The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry (16 page)

8 A. Chimezie, "Transracial Adoption of Black Children," Social Work 20 (1975): 296-301; H. Lane and M. Grodin, "Ethical Issues in Cochlear Implant Surgery: An Exploration into Disease, Disability and the Best Interests of the Child," Kennedy Institute of Ethics journal 7 (1997): 231-251.

9 as this deprived the children of their heritage and deprived the tribe of a more open future. The Supreme Court ruled that lower courts must consider the best interests of the particular Native American tribe as well as the best interests of the child Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. Passed at a time when the survival of Native American cultures was considered threatened by very high rates of transracial adoption, the act was designed to prevent the undermining of Native American tribes; it states that "it is the policy of this nation to protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes...." The Supreme Court has ruled that lower courts must consider the best interests of the particular Indian tribe as well as the best interests of the child. R. J. Simon and H. Altstein, Adoption, Race and Identity: From in fancy Through Adolescence (New York: Praeger, 1992).

10 Quoted in H. Markowicz, "La Langue Des Signes et l'Education Des Sourds: Une Perspective Sociolinguistique" (Memoire de Diplome d'Etudes Approfondies, U.E.R. de Linguistique, Universite de Paris V, 1989-1990), quotation from p. 99.

11 See, for example, the 1956 movie "The Searchers," with John Wayne.

12 R. Hoffmeister, "Border Crossings by Hearing Children of Deaf Parents: The Lost History of Codas," in Bauman, Open Your Eyes, 189-218; quotation from p. 202.

13 T. Humphries, "An Introduction to the Culture of Deaf People in the United States: Content Notes and Reference Materials for Teachers," Sign Language Studies 72 (1991): 209-240. See also: Baynton, "Beyond Culture"; Davis, "Postdeafness"; L. Davis, "Deafness and the Riddle of Identity," Chronicle of Higher Education, January 12, 2007, B6; Padden and Humphries, Deaf in America; Padden, "Deaf Community"; Smith, "Deaf People In Context"; but see B. Bahan, "Comment on Turner."

14 Kyle, "Deaf People"; Ladd, Understanding Deaf Culture.

15 B. Bodenhorn, "'He Used to be My Relative': Exploring the Bases of Relatedness among the Inupiat of Northern Alaska," in Carsten, Cultures, 128-148; see p. 139.

16 J. Fishman, "A Critique of Six Papers on the Socialization of the Deaf Child," in J. B. Christiansen, ed., Conference Highlights: National Research Conference on the Social Aspects of Deafness (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet College, 1982), 6-20.

17 R. Hoffmeister, quoted in: L. Davis, "Postdeafness," in Bauman, Open Your Eyes, 314-326.

18 Davis, "Postdeafness"; Kyle, "Deaf People"; J. G. Kyle, "Deaf People and Minority Groups in the UK," in B. Tervoort, ed., Signs of Life. (Amsterdam: Dutch Foundation for the Deaf, 1986); Ladd, Understanding Deaf Culture; Padden, "From the cultural."

19 E. Klima and U. Bellugi, The Signs of Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); W. C. Stokoe, D. Casterline, and C. Croneberg, A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles (Silver Spring, Md.: Linstok Press, 1976); T. Humphries, "Scientific explanation and other performance acts in the re-organization of DEAF" in D. J. Napoli, ed., Signs and Voices (Washington. D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2008).

20 The anthropologist Ladislav Holy states: "The most significant development in the study of kinship has been the growing awareness of the cultural specificity of what were previously taken to be the natural facts on which all kinship systems were built." L. Holy, Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pluto Press, 1996), quotation from p.165.

21 Fishman, "A Critique"; Harris, Cultural Meaning, seep. 13; J. E. Nash, "Policy and Practice in the American Sign Language Community," International Journal of the Sociology of Language 68 (1987): 7-22; J. Ree, I See a Voice: Language, Deafness and the Senses: A Philosophical History (London: HarperCollins, 1999).

22 "Deaf genes." We will use this phrase of convenience when we mean an allele, giving rise to the Deaf trait. An allele is one of several possible DNA sequences at a given physical gene location. The correspondences between the transmission of the Deaf trait and Mendelian laws of inheritance suggest the effects of a single gene but many traits are influenced by variation at several genes.

23 P. Conrad and J. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1980).

24 H. T. Engelhardt, "The Concepts Of Health And Disease," in A. Caplan, H. T. Engelhardt, and J. J. McCartney, Concepts of Health and Disease (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1981) pp. 31-45; R. Selzer, "Against Devices for the Deaf [a review of H. Lane, Mask of Benevolence]," Washington Post, July 2, 1992.

25 D. S. Davis, "Cochlear Implants and the Claims of Culture? A Response to Lane and Grodin," Kennedy Institute of Ethics journal 7 (1997): 253-258; quotation from p. 254.

26 T. P. Gonsoulin, "Cochlear Implant/Deaf-World Dispute: Different Bottom Elephants," Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery 125 (2001), 552-556; quotation from p. 554.

27 T. Balkany, A. Hodges, and K. Goodman, "Ethics of Cochlear Implantation in Young Children," Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery 114 (1996): 748-755; quotation from p. 753.

28 R. Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944)

29 H. Lane, "Do Deaf People have a Disability?" in Bauman, Open Your Eyes, 277-292.

30 R. Shweder, "Anthropology's Romantic Rebellion Against the Enlightenment," in R. Shweder and R. A. LeVine, eds., Culture Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 27-666.

31 Groce, Everyone Here. When Groce asked her informant to say who were "handicapped by deafness when she was a girl on the Island," she replied emphatically: "Oh, those people weren't handicapped. They were just deaf"; quotation from p. 5. See also: Lane, Pillard, and French, "Origins."

32 MJ Bienvenu, "Disabled: Who?" The Bicultural Center News 13 (April 1989): 1; K. A. Jankowski, Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle and Rhetoric (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1997); Ladd, Understanding Deaf Culture.

33 http://www.nad.org/issues/technology/assistive-listening/cochlear- implants (accessed 7/22/2010).

34 L. Jones and G. Pullen, "'Inside We Are All Equal': A European Social Policy Survey of People Who are Deaf," in L. Barton, ed., Disability and Dependency (Bristol, Penn.: Taylor and Francis Falmer Press, 1989), 127-137.

35 T. Humphries, "Deaf Culture and Cultures," in K. M. Christensen and G. L. Delgado, eds., Multicultural Issues in Deafness (White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1993), quotation from p. 6.

36 Humphries, "Reference Materials," quotation from p. 220.

37 D. Baynton, "Beyond Culture"; V. Finkelstein, "'We' Are Not Disabled, 'You Are,"' in Gregory and Hartley, Constructing Deafness, 265-271; Gonsoulin, "Cochlear Implant/Deaf-World Dispute"

38 M. Mills, "I Am Happy My Child Is Deaf: Many Are Horrified by a U.S. Couple Deliberately Choosing to Have Deaf Children. Here, Sharon Ridgeway, Who Is the Deaf Mother of a Deaf Child Sympathises With Their Decision," The.Guardian (April 9, 2002): 8. A survey of Deaf and hard-ofhearing participants found no preference about the hearing status of their children: S. J. Stern, K. S. Arnos, L. Murrelle, K. Welch, W. Nance, and A. Pandya, "Attitudes of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Subjects toward Genetic Testing and Prenatal diagnosis of Hearing Loss," Journal of Medical Genetics 39 (2002): 449-453; M. Miller, D. Moores, and D. Sicoli, "Preferences of deaf college students for hearing status of their children." Journal of the American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association 32 (2003): 1-8.

39 P. Abberley, "The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of Disability," Disability, Handicap and Society 2 (1987): 5-19. Baynton presents the case that many disabled persons have no desire to join the disabled "other": D. Baynton, "Beyond Culture." "What needs to be stated is that disability-while never wished for-may simply not be as disastrous as imagined": M. Fine and A. Asch, "Disability Beyond Stigma: Social Interaction, Discrimination, and Activism," Journal of Social Issues 44 (1988): 3-21; quotation from p. 11. J. Gusfield writes: "We must take care not to parody and reject lightly either the naive materialist or the constructivist positions. Naive materialists do recognize that their actions can affect the 'real' social problem they are trying to remedy. And constructivists do not claim that social problems are invented out of thin air; some disease and disabilities-some-have biological as well as social determinants of their categorization": J. Gusfield, "On the Side: Practical Action and Social Constructivism in Social Problems Theory," in J. Schneider and J. Kitsuse, eds., Studies in the Sociology of Social Problems (Rutgers, N.J.: Ablex, 1984), 31-51. "Every disabled person would welcome such an operation (or other form of personal intervention) which guaranteed successful elimination of the impairment": V. Finkelstein, "We Are Not Disabled, You Are.," in Gregory and Hartley, Constructing Deafness, 265-271; quotation from p. 265; H. Lane, "Constructions of Deafness," Disability and Society 10 (1995): 171-189. While it is true that barriers of many kinds are disabling, strong constructionism fails to take into account the "difficult physical realities faced by people with disabilities," arising from factors "such as chronic pain, secondary health effects, and ageing derive from the body." T. Siebers, Disability Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 25, 57.

40 S. N. Barnartt and J. B. Christiansen, "Into Their Own Hands: The Deaf President Now Protest and Its Consequences," in Bragg, Deaf-World, 333-347.

41 J. P. Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (New York: Times Books, 1993).

42 S. E. Brown, "What is Disability Culture?" Independent Living Institute Newsletter 12 (2001): 1.

43 Baynton, "Beyond Culture."; Lennard Davis has written: "Instead of calling the Deaf a nationality, one might consider them as occupying the place of an ethnic group."; "Thus the Deaf became a new subgroup within each state throughout Europe: like Jews and Gypsies, they were an ethnic group in the midst of a nation." L. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body. (New York: Verso, 1995): 77, 83. However, Davis questions the wisdom of "identity politics"; "Postdeafness." In, H-D. Bauman, ed., Open your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking. (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2008): 314-325; L. Davis, "The End of Identity Politics," in L. Davis (ed.) The Disability Studies Reader. (3rd ed.) (New York: Routledge, 2010): 301-315. This is a matter of considerable debate; see, for example, Tobin Siebers, who writes: "Identity politics remains in my view the most practical course of action by which to address social injustices against minority peoples and to apply the new ideas, narratives and experiences discovered by them to the future of progressive democratic society." In Davis, Disability Studies Reader, p. 321.

44 In both France and the United States, Deaf sports federations have declined to participate in the Paralympics, despite the funding that would provide. See also: H-D. Bauman, "Postscript: Gallaudet Protests of 2006 and the myths of in/exclusion," in Bauman, Open Your Eyes, 327-336; Baynton, "Beyond Culture."

45 Lane, "Constructions of Deafness"; Lane, "Disability"; Lane, "Ethnicity, Ethics."

46 R. Dunbar and T. Skutnabb-Kangas "Forms of Education of Indigenous Children as Crimes Against Humanity?" Expert paper written for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 2008. "It is important to remember that indigenous peoples also include Deaf individuals and communities who use sign languages as their mother tongues" (p. 1). http:// www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/E_C19_2008_7.pdf (accessed 7/22/2010).

47 The Americans with Disabilities Act provides that the widespread perception of disability is itself a handicapping condition. See interpretive guidance for the ADA regulations, page 1-35. The Supreme Court ruled (480 U.S. at 284) that a similar provision was included in the 1973 Rehabilitation Act because "Congress acknowledged that a society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and diseases are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment."

48 Davis, "Postdeafness."

49 G. Anderson, C. Grace, and V, "Black Deaf Adolescents: A Diverse and Underserved Population," Volta Review 93 (1991): 73-86; G. B. Anderson and D. Watson, eds., The Black Deaf Experience: Excellence and Equity. Proceedings of a National Conference March 12-14,1992 (Little Rock: University of Arkansas RRTC, 1992); G. B. Anderson, "Tools for a Wiser, Healthier, Black Deaf Community," Deaf American Monographs. 44 (1994): 1-4; H. Anderson, "Perspectives on Discrimination and Barriers Encountered by Black Deaf Americans," in Anderson and Watson, Black Deaf Experience, 49-51; A. Aramburo, "Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Black Deaf Community," in C. Erting et al. The Deaf Way: Perspectives From the International Conference on Deaf Culture (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1994), 474-482; K. M. Christensen and G. L. Delgado, Multicultural Issues in Deafness (White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1993); College for Continuing Education, Empowerment and Black Deaf Persons Conference Proceedings April 6-7, 1990 (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University, 1992); L. Dunn, "Setting the Pace In Black Deaf America," in G. Olsen, ed., A Kaleidoscope of Deaf America (Silver Spring, Md.: National Association of the Deaf, 1989), 22-23; C. Farrell, "Students Who Are Black and Deaf Say They Face Dual Discrimination," Black Issues in Higher Education. (1989): 14-15; E. Hairston and L. Smith, Black and Deaf in America (Silver Spring, Md.: TJ Publishers, 1983); H. Joyner, From Pity To Pride: Growing Up Deaf in the Old South (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2004); Padden and Humphries, Inside Deaf Culture; C. McCaskill, C. Lucas, R. Bayley, and J. Hill. Hidden Treasure: The History and Structure of Black ASL (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, in press); R. K. Rittenhouse et al., "The Black and Deaf Movements in America Since 1960: Parallelism and an Agenda for the Future," American Annals of the Deaf 136 (1987): 392-400; V. Valentine, "Listening to Deaf Blacks," Emerge. (1996): 56-61; J. Woodward, "Black Southern Signing," Language in Society 5 (1976): 211-218.