David Call’s Deaf Metamorphosis

There are some on one-side of a fence who will believe that Deaf people who cannot hear will never rehabilitated, no matter what the circumstances, and those on the other side of the fence who believe Deaf people are successful.

In the end, Gallaudet is responsible for the seal contains “EPHPHATHA” to make sure their job to determine who is sufficient to return to being a productive member of society and who is not. Deaf citizens who arrive on the campus to begin their education, the administration have sorted out fact from fiction in regards to see if Deaf citizens will fit to rejoin hearing society. I realized that EPHPHATHA is a subject of language racism.

Let’s make it clear: Personal attacks against Deaf citizens and we need to know that EPHPHATHA has no place in our public discourse. We the Deaf people need to stop politicians and their abyss of negativity to tell the stories that Deaf people will hear again. Gallaudet will not shout down or intimidate us the Deaf people because we will not tolerate it. We demand respect. The administration has the master key to hide the truth in order to suppress the power over Deaf people. However, after thinking about it for some time, I am tired of ideological censorship. We can never mount a defense against EPHPHATHA if this is always dismissed as “language racism”—but above all, if you believe that language racism exists, it is actually immoral not to deal with the problem and its survivors. I am convinced; also language racism is real and underestimated phenomena. There are many buried hatchets, including the Hotchkiss hatchet. All former presidents were hatchet buriers. They were responsible for the seal.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right to freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”—In practice, however, the way this is interpreted varies widely from society to society. Under some political systems, the rights of the general society, sometimes referred to as the language of the general society, and regarded as taking precedence over the right of the individual being Deaf and needing American Sign Language (ASL).

Unfortunately, in the United States, this allows a lot of flexibility in the way the government reacts to individual examples of “free speech” with which they do not understand. In the worst case, Deaf people are always in danger of being defined in another language and can be imprisoned for it. Although the First Amendment to the United States defines “free speech” as to communicate ideas and opinions without government intervention, it allows extremists, namely Audists, the freedom to express opinion that many Deaf people would regard as “hate speech” All in all, “free speech” can be interpreted to mean different things according to the socio-political environment in which the term is used.

Flash news. It goes exactly the same to the term of EPHPHATHA that it is in great danger of being defined in another language and imprisons Deaf people…for what? It would require a lot of plans, and a complete, committed cooperation from Deaf community is expected. Timing will be an important factor as well. Gallaudet seem to keep the term on the seal to cure Deaf people, they are hurt. If they accept Deaf people as their human rights to be Deaf, they will be appreciated. If they talk about Deaf people with full of ideas, they are contributing. Instead, they are contributing for Audists today. Gallaudet needs to stop emotionalizing disgust brought on by the imprinting of biased, sensationalized stories of curing Deaf people on the campus from every corner.

The vast majority of Audists who keeps the term on the seal by “law” make sure that Deaf people suffer politically-motivated hate statue labels—for example, a modern day Scarlett Letter that results in a kind of mental torture against Deaf people who as a result become hearing and lose their basic legal rights. Audists cannot stop Deaf people to continue their pursuit of happiness.

Deaf Metamorphosis translated by David Call, “The pupa in the image symbolizes Deaf person’s struggle in audist world.  When he discovered Deaf identity, he started to change into a human butterfly. After the transformation is done, he started to break out and push himself out of the pupa. He is about to fly free as a whole Deaf person.”

-JT

Copyright © 2014 Jason Tozier

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