Registry of the Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) already boasts the biggest hearing privileges, that would guarantee newest CEO for RID, Joey Trapani one of the biggest flops ever to walk around.

Just for kicks, Trapani had only one year or even less in interpreting experience, and yet got RID’s highest position: CEO through a shoddy reputation that often overlooks his power as a white man with red-hot hearing privileges. Oh, he’s Children of Deaf Adults (CODA)—pffft! I do not care if he is CODA. So what? Don’t get me wrong, there are some cool CODAs and there are some not very cool CODAs.

Let’s get serious here. How could RID allow hearing privileges and oppress Deaf community? The cloak dagger continues. People are allowed to help others and it does not matter who it is. If it is their own, they are comfortable in then that is it.

The major issue of Audism exists in all of us, even RID would go into complete denial and regardless of what and who we are. The regardless of language oppression is what the RID apart and what made the RID being differed from Deaf community. RID had failed to address the underlying causes of Audism and hearing privileges and leaves Deaf community without a guidance to move forward. RID refuses to identify the roots of language hegemony. Deaf community does not need to deal with status quo.

CODA and with only a year in freelance interpreting experience suffers numerous misinterpretations—deliberate confounding, irreversible misunderstanding can be very costly and burdensome for Deaf community, and Deaf people have personally experienced them somewhere in their life.

What really binds the Deaf together is their culture—the language and the ideas they have in common. Knowledge of cultural forms within the Deaf community is necessary in sociological concerns.

Since RID is essentially important for Deaf community, particularly in its history stages. Willard Willow wrote in 1932, “Schools have a culture that is definitely their own. There are, in the school, complex rituals of personal relationships, a set of folkways, mores, and irrational sanctions, a moral code based upon them.”

RID is not a world of its own. It is not even a world. But because RID is in the world, because it is affected by situations, and because it orients itself comprehensively in those situations, RID had something to teach, RID has offered something to bring Deaf community to higher learning of interpreting. Well, that is something to think about.

In the light of RID’s failure to hold community accountability, it is time to boycott RID. It is time for interpreters to get their money back and revoke their RID memberships.

CEO Joey Trapani and the board president, Melvin Walker, need to resign. CODA and hearing privileges do not belong well in Deaf community. They both ignited the golden age of Audism and the dominance of hearing privileges of their namesake of ignorance, which furnished RID toward the notion of educational proof and has been thrown into the mind of Deaf community since. Hearing privileges–not cool.

Isn’t Deaf community exactly the right place to exchange and debate differing concerns? Perhaps RID has lost its professionalism and respect. RID got Humpriezed. In reference to Tom Humphries, the coinage of Audism. Deaf community should not be oppressed in the name of Audism. Deaf community is a minority of one, they deserve better. RID should be Deaf-centered, Deaf-oriented, and Deaf-controlled.

-JT

Copyright © 2018 Jason Tozier

This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.