ASL and Cultural Racism

The greatest education comes from action.

The greatest action is the struggle for justice.

—Myles Hortin

 

In the distant past, gaining what is now called cultural racism was a determination by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of a telephone, with a particularly strong belief that the eugenics movement was necessary to erase deaf people.  Some of his eugenics colleagues had called for legislation outlawing intermarriage by deaf people, but Bell rejected such a ban as impractical. Instead he proposed the following steps:

1.  Determine the causes that promote intermarriage among the deaf; and 
2. remove them. 

The strategies that Bell and today's benevolent folks have continued to seek to remove are American Sign Language (ASL), deaf teachers, and residential schools. 
Bell's solution was the creation of special day schools taught by hearing teachers who would enforce a ban on sign language.  Bell even said about deaf children:

We should try ourselves to forget that they are deaf. We should teach them to forget that they are deaf.

Alexander Graham Bell was responsible for launching the world's worst language bigotry.  It has been my professional experience that most people today are rather apprehensive of learning about banning American Sign Language (ASL) and that they approach it with reluctance and even dread.

The following case study provides a better sense of the complexity with which cultural racism generates for many years.  It is partially quoted from the film, The Preservation of the Sign Language by George W. Veditz, beginning at 5:00/14:40 of the video below.

We American deaf are now facing bad times for our schools. False prophets are now appearing, announcing to the public that our American means of teaching the deaf are all wrong. These men have tried to educate the public and make them believe that the oral method is really the one best means of educating the deaf. But we American deaf know, the French deaf know, the German deaf know that in truth, the oral method is the worst. A new race of pharaohs that knew not Joseph is taking over the land and many of our American schools. They do not understand signs for they cannot sign. They proclaim that signs are worthless and of no help to the deaf. Enemies of the sign language, they are enemies of the true welfare of the deaf. We must use our films to pass on the beauty of the signs we have now. As long as we have deaf people on earth, we will have signs. And as long as we have our films, we can preserve signs in their old purity. It is my hope that we will all love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest gift God has given to deaf people.

--George W. Veditz, 1913, The Preservation of the Sign Language.

(Translated from ASL by Carol Padden and Eric Malzkuhn

George Veditz, 1913