Helen Keller is alleged to have once said that “deafness cuts people off from people.” I not only disagree with this statement, I abhor it. This message has grown over time from something that is merely false into a lie that continuously erodes our community with almost unbearable pain, intolerance, and hatred. Deafness does not cut people off from people—people cut people off from people. Or more precisely, the decisions that people make cut them off from each other.

Much has been made of morality throughout the debate over what type of parental choice is “best” for a deaf child. Should his parents have him implanted? Should they expose him to ASL? The consequences for making the wrong choice are potentially dire, so perhaps such an intense focus on morality is to be expected. But any argument regarding what is moral must by definition be predicated upon what is true, so let’s return to Keller’s statement for a moment. “Deafness cuts people off from people.” Why should such a belief be so destructive?

Once we delude ourselves into accepting deafness as the cause of even one negative sociological condition, it becomes that much easier to accept deafness as the cause of all other negative sociological conditions. This is why much educational research of the early 20th century (and decades prior to that) placed such a strong emphasis on the “fact” that deafness caused illiteracy among large numbers of deaf children and adults. Compartively less emphasis was placed on the choices that people were making in regard to communicating with deaf people. It’s also why we often see what started out as an accurate correlation between groups (such as the simple observation that there are large numbers of unemployed/underemployed deaf people in the United States—a true statement) become a faulty cause-effect relationship, with the implication being that deafness itself causes unemployment. In fact such a faulty relationship can become self-perpetuating. When no further explanation is deemed necessary, the implication stands. And because the implication stands, no further explanation is deemed necessary.

Yet we know that these types of statements are not true. If prelingual deafness caused illiteracy there would simply be no prelingually deafened literate people. If deafness caused unemployment, there would be no deaf people with jobs. Thus we’re left with disturbing questions that end up showing us exactly why we avoided asking them in the first place. Which is more likely: My deafness (a physiological condition) refused to hire me; or some potential employer (a person able to make decisions though riddled with fears and prejudices of his own) refused to hire me? Did my deafness spit in my ear when I was ten years old, or did one of the children I attended elementary school with do this? Does my deafness render me unable to fit in; bereft of many social and educational opportunities? Or do other peoples’ reactions to my deafness ultimately have more to do with whether or not I fit in? With whether or not I have access to the same opportunities everyone else has?

We already know the answers to these questions. We just don’t like them.

Many times in my career, I have held my silence when a parent, teacher, or a researcher blamed deafness for whatever negative outcome befell a deaf child. I won’t do that anymore, because I now believe the action to be immoral. It makes no sense to strenuously argue for a parent’s “right to decide in the end” and then turn right around and enable a parent to pretend that his choice wasn’t ever really his choice if the outcome isn’t the one he hoped for. This happens every time we accept deafness itself as a rationalization for failure. “I tried my best,” a parent might argue, “but deafness is a disability.” Or else a school administrator might say: “We based our educational practices upon what we knew about deafness at that time.” Do you notice how both types of statements shift the focus back to deafness itself, and away from the decision that was made in response to deafness?

Does a deaf child fail to acquire fluency in English because his parents made the decision to not expose him to ASL, or because he’s deaf? The answer cannot be the latter, because deafness alone does not lead to a lack of English language acquisition. Every time that we do not point this out, we’re lying. Every time we let a person assume that a negative outcome is the fault of deafness, we’re lying. Deafness is not the true source of the problem. Other people are the source of the problem. If they aren’t, why should A.G. Bell or the NAD bother with advocacy efforts at all? You can’t advocate with deafness itself. You can only advocate with other people. Deafness is not conscious in the way that people are. It has no value—be it negative or positive—other than the value people give to it. It can’t give value to or take value away from itself. It can’t really do anything other than make you deaf. It certainly can’t make you miserable.

Less than a month ago my mother again asked me when I went home to visit if I would consider getting an implant, seeing how well my brother’s implant was working out for him. In her eyes I saw all of the hope that I would like to believe most hearing parents have for their deaf children.

So understandable, but also so sad. What is it, really, that she’s hoping for? In her case, what did my deafness ever isolate me from that an implant is now supposed to fix? I asked her many times over the years to learn to sign. She didn’t, and neither did most of my family. That’s the end of it. Nothing can take that away now or take it back. An implant can’t. Another person berating me for my “unreasonable” expectation that everyone else change for me can’t take it away. Even if I get an implant, even if I someday hear again; even if hearing again is a great, wonderful, and beautiful thing; I’m still going to have to look at my own family and live with the knowledge that when they had the choice to include me by learning to sign, they ultimately chose not to do it. They’re going to have to live with that knowledge too. And there is nothing that A.G. Bell or any cochlear implant specialist in the world can do to make that not true.

Thus I end this series with a message for all parents of deaf children: As someone’s son, as someone’s brother and friend, as a man who will someday be a father himself; I have learned much over the years about forgiveness. I have worked through many of my feelings regarding what deafness has and hasn’t done to me. I have come to develop an understanding of why people make the decisions that they do, and how they justify those decisions years later. I’ve seen the very best examples of human responsibility and accountability. I’ve seen people go to incredible lengths to right the things they came to realize that they once did wrong.

I’ve also seen the very worst of human nature, the very worst of human laziness, and emotional paralysis brought on by fear.

You owe nothing to me but you owe your child everything, because the younger he is, the less capacity he has to make choices for himself. Therefore he must depend upon you to make those choices for him, and his life may very well come to hinge upon the choices you make. So don’t make your decisions based on the hardships you think deafness will cause your child. Make them based on hardships that you think other people—including yourselves—might cause your child, because then you’ll include the consequences of your own actions among that potential list. You’ll include what might someday develop into your own unwillingness to see a mistake you might have made, and to fix it. You’ll include teachers who might say something can’t be done when in reality they aren’t willing to do it. And you’ll include doctors and organizations that may care less about what’s best for your child and more about the illusion that curing deafness will make a dent in humanity’s historical and general difficulty with tolerating anything that is different.

It won’t. So you’ll have to.