[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5W604uSkrk]
Within this community, people are often put down because they are “unable to do what hearing people can do” but then again, do they really want to do it? That’s where I-King Jordan’s famous quote, “Deaf people can do anything…. but hear” is misleading. In so many ways, this community has things that people don’t have.
As highlighted in the video, there are several things that are gained from being a part of this community. Identity, perspective and community are all beneficial gains hence the phase, “Deaf gain” will likely become a way of describing the way hearing people describe people of this community, “hearing loss.”
Confusion on why some people believe that they are a part of a group, identify themselves as a member of a community rather than having a disability. Look at the definition of disability-
Lack, normal, incapacity, hinderance, unable to perform, and disadvantage are all ways that are used to describe the word, “disability”. There are several other groups of people that are considered disabled that detest the word disability to describe them too and they have experienced backlash as well. It’s a very sad perception that “hearing” or “able bodied” individuals have.
A beautiful story that has been written by a girl with autism is called, “
Carly’s Cafe“. Again, she has been one of those people that have been told she can’t do anything because she has a “disability”. She was quoted from her facebook page talking about being accepted into college.
I CARLY FLEISCHMANN someone who is nonverbal has been accepted to university for the fall. I would love to see the look on my kindergarten teachers face. She thought I didn’t like her because I didn’t look at her. The moral of this story is that we are all capable (Carly)
Why is everybody constantly having to put a negative word upon something they don’t understand completely? If the world would open their eyes and look more at what they might be missing, they would see that there is no “normal”.
