Tag: Nyle DiMarco Foundation
Remember 2016 April 1st?
So, it begins..with on the eve of April 1st, where we were sleeping peacefully that gives ourselves comforting, secure feeling as the state of being Deaf then woke up to a rude awakening where no character to escape in every corner of America’s roads. The Washington Post publishes an article that changed everything.
By tomorrow’s day, it becomes one-year anniversary. It was the day outgoing president of Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, Meredith Sugar made an effort-consuming for deficit thinking by encouraging hate speech about ASL and scolded Nyle DiMarco that should not accepted in the society or even his subjective identity. That was a major or even grave mistake of Meredith to do that.
There were been a lot of letters written by State Associations of the Deaf on the behalf of Deaf people, social media, bloggers, vloggers challenging AGB association and Meredith Sugar, it was incredible—more like awesome for the next couple of days! Maybe even couple of weeks. We need to see it more like this.
When AGB associations practice any behavior, for example, hate speech, that behavior becomes stronger and harder to get rid of. In our human minds, we see a person of different culture walking past the street, and people sneer at them. They then become invariably disappears.
Today, AGB still refuse to apologize for its action showing more interest to encourage hate speech, what is being done to attack Deaf people and what can the average citizen do to help in those efforts?
Deaf community is an incredibly special place, and Deaf people are a unique breed of people anywhere. Three-time Pultizer Prize winner Thomas Freidman writes,
Freedom is the ability, desire, and aspiration to live in a context where I can realize my full potential as a human being.”
However, someone once said that, “We shall challenge AGB, no matter what until they give up.” We need to realize our full potential as a human being. The LEAD-K summit asked the audience not to talk about AGB or challenge AGB at all and stay in silence. Then the silence grows bigger. We need more people to continue and challenge against hate speech more often. It continues to target Deaf people today because they are nobody. Well, we are someone else! ASL is highly designed in terms of knowledge, collections, and efficiency. April 1st will be always in history forever.
My older post in 2016 the day after Meredith’s hateful letter then second one later in two weeks:
https://audismnegatsurdi.com/2016/04/02/alexander-graham-bells-name-hate-speech-with-spin-wheel/
https://audismnegatsurdi.com/2016/04/13/agbell-time-for-peace-with-justice/
-JT
Copyright @ 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
In Response For Nyle DiMarco
So, here is first Deaf person to win America’s Next Top Model Cycle 22 and Dancing With The Stars Season 22 and set up his YouTube channel, Nyle DiMarco and let people ask him random questions on February 15, 2017, “Were You Bullied For Being Deaf?”
With due all respect for Nyle, that is where the buck has to stop there. Paddy Ladd, the author of Understanding Deaf Culture: In the Search of Deafhood,
Utilising their contacts in the scientific establishment and the media, a public climate has been manufactured which once again again proclaims the advent of the ‘miracle cure’ and suggests once more that ‘deafness is abolished’.” (page 159) and “In the case of cochlear implants, for example, one would expect the trumpeting of such a ‘cure’ to represent a contradiction to our absorbed miracle of the Little Magic Box. ‘If the box works so well, we might ask, ‘then why is such brutally invasive surgery deemed necessary?'” (page 173)
It is exactly a good example of media manipulation when someone asked Nyle a question, “what’s your opinion on cochlear implants in relation to (the lack of) sign language acquisition?” That was un-American question.
I was surprised what his response was. First of all, please remember that I am not against people who are cochlear implant users, but I am against cochlear implants itself. Please remember that.
Nyle signed in 2:10 video, “Well, I have nothing against cochlear implants. I would support whatever a child wants to do whether their parents want to get a cochlear implant. Fine with that I have no say in that matter.”
Do you really believe that a child would say, “I want a cochlear implant” just like that? Remember, in 1989, 12 Deaf children died from cochlear implant surgeries—so do you think a child would say, “I want a cochlear implant and I want to die, too?” Please be realistic! It is the oppressive society (doctors, audiologists, stockholders, politics, corporate dirt bags) that manipulates parents to get their children cochlear implants. Is that not a bullying?
Did Nyle ever read a book called Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children by Laura Mauldin yet? I do not think so because if he read the book then he would not say, “I would support whatever a child wants to do.” I am telling you that the book would blow your mind away.
Again, the book is very important for everyone to read and understand the truth. Beware; there are a lot of manipulations by people who are actually against ASL and even the state of being Deaf, too. That is a form of hate.
For example, Alexander Graham Bell Association for Deaf and Hard of Hearing has done very good public relations by manipulating parents into getting cochlear implants.
I am certainly disappointed that people who look up to Nyle as a “celebrity” who gives a wrong impression about it. He was supposed to set a better example and stop lies how special cochlear implant industries are. I mean, he said that he is an activist even he said that he is passionate about language and literacy. Well, did he know that cochlear implants makes it worse and become the subject of language deprivation? Even language delay, too. Cochlear implants does not make better literacy.
It is all about cultural oppression. It is also about the organizing principle of power wherein culture can be studied through technologies of power (cochlear implant industries) and money.
Why not Nyle stand up and challenge cochlear implant industries and make progress, education, conflict, struggle and resistance? For American Sign Language [ASL], it is the truth that attributes to functions, neither economy nor power. ASL creates truth, and this truth produces a function of power.
Cochlear implants has been ongoing ill-advised and misleading term for years and years. No human being can restore anyone’s hearing; Cochlear implants depends a lot on battery economics is a BIG business, yet, it does not restore anyone’s hearing at all. That is reality. It is all about money.
Remember, cochlear implants “profits” over people…is that even an American way of life?
-JT
Copyright @ 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
References:
Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. 2003.
Why Did LEAD-K Bring Into Confusion?
Lisa A. Goldstein’s Fables of the Deception
Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.-Desmond Tutu
Lisa A. Goldstein’s article, Nyle DiMarco’s Activism Is Dangerous For The Deaf Community, she is one lost soul—I had been Deaf all my life—like Nyle and Lisa. I was raised into a hearing family and mainstreamed into public schools, and yes, I felt isolated all the time since I step my toes into mainstreaming system and been bullied ever since. The predominant language of this country in mainstreaming system is a classic example of bullying for Deaf students. I became a lost soul before I discovered Deaf community—a massive change in my life. I realized that Deaf community is not about living in silence, it is about humanity. It is one of the most beautiful thing ever happened. Seriously.
Living in silence—a period in which atrocities were committed, at depth, by perpetrators whom the world turned a blind eye towards—until they could no longer. Alexander Graham Bell (AGBell) survivors were separated, societal hierarchies dissipated, and demoralization, with the almost certain prospect of death, permeated every fiber of the oppressed.
The author of the article, Ms. Goldstein—need to prepare to review explores and seeks to compare, the individual conception of justice and forgiveness from AGBell survivors, to the collective accounts and rationale, of AGBell survivors and their contemporaries from stories, ranging from Ramsey’s Deaf Children in Public Schools, Ryan and Schuchman’s Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, Lane’s When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf, Breivik’s Deaf Identities in the Making and many more. Those books I am proud to own sitting on my bookshelf. The books heal my life, today and tomorrow by seeking to explore a higher consciousness, and more critically thought-out reasoning, in its responses. That withstanding, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the significant differential in the timing of those books.
This realization, brought by the varying accounts provided in those books, leads me to the conclusion that time can allow for one to resolve one’s animosity and move towards forgiveness. Ms. Goldstein’s statement is all about propaganda is yet another effort by Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing to dismantle Deaf community. She asserts that she knows “better than most” about what Deaf people are capable of doing but she clearly indicates in her statement that she is nothing but all talking.
To date, we ignore her hatred towards “our common collective goals”—what are these collective goals what Nyle DiMarco Foundation do? Have Ms. Goldstein taken courses in American Sign Language (ASL) in order to reach them? Nowhere in her statement has indicated one value that ASL is used for instruction of the Deaf as well as promoted by Gallaudet University. Nothing. She fails to exemplify these collective goals as Deaf person. She simply details her denial paragraphs—each paragraph. She destroys her own self as Deaf person. That is called self-hate.
It is difficult enough to have true objectivity in something, which she has not experienced personally. To ask one to provide insight, or moral guidance, on a matter, which she neither experienced nor could possibly imagine, is highly presumptuous. With that being said, the time value in distancing one’s judgment rendered will, in my opinion, misinterpret her ability to assess the situation with the same acute sentiment as Deaf community who has freshly experienced said conditions.
In sum, Ms. Lisa A. Goldstein need a lot of time to provide reflective judgments from what Deaf community has suffered since 1880 Milan Resolution—and therefore a higher, more conscious level of thought than the reactive nature of Deaf community actually experiencing hatred every day. I do not care if I am being called as Deaf culture extremist in full force—the essay Ms. Goldstein has shown her intimidation and manipulation tactics—destroying Deaf community, like I said, permeated every fiber of the oppressed.
After all, she is the one who is living in silence.
-JT
Copyright © 2016 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message
How ASL Evolve Human Brain
Nyle DiMarco: Broke the Camel’s Back in Hollywood
Nyle DiMarco Foundation: Changing the Imagination of Change
“For many of us who feel estranged from mainstream politics, there are rare, ephemeral moments of celebration.”- Arundhati Roy
If you read some of the blogs and v-logs lately in Deaf community about hate crimes, hate speech, and hate group—AGBell. It is clear that they represent a new, important form of democratic expression. They mark a fundamental shift in power away from public relations dominated by AGBell to AGBell survivors which now empowers the Deaf community. For example, the blogs and v-logs reach places that AGBell as well as its yellow journalism cannot touch today.
AGBell survivors are still alive as metaphors in our lives. It provided us with a vivid illustration of reasons why AGBell is doomed. It is not inconceivable that blogging and v-logging in Deaf community will turn out to be just as important as its founders of their own blogging sites initially supposed. It is really a big deal. The word, “hate” is rightfully true what is happening in Deaf community.
The organization known as Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, is now easily a hate group in the making, they are but self-touting, praising themselves as an embracer of American Sign Language (ASL) and its Deaf culture—and a self-conceiting telling how they has now become a spokesperson for Deaf people. There have been many revelations from AGBell about the last 130 years of so-called educational leadership. A great many of damages were done, and Deaf people were hurt.
Many people across the nation had caught up in the idea about Gallaudet University, and that the way Gallaudet University acts is best. With Nyle DiMarco bringing his sidekick, Gallaudet University president, Roberta “Bobbi” Cordano to White House Correspondents Association Dinner last Saturday, April 30th, 2016—it was more than a ripple effect! Within the mainstream media and politics who had been “cyberbullying” Deaf people for years and years where they suffer a form of hate, whether it is based or not. Love conquers over hate.
The world-view which has given direction to Deaf life and I believe that Nyle DiMarco Foundation is changing the direction where it is now. This world-view, especially with the media attacking Deaf community with hatred is now done and gives ASL and Deaf people a sense of belonging of “being at home with ASL” that needs to change the face of Gallaudet University, a sense of fulfillment unknown to academia. After all, the sidekick was a perfect economic opportunity.
Time for action. Any hatred messages spew by AGBell is urgent. We must act, and broad support is needed. We all have the democracy to write letters to Congress. And there is far more to politics than the mainstream of hatred over ASL and Deaf people, more in the margins where hope is most at home.
-JT
Copyright © 2016 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only including this copyright message.
...And the Truth Shall Set You Free. 
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