After I posted a video sharing my experience last night about hate crime where three people dressed up as fake police and attacked me at my own house on August 21, 2018 around 8:30 in the morning. They took advantage of me as the state of being Deaf by screaming, cussing, threatening, menacing and all.

It was a morning that I will never forget. Distressing, life-threatening, and psychological trauma has set me in. Since I was ten years old, where I experienced sexual abuse, it was enough traumas, and most of my life, I had been targeted, attacked, ridiculed, twist lies, you name it all. Five heart attacks including death where I was asked to shut up about truth. Depression is incredibly powerful. Enough!

Less than two weeks ago before what happened to me, I attended a town hall discussing about how to combat hate called Teach-in on Effective Community Responses to Hate and White Supremacy and I stood before panelists and congresswoman and congressman, asking a question, why did Deaf community suffer invisible hate crime? One of the panelists, an expert from Southern Poverty Law Center said that I was absolutely right and it is a huge problem in this society.

It was the answer we all needed to know. It’s so important that it is a sociological problem. Deaf people are always under-reported because of “auditory evidence”. It was pretty insulting—shaking my head. Auditory is privileged. Eyes are more powerful than auditory. I just cannot believe this. This is a good example of hearing privilege.

Even in 2018, Deaf people always been invisible, and it is OK for hearing people to attack Deaf people because they cannot hear and took it as a privileged opportunity. While this is an alarming spike of invisible hate crime targeting Deaf people around the world, it follows a pattern:

Deaf people are very easy to target. Many Deaf people do not report to law enforcement because they do not feel trusted, they do not feel strong community protection from them, they do not feel safe from the society including law enforcement and that is the major problem.

Ironically, part of the reason for hate crime against Deaf people, the society still do not accept attitude towards Deaf people—and the majority of society becomes more judgmental of Deaf people. What is it called? Surdophobia. What does it mean? Fear of Deaf people.

Hate crime is absolutely complex problem—Deaf people are under-reported at an even higher rate, more imaginable than we really understand.

“Hate in the culture and personality provides the basis for doing harm by justifying an attack”—Jack Levin and Jim Nolan.

Audism is a threat. Audism is a hate crime. The term coined in late 1970s, to suggest that it is better to hear and speak than not. The bias makes such language bigotry is an important for the poor state of critical learning and thinking. Audism and hate crime targeting Deaf people spread fear and intimidation beyond the immediate victims to those who cannot hear—is the greatest threat. Is the problem of hate crime actually becoming worse, or is it only iceberg of the problem?

So, “auditory evidence” wins. Even though in the first place, hate crime with motivation committed are most likely to get away that involves emotional, mentally and physical assaults than do other crimes generally do. That’s why Deaf people are invisible. Forever.

-JT

Copyright © 2018 Jason Tozier

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