In a sense, Dr. Jane K. Fernandes was right. To paraphrase what she told the Washington Post, she just happened to be the woman standing next to the volcano when it erupted.

A volcano erupts when pressure builds up in its recesses. The pressure causes magma–molten rock–to force its way to the surface. Eruptions can be caused by gas bubbles from chemical processes, or by more magma crashing the house party from deeper inside the earth. The magma in the volcano chamber is just waiting for a little incentive to blow. In this case, the incentive—unfortunately—was Dr. Fernandes’ selection as the next president of Gallaudet University.

This eruption happened in the middle of a cultural earthquake. Postcolonial theory recently started to trickle down from academia and influence how people inside the deaf community understood themselves. Theories of oppression and marginalization are beginning to seep into the deaf community’s collective consciousness. Basically, words such as “deafhood” and “audism” escaped from academic discourse and found their way to the deaf club.

Now, deaf people are angry. We finally understand just how much the world does not want to make room for us.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law by President George H. Bush in 1990, promised a world where deaf people had equal access. In the post-ADA and post-Deaf President Now era, we have bitterly come to realize that the famous words said by Dr. I. King Jordan, first deaf president of Gallaudet University, “Deaf people can do anything but hear” were a lie. It’s not his fault. It was a hopeful lie. He believed it…and we desperately wanted to believe him.

We wanted to believe that after DPN and ADA, the world understood, and would make room for us.

In April 2006, sixteen years after ADA was signed into law, a doctor refused me service because he did not want to pay for an interpreter. In May 2006, ignorant hearing people called in to a NPR show celebrating the legacy of Dr. Jordan to complain about the high cost of interpreting services. Deaf people died in Hurricane Katrina because emergency communications broadcasts were not closed-captioned. It’s over a year later. They’re still not closed-captioned.

Last year, I met a woman who worked for the Human Rights Campaign—an organization that works for gay, bisexual and lesbian equality and has in their mission statement, HRC strives to end discrimination…and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all. In an attempt to connect with me (or more likely, to pick me up, it was a gay bar), she grasped at the only deaf connection she had. She told me that the HRC had a deaf intern working there who was “really good.” She then added, “But he wasn’t considered for a permanent job.” I asked her why, and she said, “He just didn’t fit in.” When I pressed her further, she admitted that it was just too difficult to communicate with him.

The little things. It’s the little things.

My humanity is taken away from me when people dismiss me in tiny little ways. It’s unbelievable…the frustration I feel when my flight has been moved to another gate and the gate agent won’t take the time to write down where I should go, just waving me off as someone else steps up to take my space in the line. The rage I feel when the person behind the counter gives me a look, like I’m stupid, after I ask for a pen. The helplessness I feel when a cab slows down, and then speeds off when I proffer paper with the destination written on it. The words I want to shout at the people who have mistreated me but don’t because I refuse to give anyone an opportunity to look at me as less than human because my speech is not clear and sounds different.

What I hate the most though, is when someone has more power than I do because she can hear and talk. She can barely read or write but that doesn’t matter, right? She can talk. And talk, she does, for me, as I depend on a sign language interpreter. I must grit my teeth as her voice says, “We are giving Board of Trustees evil eye,” when I actually signed, “We are going to closely monitor the Board of Trustees.” (This didn’t actually happen to me but I did see this on the news recently, and who knows how many more misunderstandings have happened since interpreting became a profession) It’s always a crapshoot, waiting to see who shows up to interpret for you.

To hearing people who don’t use sign language, I am nothing without that voice. There is an empty space where my thoughts and feelings should be. They can project whatever they want onto that space, and they do.

Put together countless dehumanizing little things like this happening and a group that has just had its consciousness raised, you get a volcano. It is terrible, what happened to the woman standing next to the volcano, but the anger that burnt her to a crisp is real. It wasn’t identity politics. It was many and many lifetimes of not having a voice because, who’s going to pay for that voice? And even then, there’s no guarantee that voice’s going to say what you really mean.

That, my friends, is why the signing deaf community united against Dr. Fernandes.

—

© Copyrighted material. This article cannot be copied, reproduced or redistributed without the express written consent of the author. As with every blog on this website, this blog does not reflect the opinion of DeafDC.com.