Gandhi – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

RID got Humpriezed

June 6, 2018 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

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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

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Deaf President Now: Fool to Fight for Our Rights?

March 11, 2018 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

Was it foolish to fight for Deaf rights and supporting the protest for Deaf President at Gallaudet University in 1988?

How to Stop the Avalanche of Hate

October 14, 2017 The Last HiccupLeave a comment

I would like to express something off my mind for couple of minutes. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve received ugly postings about me from my own Deaf community. I am aware that I had been dealing with hate to make sure I disappear off the Mother planet. I come to understand the dangers of hate mongers than ever. Times I would be warned not to write about my experience as a returning citizen. This could not be further from the truth. If you have hard time reading the print in the picture on the left, I apologize for sloppy marker.

The questions I wrote down: Do we believe that youth who make horrible mistakes deserve second chances? Do we believe youth can develop character beyond their crimes?

I believe in resistance and challenge against hate, as a means of survival and hope. I did not create hate in the first place. You did. For 21 years, there are people had been threatening me and put me in human exile. That sucks because I had been working hard to change my life around. I refuse to live in someone else’s shadow.

For the haters out there, please understand this—TAUNTS just does not work. I do not need shame and disrespect, shows that hate STILL kills’ people and corrupt systems. However, I’ve reached the underlying reasons for the resistance and I believe in second chances. Sadly, due to institutional and societal barriers, once I entered back into community, there were challenges of employment, housing, and help for support and I’ve faced hardships where I had to deal with mental and physical abuses for telling truth.

Gandhi writes,

Many people, especially, ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still there.”

My journey as Deaf returning citizen as indirectly described, has been carried around with the educational champions of the Sociology world I fell in love with, and found my Deafhood identity. The hardships are claimed. Deaf Studies are claimed. It is a new birth: the “origin” of my stories. All the hard work of building self-confidence, all the bulwark in the face of hate that is often subtle, yet no less compassion, than hate in the community. I remind myself to live constantly in George Orwell’s “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”

When I see this photo the other day, I see it as a metaphor for the intellectual decline of American people to understand stories.

Hate is virtually deserted, devoid of human life; surrounded millions of old souls, the stories will be unthinkable. Is hate an unforgiving society? Does that mean it also allows deficit thinking to build more fear? Even a single story of a Deaf returning citizen can change the world. Will we accept the fact that hate is a painstakingly back-up human error? Are Deaf returning citizens even part of Deaf Studies?

I just wanted you to know that I stand strong. Sure, I can be hard on myself for my imperfections and mistakes even my failures and I am aware of the haters who are obsessed with me as a Deaf returning citizen and try to pull my life down. I’m tired of crab theory. I am tired of rumor-mongers. The last words of this blog when I would like to say that I deal with hate a lot, I do not hide my face under a mask or nothing. Here is the thing: More and more people criticize it, but most likely shift the blame for who is responsible.

Last October 2015, I was invited to give a lecture for CSUN Social Justice conference sponsored by Deaf Studies Association, I felt very good what I’ve contributed back to the community. That matters the most to me.

I continue to complete my ultimate goals. I will not be intimidated. Let’s remind ourselves this month of October is National Bullying Prevention Month.

-JT

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