There is a journal article published in Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education available online on July 28, 2009. Jane K. Fernandes and Shirley Shultz Myers wrote an article titled, “Inclusive Deaf Studies: Barriers and Pathways”.

Myers and Fernandes also wrote an companion journal article, “Deaf Studies: A Critique of the Predominant U.S. Theoretical Direction” along with the article mentioned above.

Here is the abstract from Inclusive Deaf Studies: Barriers and Pathways.

Joining scholars signaling the need for new directions in Deaf Studies, the authors recommend a more expansive, nuanced, and interdisciplinary approach that encompasses the many ways deaf people live today. Rather than destroy Deaf culture, this approach is the only realistic way to allow it and Deaf Studies to survive. Deaf Studies today continues the focus of founding scholarship on native White American Sign Language users, now head of a powerful hierarchy through which they receive privileged status at the expense of deaf people with different language backgrounds and races or ethnicities. This marginalization is unsustainable and impedes knowledge. A companion article (this issue), “Deaf Studies: A Critique of the Predominant U.S. Theoretical Direction,” analyzes this reactive stance that is oriented by a focus on audism built on the concepts of phonocentrism and colonialism.

This article was submitted first on November 14, 2008, and was revised on April 27, 2009. The article was accepted on June 11, 2009.

If you are interested to read the full journal article, you may go to the website and purchase the full article for $22.00 dollars (one day access only), and you can download the PDF file. Click this link here.

I am going to share some of the excerpts from the article.

“the two articles reveal the predominant direction in Deaf Studies and in the core White Deaf community as reactive toward changing historical conditions and the variety of deaf lives today.”

“What remains in the shadows is the fact that the pride of ASL users has evolved into a powerful hierarchy through which native White ASL users and those born into Deaf culture receive privileged status at the expense of other deaf people.”

“Audism and a U.S. version of Deafhood are particular strategies to maintain a core Deaf culture.”

“The core White Deaf community might expect conformity to its standard and place themselves at the head of a hierarchy of a language and cultural group they claim is for all deaf people.”

“Whether Deafhood is an open process resulting in a variety of ways to be deaf or in a single outcome has confused many. However, two examples make apparent this confusion in the U.S. version of Deafhood. The first one makes clear issues of race and exclusion intertwining with Deafhood in the 2006 positions of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) board on Deafhood and diversity. The second one reveals division and confusion that came to the fore in 2008 concerning a U.S. organization called Deaf Bilingual Coalition (DBC).”

“One organization with a number of members also presenting on Deafhood (Sewell, 2008) in the United States is DBC (2008). Mostly over the summer of 2008, reports in blogs and vlogs of communications from and within DBC indicate tense cultural processes at work that explain the fracturing of the coalition and eventual collapse. (Recently, some members of this group have created another organization, Audism Free America.) “

“in the Milwaukee article, a DBC spokeperson [sic] indicates there is more to DBC than the promotion of ASL alone: “The two groups will bring their competing agendas to Milwaukee in separate national conferences this week: one that views cochlear implants and auditory-based therapies as a way to give children access to the wider world; and the other that sees them as unnecessary and an affront to who deaf people are as individuals… . We’re concerned about the audism behind the implants—this belief that hearing is more advantageous than being deaf. It’s the same as racism,” she said… . “You’re only learning how to speak, to regurgitate the words, and only a small percentage of deaf people are successful at that..”

(The link to Milwaukee article is: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel : AG Bell and deaf coalition conferences differ on cochlear implants )

Amy Cohen Efron summarizes:

It is important that we keep abreast of all of the journal articles written about our Deaf history, and sometimes they only can present one perspective. We do need several articles to bring in different perspectives because most scholars do rely on journal articles than blogs or vlogs available online.

Best,
Amy Cohen Efron