Facts About The Deaf Community

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About The Deaf Community

Being unable to hear is only a part of being Deaf. In fact, when the word is used in the cultural sense, hearing is one of the least important criteria used to delineate group membership.

Many persons that are labeled hearing or hard-of-hearing from the medical perspective are labeled or would label themselves as Deaf from the cultural perspective.

Similarly, a person who self-identifies as Deaf may in fact have much more hearing than one who self-identifies as either hearing or hard-of-hearing.

The use of the cultural label is a declaration of personal identity much more than an explanation of hearing ability.

For the above reason, culturally Deaf people do not look on deafness as a disability.

Deaf people view deafness as an asset in much the same way it is an asset to be a Navajo within the Navajo tribe or to be a Korean within the community of Koreans in Los Angeles.

It is a manner of viewing the world and a matter of semantics.

Most Deaf see deafness as the norm and thus do not see hearing as something they lack or envy, even though the significant majority of the population has moderate to profound hearing loss.

One would not define Navajos or Koreans as lacking the ability to be something other than Navajo or Korean.

They, and the culturally Deaf, define themselves by what they are instead of what they are not. They consider what they are to be a positive trait, because it is tightly connected to their culture.

As an example of how thoroughly deafness is seen as a positive attribute, many Deaf individuals wish for their children to be born deaf.

This can be hard or even impossible for hearing people to understand, but there is an explanation for this when one considers how difficult it can be for hearing parents to raise deaf children: It can be equally difficult for deaf parents to raise hearing children.

Both hearing and deaf parents who have children unlike them understand how much simpler life is when they fully understand the needs of their children and can easily communicate with and relate to their child's experience in the world.

As hearing parents seek out resources to help them in the nurturing and education of their deaf children so too must deaf parents take extraordinary steps to ensure their hearing children, whose mother tongue might be a sign language, are exposed to hearing people and culture.

Furthermore, Deaf parents know firsthand that Deaf people are able to live productive, fulfilling, and rewarding lives.

So, taking all this into consideration, it comes as no surprise that as with hearing parents, some deaf parents see their own abilities and skills best utilized on children who cannot hear.

Over the centuries, some deaf families have learned how to compensate in ways to overcome common obstacles and share the knowledge via storytelling in sign language.

Those who view deafness as a disability — known as a pathological perspective of deafness — can be met with hostility by some individuals in the Deaf community.

Such hostility may represent a reaction to the suspicion and hostility that many deaf people encounter during their lives at the hands of the hearing.

People without hearing loss can and do participate in the Deaf community. For example, hearing children of deaf adults (commonly called "CODAs") can experience full acceptance within the Deaf-World, a term some Deaf Americans use to describe their social network.

Acceptance into this world may extend to anyone who appreciates the aesthically pleasing flow of signed communication within the group and upholds the values, history, mores, and dignity of deaf people.

Other people who are often accepted as full or partial members of Deaf culture are sign language interpreters, family members, and service professionals who help Deaf individuals.

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