Substance Abuse Among Deaf Community And Service Providers Working With The Deaf Essay

This topic is very important to me because I was raised in the Deaf culture. My entire family is Deaf and have faced many of these questions that hearing people are unaware about. I feel that it is my job to educate when I have the chance to do so. By being able to educate at least one person, I have done my job. I do not think there is enough information out there to reach everyone’s awareness of Deaf culture.

Deaf Like Me is a story compiled together by Thomas and James Spradley. It is a compelling story about two hearing+ parents struggling to cope with their daughters overwhelming deafness. This powerful story expresses with simplicity the love, hope, and anxieties of all hearing parents of deaf children. In the epilogue, Lynn Spradley, herself, now a teenager thinks back about different times in her life growing up deaf. She reflects upon her education, her struggle to communicate, and the discovery that she was the inspiration and the main focus of her father's and uncle's book collaboration. Deaf Like Me is a

The Deaf community is comprised of people of a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds, as Deafness prevails around the world; discriminating against none. The Deaf community grows continually. As a hearing person learning about the community, it’s distinctive culture and how to communicate in ASL, I am developing myself and discovering my fairly new position within the Deaf community.

The Deaf community contains the basic characteristics of any particular ethnic group, despite the attempts from hearing people to destroy their culture through medical interventions. This community contains members who share a feeling of community. They value recognition by others and self-recognition (Lane). They feel strongly identified in their group, as they create a family environment, which provides support for each of its members. Moreover, the Deaf community has a set of norms for behavior. In decision-making processes, they try to agree on the course of action to take through consensus and not just by individual initiatives. Allegiance to their culture is also another distinct value that characterizes the members of this community. People with hearing impairments have the “highest rate of endogamous marriages of any

The book also describes how life has changed for deaf adults through the years. Previously, many deaf adults were not able to get jobs in many places, because there were not many places that were accepting to them. These days, however, almost every business or company is looking for those that are fluent in American Sign Language, due to the simple fact that they would be able to accommodate that many more people and earn more money for their business. Also, there were not many outlets for deaf adults to use in relation to entertainment or basic needs, because again, mostly everything was catered to hearing adults only. However, they have recently developed many different ways for the deaf to communicate with the hearing and with one another, including TTY, full-keyboard, and internet phones and closed-captions on television stations and movies.

First, this book allowed me to see the negative way in which deaf people were perceived. This book is not old by any means, and I was taken aback by the way deaf children were perceived by not only others in the community, but often times by their own parents as well. The term

In the Deaf community Benjamin Bahan is considered an influential figure because not only does he write about Deaf culture but he is a storyteller as well. Bahan has published at least twenty-eight articles, five books, and eight videotapes. With Dirksen Bauman and Melissa Malzkuhn they created the world’s first online journal called, Deaf Studies Digital Journal. It is a “peer-reviewed academic and cultural arts journal to feature scholarship and creative work in both signed and written languages” (Gallaudet Press). Because he is a storyteller he appears in chapter two of “Signing the Body Poetics”. In this chapter he talks about the Face-to-Face tradition in the American

The deaf subculture has always seemed so interesting, American Sign Language (ASL) is so intriguing, a personal friend is deaf and it is amazing, the fact that hearing and speaking could change a person’s culture so drastically. This essay will explain in broad terms what the deaf culture is like and how it is separate

According to Edwards, the Deaf community began to rise in response to the social view of deafness as a handicap rather than a difference that a whole “Deaf” community is characterized by. Their shared

The deaf community does not see their hearing impairment as a disability but as a culture which includes a history of discrimination, racial prejudice, and segregation. According to PBS home video “Through Deaf Eyes,” there are thirty-five million Americans that are hard of hearing (Hott, Garey & et al., 2007) . Out of the thirty-five million an estimated 300,000 people are completely deaf. There are over ninety percent of deaf people who have hearing parents. Also, most deaf parents have hearing children. With this being the exemplification, deaf people communicate on a more intimate and significant level with hearing people all their lives. “Deaf people can be found in every ethnic group, every region, and every economic class.” The

Deaf culture in is one of America’s many sub-cultures, which means that it is a culture imbedded into the overall culture of the nation. What is unique about the deaf culture is that at times it is a sub-culture of a sub-culture, of a culture, for example the deaf community in Colorado is a sub-culture of Colorado’s culture, and Colorado culture is a sub-culture of the American culture. It can get even more complicated than even that, because say there is an African American deaf culture in the deaf community that adds another deaf culture. It is also unique and set apart from other cultures because of the language barrier between the deaf community and the hearing community. Deaf culture has only recently been accepted by the general public, as well as they have not always had access to an interpreter. Deaf culture has changed drastically since before the 1960’s.

American Annals of the Deaf is an educational journal that is committed to providing educational experiences of high quality as well as related services for the deaf. This journal has been around for over 150 years, and over time they have been dedicated to making sure that children and adults who are deaf or hard of hearing are receiving quality assistance for their disability (NEED CITATION). In July 1996, they published a scholarly article in response to a survey Catherine Gillespie and Sandra Twardosz conducted about the literacy environment and different practices that children are receiving in a residential school for the deaf.

Famous poet and activist Bryant H. McGill, once wrote, “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” In a rather perverse case of irony, there is no culture that this speaks to more than the deaf community. The unsettling reality of oppression is that if you are not exposed or affected by it, you are not aware of its existence. This is the category that I have found myself a part of while learning ASL and by extension about the deaf community. In learning about the diverse and multi-sided culture that is the deaf community I can say with certainty that the prejudice they experience is not only horrifying but also unfounded.

The deaf community does not see their hearing impairment as a disability but as a culture which includes a history of discrimination, racial prejudice, and segregation. According to an online transcript,“Through Deaf Eyes” (Weta and Florentine films/Hott productions Inc., 2007) there are thirty-five million Americans that are hard of hearing. Out of the thirty-five million an estimated 300,000 people are completely deaf. There are ninety percent of deaf people who have hearing parents (Halpern, C., 1996). Also, most deaf parents have hearing children. With this being the exemplification, deaf people communicate on a more intimate and significant level with hearing people all their lives. “Deaf people can be found in every ethnic group,

“Mother Father Deaf: Living Between Sound and Silence” by Paul Preston, portrays interviews with over 150 individuals, who are all hearing children of deaf parents. Being that Preston is a child of deaf parents, himself, it made it a lot easier for the informants to fully open up to him. He understands where they are coming from and is relatable for them. One of their biggest frustrations is having to explain deafness- in terms of their parents, as well as themselves, to people who don’t understand the culture. One interviewee even mentioned, “I wasn’t going to do the interview because I always get asked so many dumb questions. It’s a lot better knowing that you understand, that I don’t have to explain everything” (Preston, 46). The common bond between Preston and them helped gained a sense of trust between each other.