Comedy – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

Someone photo shopped an image and put it on Dunkin Donuts door in state of Illinois to make it look like real: “We hate Deaf and Dumb people! They are not welcome in our store. Go order your food from McDonald’s! We don’t want your SSI Check. Thanks, Management”—do you think it is funny at all? Where can you find humor in this statement?

When someone finds time to type “hate Deaf and Dumb people!” with passion, the word “hate” comes from the Old English, hatian “regard with extreme ill-will, have a passionate aversion to, to treat as an enemy.”

In practice, it refers to treat Deaf people as enemy, making an action that needs to be taught in the society. That practice could be either smart or stupid.

An image created from “Photoshop” style like that, it means hate mail. As the word, “hate mail” was coined in 1951, and that was 68 years ago and the practice still carry the legacy. It has been too long. Why wait so long to stop hate mail? You can see that clearly from the society view of Deaf people in which the “hate” is used in the legal sphere seemed more dignified. It does not matter whoever created the image—even from Deaf person.

The definition of ‘hate’ in crimes, literature, mail, and speech, targeting Deaf community is a secret in the making, and the word itself is a dangerous framing, attaching a criminal behavior that has become normalized in the society. Why do you think there is no laws protecting Deaf people in the name of hate crimes? So, over the years, lack of laws has become a part of our “deficit thinking” of what a hate crime, hate mail, hate speech, and hate literature and it is crucial part when it comes to the understanding of hate crimes.

When hearing people call police on Deaf people, what is about fearful of Deaf people, watched, suffering and told stories by millions at the time and for many years including current status like today, had ignored the evidence of one of painful human conditions, to understand the word of “hate” hurting Deaf people that makes the bigotry invisible?

The reasons that hate crime are not being enough discussed in Deaf community is because the truth that was not seen enough and ignoring social problems, in order not to show the truth in the light. The lack of learning about hate crimes in Deaf community is a big problem, I repeat, really big problem has been ignored in all angles of human compassion because when someone like Deaf people experiencing hate mail, hate speech, hate literature and hate crime becomes invisible.

Today in 2019, the terminology of “hate” about Deaf life on the Earth we live and breathe has failed.

The image was found to be offensive and insulting even though it was attempting to be funny, but it was poorly choice of words. Head shaking. No Deaf people shall be enduring torture like “hate”–we are much stronger than “hate”. Agreed? Even if it was supposed to be joke, it just does not work that way.

-JT

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Identity Gone by Nancy Rourke

Laugh, laugh, laugh! Come on, it is not that hard to do! What is wrong with you?

Well, when I was growing up seeing family members in the same room, laughing, and I often asked them, “what is so funny?” They would say, “I am too lazy to tell you,” “it is not important to know,” “you do not understand,” “get lost,” “who are you?” Why is the laughter not very much a part of my life? I became dumbfounded on-spot that something was funny in another language: spoken English. Not just the family gatherings, but I would watch movies with closed captions, I still did not laugh. Growing up as a kid, I was completely clueless about American Sign Language (ASL).

Growing up in THE hearing world all my life, I was just a stranger, an interloper without guidance, a lack of ASL, and confused with no goal or direction in life. As a boy growing up in a small town, I drank into my character a dark with empty life that had not shared enough with an important human property, laughter. Without laughing, it gave me a handful of toxic legacies that flushed me inside out.

There were several times when my cousin Tony and I would be watching a movie with some of comedy together, he was laughing hard but he noticed that I did not laugh. He then asked me why I would not laugh. I never really understood any part of the laughter. I was just an angry kid, knowing that my family did not bother to communicate with me. Also, I was angry that I was being bullied and ostracized at my school. I often landed me in the principal’s office where I would get accused, blamed and suspended right away. Those hearing peers would mock and laugh at me. So I did not laugh.

After I saw stories in ASL via vlogs and Deaf scholars, I was shocked to discover that I was able to laugh! It had transformed me from a lonely and introvert childhood. I always had trouble with the hearing world, and with laughter, I went to being an outgoing, sociable jock, just a full of life.

I lived with the label in hearing world all my life until ASL came into my life that removed my depression right away. As my story goes on, I saw people laughing with furtive glances in public. I could remember for the first time when I laughed in ASL in the air, it became free. It changed my life; I still feel the stigma from growing up in the mainstreaming world. I believe that mainstreaming changed the presence of who I am. It is the most reviled label that I lived in that world.

When I was 20, I chose to move out of from a small plot of land in the rural southwestern Washington State town, population of 500, the back door of the single-wide house faces the forest—the fact that I had to escape from vigilant attacks. The stigma by not laughing too much followed me around until I met Deaf scholars. I never knew they knew how to make me laugh! What kept me going? My anger, my guilt, my ignorance. I had lived in the hearing world. My return to a “normal” life has been slow. I needed to go to ASL festivals more often. With glints of laughing in ASL made a lot of progress where I had opened up to my friends and relatives outside my immediate family.

I realized that laughing is itself a learned behavior. ASL is the language usage to learn. I was intrigued by seeing comedies in ASL to help me identify myself as a Deaf person. The act of role in ASL makes a huge repetitious performance of Deafhood that is dictated by a hearing dominance culture. It questions the idea of laughing in ASL is very important to recognize the state of being Deaf from which hearing world deviates. Learning how to laugh in ASL goes through a fallow period and has some conceptualization of what I am to ASL around me before I can comfortably live in the world. After all, laughing is contagious if it is shared and understood.

-JT

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Tag: Comedy

“We Hate Deaf and Dumb People!”: Funny or Offensive?