Hearing privileges is very serious topic in Deaf community. The world is heavily hearing population. There are hearing people who has been mocking Deaf people down their necks and distinguish between hearing and Deaf when it concerns the history, culture, and politics of “hearing” anywhere in the world. Examining the facts might help you realize there is no apples-to-apples comparison and there is no straw that will break the camel’s back and that implementing hearing privileges is unacceptable.

In a society in which hearing people with power, for example, a finalist to be CEO for Registry of the Interpreters for the Deaf (RID), is encouraging “hearing privileges”–without any knowledge of ASL, Deaf culture, and what it is to understand Deaf-centric philosophy. Do Deaf people really have to accept their growing cultural decrease because whether it comes to the sense of social Darwinism that is being promoted by ignorance?

The root of RID since it has founded in 1964, is to understand and respect that Deaf people comes FIRST. When RID CEO search, one of the finalist, a hearing finalist, it is the biggest mistake of all—-to oppress Deaf people. It is unconstitutional, shaming, humiliation, and persecution-oriented hearing privilege control list below Deaf people’s intelligence and experience. Education, standards, excellence? Hmm.

RID Search Committee is immature to allow the hearing privilege to continue chipping away at Deaf people’s most cherished legal protections and freedoms that Deaf people once had—all in the name of “pursuit of happiness” at RID. Whatever it means. It is clear that RID are devolving into large segment of allowing language hegemony in Deaf community that has no business having the power to undermine Deaf people for any reason because they simply lack discipline, common sense, and the ability to realize how other areas of their life impact their behaviors.

RID has nothing to address because it would be an admission along with a problem to face with Audism. They operate behind secret interpretations. You have just got to love hearing privileges what RID is all about today. Once Deaf people engineer a revolution to challenge oppressive tactics, people with hearing privileges will always leave the most vulnerable Deaf people unprotected, so they can undermine them.

That is how RID is justified. Again, when a hearing finalist for  RID CEO, Deaf people cannot “defend” themselves, heavily regulate and restrict them in all means. Shakespeare once wrote, “Brevity is the soul of wit”–thus a hearing finalist with ZERO knowledge about ASL, how interpreting world works, how ASL affect Deaf community each day, does not pay attention and time to listen.

Something is wrong with the picture. One of two finalists for RID CEO who is Deaf who holds Ph.D, and Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI), truly stands for which is liberty and justice for all and history has taught us that any promise of security and prosperity from powerful hearing privileges ends the same way: suffer and humiliation. This is the real epidemic out there that needs to be addressed.

Is that why RID is being the “New Invisible Hand?”

There are series of questions that needs to be addressed. What does it mean to be “hearing”? Are “hearing” people considerably different from us? Do they learn how to be “hearing?” Or do they know they are named “hearing?” How different are the Deaf from “hearing” people? What are criteria of being “hearing?” What is a radically new understanding of what it means to be “hearing?” Deaf people are indeed different!

RID allows a hearing person with zero knowledge of Deaf life is one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated against Deaf people because it is based on fiction, myth, and false assumptions. This is clearly unconstitutional and vindictive punishment.

-JT

Copyright © 2018 Jason Tozier

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