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3 ETHNICITY, ETHICS, AND THE DEAF-WORLD
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42 3 ETHNICITY, ETHICS, AND THE DEAF-WORLD Harlan Lane This chapter is concerned with ethical aspects of the relationships among language minorities using signed languages (called the Deaf-World) and the larger societies that engulf them. It undertakes to show that such minorities have the properties of ethnic groups and that an unsuitable construction of the Deaf-World as a disability group has led to programs of the majority that not only discourage Deaf children from acquiring the language and culture of the Deaf-World but also intend to reduce the number of Deaf births—programs that are unethical from an ethnic-group perspective. The chapter advances four reasons not to construe the Deaf-World as a disability group: (1) Deaf people themselves do not believe they have a disability; (2) the disability construction brings with it needless medical and surgical risks for the Deaf child; (3) the disability construction also endangers the future of the Deaf-World; and finally, (4) the disability construction brings bad solutions to real problems because it is predicated on a misunderstanding. It has become widely known that, as in other nations, there is a Deaf-World in the United States that comprises citizens whose primary language is American Sign Language and who identify as members of that minority culture. The size of the population is not known, but estimates generally range from half a million to a million members (Schein 1989). The English terms deaf and hearing impaired are commonly used to designate a much larger and more heterogeneous group than the members of the Deaf-World. Most of the 20 million Americans (Binnie 1994) who are in that larger group had conventional schooling and became deaf after acculturation to hearing society; they communicate primarily in English or one of the spoken minority languages; they generally do not have Deaf spouses; they do not identify themselves as members of the Deaf-World, nor do they use its language, participate in its organizations, profess its values, or behave in accord with its mores; rather, they consider themselves hearing people with a disability . Something similar is true of most nations: there is a Deaf-World, a relatively small group of visual people (Bahan 2005; Padden and Humphries 1988) who use a natural visual-gestural language and who are often confused with the larger group of people who view themselves as hearing impaired and who use a spoken language in its spoken or written form. Acknowledgment of this contrast, often signaled in the scholarly literature by the use of capital-D Deaf for members of the Deaf-World and small-d deaf for members of the larger group, does not deny that there is a gray area between the two groups; for example, some hard of hearing people are active in the American Deaf-World while others are not. Oral deaf adults and late-deafened adults usually consider that they have a hearing impairment and do not self-identify as members of the Deaf-World. This chapter is concerned exclusively with the smaller group, the Deaf-World. The discussion undertakes to show that it qualifies as an ethnic group and that an unsuitable construction of the Deaf-World as a disability group has led to programs (such as oral education and cochlear implant surgery) that discourage Deaf children from participating in the Deaf-World and that attempt to reduce the number of Deaf births—programs that are unethical from an ethnic-group perspective. In other words, this chapter makes the case that our ethical standards for the majority’s treatment of Deaf people depend, not surprisingly, on whether our representation of the Deaf-World is that of a disability group or that of an ethnic group. THE DEAF-WORLD IS AN ETHNIC GROUP A strong case can be made that the Deaf-World is an ethnic group. Support for this case can be found by considering the very criteria and characteristics that social scientists use to characterize any ethnic group: internal properties and ethnic boundaries. Internal Properties Table 3.1 shows the criteria that social scientists have advanced for characterizing a social group as an ethnic group. 1. Collective name. The members of this group have a collective name in their manual-visual language by which they refer to themselves. I will refer to them by that name in adopting the English translation of their compound sign DEAF-WORLD. 2. Feeling of community. Self-recognition, and recognition by others, is a central feature of ethnicity (Barth...