Deaf and Disability Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Identifying Allies

105 Identifying Allies Explorations of DeafHearing Relationships Joan Ostrove and Gina Oliva Keywords Ableism; Activism; Audism; Alliances; Gender; Identity; Language; Race In her work on the “social divide” between people with disabilities and nondisabled people, Carol Gill (2001) calls for work on nondisabled allies: people who stand up against disability oppression, who appreciate “their disabled associates . . . in their full glory and full ordinariness,” in short, who “get it” (p. 368). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people describe “low prejudice” heterosexual people as those who treat them no differently from other people, who smile and ask questions, who make eye contact, and who are supportive and warm (Conley, Devine, Rabow, & Evett, 2002). In an influential essay on alliances among different groups of women, woman of color feminist Gloria Anzaldúa (1990) wrote that “alliance work . . . [asks] how can we reconcile one’s love for diverse groups when members of these groups do not love each other, cannot relate to each other, and don’t know We would like to thank Sandra Ammons, Susan Burch, Alison Kafer, and Lakshmi Fjord for feedback and conversation about earlier drafts of this manuscript. Thank you to Summer Crider for helping develop coding themes from the focus groups and Nick Bonges for assistance with organizing and videotaping the focus groups. Some of the research described in this paper was supported by a grant-in-aid to Joan Ostrove from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and our collaboration has also been funded by a Faculty Career Enhancement Grant to Ostrove from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. Parts of this chapter were presented at the 2008 Conference of the Society for Disability Studies in New York City. 106 Joan Ostrove and Gina Oliva how to work together” (p. 219). All of this work points us to the importance of the concept of “alliance”: an effective, mutually respectful relationship across (at least one) difference of identity that acknowledges oppression, privilege, and the complicated nature of identity. In this chapter, we will draw on this conceptual work on alliances to examine possibilities for alliances between Deaf and hearing people. Our work is motivated by the following questions: What do Deaf 1 and hard of hearing people want in their relationships with hearing people? Who are Deaf individuals’ hearing friends and allies? What qualities do these friends and allies have in common? What are the challenges to effective alliance building? From the literature about alliances that we referred to in the introduction and from our own research about relationships between Deaf/ hard of hearing and hearing people, we have learned that building alliances across differences of identity requires an understanding of broad social contexts and that successful alliances are grounded in effective communication, mutual respect, and a recognition that identities are complicated. All relationships exist in social contexts. Although it is important to acknowledge those contexts for studying any kind of relationship, understanding relationships across differences of social identity requires that we pay particular attention to the social structural context in which those relationships exist and develop. For example, relationships between people of color and white people exist in a context of racism. As a result, many people of color are wary of interactions with white people because they expect white people to harbor prejudiced attitudes and display discriminatory behavior (Monteith & Spicer, 2000; Shelton & Richeson, 2006; Shelton, Richeson, & Salvatore, 2005). Conley and her colleagues (Conley, Calhoun, Evett, & Devine, 2001; Conley et al., 2002) found similar themes in their studies of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people’s experiences with heterosexual people (especially straight people who were described as being high in prejudice), experiences that occur in a context of heterosexism/gay oppression. Similarly, relations between Deaf and hearing people exist in a context of audism, or the systematic discrimination of individuals based on hearing ability (Bauman, 2004). Humphries (1975) defined audism as “the notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears” (cited in Bauman, 2004, p. 240). Deaf individuals have experienced considerable discrimination based on the (misguided) notions Identifying Allies 107 that being able to hear is superior to not being able to, and that hearing (and speaking) conveys a basic humanness that is denied to people who do not hear (Bauman, 2004). Many hearing people believe that deaf people are, for example, generally less capable than hearing people, have a medical problem that...