Deaf People Without Stories

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April 5th. Five years ago today, it was the last show Deafhood Monologues in DC. Being part of the cast had made me better person. Deafhood Monologues set the determination to lift up the awareness and empowers the significance of Deaf people, whose stories captured the consciousness of Deaf community.

Some of people I know who attended Deafhood Monologues shows have given them optimism. It has been a defining moment for them and will do their best ability to their thinking and decisions throughout their lives.

Seeing stories in ASL, have the power to make a difference when a difference is what Deaf community needs. After seeing those stories during audition sessions, there are Deaf people throughout the world; I was inspired by the strength and compassion.

Lastly, Deafhood Monologues was a brilliant idea. They have made a powerful message that will reverberate across America: Deaf people who have been deeply oppressed by oppressors can no longer buy their way out of trouble.

Seeing ASL stories in Deafhood Monologues by powering this movement with truth to continue a commitment in social justice for Deaf people. Stories are powerful movement.

-JT

Copyright © 2018 Jason Tozier

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

 

Deaf Community: Hate Crime as a Social Problem

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“History, despite it’s wrenching pain, cannot be unlived/But if faced with courage need not be lived again.”- Maya Angelo

From the local to the global, debates over hate crimes in Deaf community-what they are and what we should do about them–are all around us. A close examination of these debates reveals that hate crimes are not simply academic challenges, but social, political, economic, and even Deaf culture, as well. Perhaps nowhere is this complexity more evident than in current discussions over the meaning and practice of “hate crimes”.

Hate crime as a broad introduction to the interdisciplinary field of sociology and society interactions. We need to adopt a sociological lens to consider the causes, consequences, and responses to hate crimes–from global worries over political and legal change to local controversies over educational use and development. In my work, I will not be focusing on the political dimensions of issues per se.

Rather, I will examine how different social structures, processes and belief systems shape how hate crimes in Deaf community arise and get defined; how Deaf community experience and respond to these challenges; and how policy debates over what to do about them unfold. For decades and decades, hate crimes have used what they call “active measures” to destabilize Deaf community today and tomorrow.

We need to turn those tools to defeat them, through in that process that for example, Alexander Graham Bell (AGBell) Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing actually violated plenty of federal laws when they target Deaf community. It is rule number one of the hate crime: they will be caught.

AGBell is something that we have been for many years. Why do we want to claim our intellectual life? Well, let’s look at hate crime dimensions that we suffer from. We looked our across the educational landscape and saw this oppression practice and thought, “OK, what about American Sign Language (ASL) today?” a broad number of AGBell followers would say, “You know, let’s demonize them for the fuck of it” and this comment does explicitly refer to oppress Deaf people as in hate crimes. Serious.

It does because AGBell will expect money and lies with immediate solution. Deaf people and my name will be in it–what I care the most is if Deaf people had experienced hate crimes even when they do not know that they actually experience hate crime, then Deaf people will be always oppressed, too. You know, today is the day after AGBell’s death in 1922, he may be forgotten but at the same time, he must not be forgotten for what he had done.

After all, That is how AGBell as a narcissist think. He was basically defective in the brain. Broken.

Deaf people will be always target for academic freedom–ASL and the state of being Deaf. It is a branch of human ignorance. What should we make of it? Can Deaf people point to a greater language hegemony than we experience hate crimes? Is the difference between ASL and hate crimes just a matter of what AGBell or any particular group of human beings says it is? Soon, you will see something powerful….

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-JT

Copyright © 2016 Jason Tozier

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deaf Stories Wanted

ImageWe need to collect stories in ASL to study socialization as well as the production of Deafhood. We need to illuminate how Deaf stories “depoliticizes” between each other from long-term conditioning and not the dynamics of Audism to define human socialization as the process in which Deaf people learn how to carry themselves both mentally and physically in accordance with societal expectations. They learn what hearing people are supposed to do and what Deaf people are not supposed to do through four domains: their families, schools, friends, and the media.

FAMILIES:

Through parents, infants, and toddlers obtain “listening and speaking” lessons via activities that they are enrolled in and direct instruction. ASL is the direct instruction of all languages. For example, many Deaf babies who does not learn ASL are more likely to be language delay with no guidance. Once the babies learn ASL throughout their developmental period, they begin to identity with ASL and the state of being Deaf are more likely to grow strong identity. This influence is significant because many Deaf children develop strong Deafhood identities right there. It will become their role expectations and promote and cultivate with their parents and themselves into personhood.

SCHOOLS:

We need to bring more stories and to discuss ASL/Audism as if they affect Deaf people and policies as well as practices which has governed their education. The purpose in this article is to discuss what constitutes “deficit thinking” and contrast it with the prevalent Oralism approach to Audism which patterns other governmental policies in its “denial of the Deaf”–

FRIENDS:

The stories are our biggest assets in these domains fostering the world in which Deaf people are not equal in income, prestige, power and life changes in the society. The stories need to take a biological and historical look at whether or not Deaf people are not sufficient to suit to be intelligent as hearing people are. The 1880 Milan Resolution, for the last 133 years, Deaf people has been the part of “developing oppressed societies”, and it has caused Deaf people to live as demanded by a hearing society  in order to survive.

MEDIA:

The account of travesties against many Deaf people in social media indicates that Audism is alive and well in its policy. Why does Audism prevail? Let’s look at the Deaf perception of observance of natural law, which higher than any human law, and governs how people view their interactions with other people, animals and plants on the mother Earth. In contrast, the politics of Audism has created thinking based on timelines and progression, and progression cannot happen without accumulation and consumption.

These values creates many things that are included sustainable living and reciprocity to all other living organisms. Balance, reciprocity, and cyclical thinking (all thinks natural are cyclical–moons, seasons, bodies, people, and time) and create a philosophy of knowing that Deaf people exist on a cyclical continuum, and what you do now will affect you in the future. In accordance, you do not take without giving and you take only what you need and leave the rest. Deafhood is built on these tenants, collected through hundreds of years of observation and practice and intimate knowledge of their Deaf stories and their roles as careful students and caretakers.

-JT

Copyright © 2013 Jason Tozier

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