I’m starting a series of reflections on essays from the book Deaf World, edited by Lois Bragg. All essays in this text are by d/Deaf authors, meaning it is both a primary resource and, thanks to the scope of essays, a historical reader.

In the essay “On Planning a Deaf-Mute Commonwealth,” J.J. Flournoy and Edmond Booth are the main debaters of the need and practicality of a self-run “deaf-mute” community. The claims and responses are published from September 1857 to June 1858 in the American Annals of the Deaf. Interspersed are comments from other readers that address Booth’s and Flournoy’s arguments, and it should be noted all participants in the conversation are deaf. 

The key points of the debate include: the practicality of an all-deaf community when most children of deaf adults are hearing; access to education, especially reading and writing; land ownership, inheriting land, and sale of land; ostracization deaf people experience in hearing communities that leads to loneliness; and whether the government would provide funding based on the history of grants given to underserved populations. 

Firstly, the diction stands out to me because it reflects the language of the time. “Mute” and “deaf-mute” label a community that, today, would be “Deaf,” or maybe “deaf.” Thus, reading a historic text written by d/Deaf authors got me thinking more about how we might describe the d/Deaf population in the late 1800’s while maintaining accurate labels and avoiding unintentional offense. Because Flournoy describes the “deaf-mute” population as scattered across the U.S. and living alone, I wonder if capital-D Deaf is accurate. Can a few people be said to have a culture, even if they use ASL? I do not know the answer to this question—yet. 

Furthermore, the authors present individualistic and collective thinking. Booth argues the “deaf-mute” population is fine scattered around the U.S., and if they want to meet with other deaf people, there is good public transportation (in the Northern U.S., not the Southern). Rather than seeing a deaf collectivist community having the means to raise all people intellectually, he feels the uneducated deaf would repel educated deaf from joining the all-deaf community. I focus on this moment because my understanding is Deaf people today celebrate and support the achievements of all community members, though “crab theory” is an issue in most minority populations, including the d/Deaf. What was happening in the 1850’s that split the deaf community by education, and does that feeling still exist today? 

In contrast, Flournoy’s point that educated deaf people would serve as role models for uneducated citizens rings truer to what I’ve learned about Deaf culture in the last few decades. I am curious as to why Flournoy emphasizes reading as a sign of intelligence. Is this hearing culture intrusion, and does “educated” versus “uneducated” simply mean those who can read and those who cannot? Later, another contributor named Carlin states that deaf people learn to read only so they can communicate with hearing people. While Carlin agrees with Flournoy that deaf Americans are at a disadvantage by being spread out, his ideas further challenge Flournoy by dismissing reading as a sign of intelligence and positing it is a tool of social survival. In reflection, I wonder if reading is today viewed as a requirement to coexist in hearing/English society, or if reading is valued as part of Deaf culture. Carlin and Flournoy imply different relationships between reading and deaf people. 

Lastly, I was intrigued by the debate around land ownership for a few reasons. If you look at a map of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe reservation in central Michigan, my parents’ home is located within the boundaries. However, we are not Native Americans. At one point, that land was sold to our white family, as were many other homes in the area. Therefore, I understand the concern of future residents of the hypothetical deaf commonwealth. At what point is the project moot because so many hearing people live on the “reservation”? I hadn’t thought of a commonwealth as being like a reservation, but I do know it takes a lot of money for the Tribe in my hometown to protect their culture, language, and history. How might a deaf community fund itself to safeguard their culture? 

Previously, I taught Black Lit to college students, and we discussed the pros and cons of a state given by the U.S. government to Black Americans as repayment for slavery and an effort to quell racial tension. In his autobiography, Malcolm X argues that white men will never accept Black men as fully human, so it behooves both races to separate. Martin Luther King, Jr., of course, disagreed and explained in his “I Have a Dream” speech that he supports integration. For me, reading a d/Deaf perspective on integration and segregation was both familiar and new. When Malcolm X theorizes about a Black state, he doesn’t argue about education and home ownership; instead, his focus is on Black-owned businesses, which none of the respondents in “On Planning a Deaf-Mute Commonwealth” discuss. 

An interesting moment happened last Halloween. My neighbor, a six-year-old hearing boy, came over for trick ‘r treating and then showed me the ASL alphabet. He’d learned it online, his mother said, by himself. They’re not teaching it in school. The little boy knows I am an ASL-English interpreting student, so he wanted to make a connection. I was surprised, largely because I can’t imagine myself doing anything on the internet at age six, and not only because we didn’t have home internet back then. But his drive to learn something outside of school that his parents were not also learning surprised me.

Jump ahead to this week. I received a text from the boy’s mom saying he wanted to leave me a letter in my mailbox. On the outside of the envelope, it says, “amazing” and “asom,” “cool” and “sooo cool.” Inside, here is what he wrote:

While it might be natural to think, “Awwwww,” my first thought was, “Aaaaaack.” There are a few ethical dilemmas here, and the whole situation is quite unexpected!

Firstly, there is a misconception that knowing “some signs” means that a hearing person is good at the language, which may not only be offensive to Deaf people because “some signs” denies the true linguistic and cultural value of the language, but can lead to an abuse of rights. For example, according to my former interpreting professor, who used to be a classroom interpreter, people who take two semesters of ASL will be put in classrooms to interpret for Deaf children. To compare, I have four semesters, and know my language skills are miles from proficient — and the goal is to be “near native.” In the past, if the lunch lady knew “some signs,” they would throw her into a classroom to interpret to meet the demands after the passage of IDEA.

Secondly, we’re in a place right now when we celebrate, and even think it is cute, that hearing children can sign, but deny Deaf children access to sign language. Parents work with doctors to “fix” their children and are encouraged to expose the Deaf child to English that they can’t hear and stop them from signing that they could use to learn and communicate. Do you remember the baby signing craze from about twenty years ago, sold as a way for parents to communicate with frustrating babies that throw temper tantrums? But how do I explain this to a six-year-old boy who could become an interpreter some day, and an ally? This is a short term vs. longer term dilemma, I think.

And of course, when hearing people teach ASL without the blessing of the Deaf community, they deny a Deaf person not only a job, but the hearing person makes money off of a different, and oppressed, culture.

Hypothetically, if I volunteered my time, that spirals into another ethical dilemma of whether I should volunteer my skills because they are learned and not deemed manual labor (well, yes, ASL is physical but, if you ask the average person what a “physical job” is, they’ll say construction, welding, plumber, etc.). Basically, we value manual labor as something we should pay for, and intellectual labor (for lack of a better term) as “no sweat” and thus able to be shared freely.

Volunteer or not, because I am in a position of privilege, it is ethically wrong for me to teach the neighbor boy simply because I am the first adult he knows who has studied ASL.

So, what to do? In the end I texted the boy’s mother and said that I appreciated his letter, but that it’s very important to have a Deaf teacher. I might have gone overboard explaining about hearing people getting paid to teach a different culture’s language, but it was a response I can live with. I think that’s the ultimate goal of ethics; can you live with the decision you’ve made, because no matter what you do, there are right vs. wrong and right vs. right dilemmas. I asked the mother to please tell her son that I have a Deaf teacher, and he’s very cool! I also gave her the phone number of a local agency that, I think, should be able to put her in touch with members of the Deaf community.

What are your thoughts on this situation? I acknowledge that I have made some generalizations about how Deaf people may feel in regards to hearing people teaching ASL based on interpreting classes I’ve taken, and if my generalizations are incorrect, I would be grateful for any corrections. I also want to remind readers that I am a student in an ASL-English interpreting program.