
Paper #4
Professor Ojikutu
Section 112 / English 103
Deaf Culture and its Stigmas
Harlan Lane put it well in her text when she spoke about the stigmas that come along with being deaf and that no one that isn’t that white, young, suburban, college educated male will actually know what it’s like to live completely free of being stigmatized in one way or another. Deaf people are stigmatized in the way that since they cannot hear or hear very little, they communicatively impaired; that by being deaf, they’re broken and considered to be less than human. In the deaf community, the deaf have a strong bond with each other. They respect each other and understand what they’re going through. It’s a sense and bond that people in the hearing world cannot even begin to understand or to analyze, for we, to them, are impaired with being able to hear. The problem that people in the hearing world have is the way we think see people that hear less than we do as having hearing disabilities. Perhaps to that person, not hearing isn’t a disability but more of a blessing. I, for one, wouldn’t like to hear what’s going on around me from time to time. Living in this world can seem like orderly chaos and it’d be nice to tune it our ever so often. Deaf people rely on their vision as being their most important tool to keeping in touch with the world, so a deaf person would, naturally, have a heightened sense of seeing than we do. They rely on their vision they way we rely on our hands and fingers. If we look at it this way, someone who is deaf is actually more “human” than the hearing person.
Deaf people, according to Harlan, even tend to shun other deaf people. For instance, a deaf person with a bit of hearing ability can be seen as an imposter. That deaf person that can hear a little can be seen as someone who is not comfortable with themselves and would rather pretend to be someone else than to embrace who they really are.