I have been thinking on this for awhile, and talked with a few high placed deafies online on this subject – to get their feedback and advice. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
How are we supposed to deal with ourselves if we want to stay out of the ‘deaf ghetto’? This means making a choice to enter a profession that does not involve the deaf community. This includes being a deaf teacher of deaf students, couselor for the deaf, coaching, etc.. you get the picture.
However.. I talked to a professional who deals with both the deaf and hearing professional worlds and to quote her (deaf herself) ‘A deaf professional in a deaf setting has to work twice as hard to prove themselves that they are capable of their jobs.’ There’s a lot of truth in that. But I expect the same would likely be appliable to the hearing as well.
There is a strong link between having confidence in oneself as a deaf person and the work place or in a professional setting. That confidence can be shattered or severely displaced when the deaf professional decides to leave his ’safety net’ and move into a hearing workplace. This means that the deaf person has to work twice as hard to prove themselves capable not only to themselves, but to their hearing co-workers too. And there is still the work to overcome the attitudes of SHP (to quote Amy Cohen Efron; ’stupid hearing people’) who view them as ‘deaf’ first before anything else.
In another instance, I talked with a deaf woman who is trained as a social worker and works as an advocate for her deaf community where she lives. She stated that there is a geniune lack of confidence among many of the older deafies (40’s and on up) in the work place because of ‘old fears’ that had been planted early in our lifes.
I can see where this can happen – even with a well – educated deafie. How many job ads do you see in the papers and online that required skills in communication within a company AND with the public? How many of them require the use of a telephone?
While it’s true that we have the ADA law and the technology which surpasses the use of a TTY machine, we still do have to use them to make a contact with a company – only to run into a wall that makes it clear they’re still in the dark ages (hanging up on relay calls, etc)
But guess what? She said that a part of the problem came from Gallaudet University. True Biz! She had a couple of clients who’d had a bad time in their work place (hearing) because of their English level. Because of this, it has completely destroyed their confidence to make it in the hearing world – and yet, Gallaudet allowed them to graduate on the foundation of ‘false hope’ without looking into their English skills.
Something’s wrong there.
It’s also wrong for us to feel deep down questioning ourselves if we really can do it in spite of communication issues and deafness. We shouldn’t have to deal with those feelings when we’re have enough on our plates not only try to convince them to hire us, but to prove it to them as well.
She also said – and I agree – that a large part of the confidence problem stems from long standing oppression. Many of us had been ‘conditioned’ to think in those terms “I can’t” via social conditioning, parental opinion, etc. Those are the internal struggles many deafies deal with. Sure.. it’s easy to utter the brave words that we can do anything (but hear) – however deep down inside of ourselves, we wonder. And there’s the issue of external struggles that causes a deaf professional to feel this way too, due to the hearing ‘watching out for them’, ‘helping’ and being patronizing.
We all need a sense of belonging in any work place we find ourselves in, a place where we can be safe and be confident.
This is an excellent, thought-provoking article — thanks for posting it! I’d been wondering about the social conditioning you mentioned. There’s an author and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania — Dr. Martin Seligman — who coined the phrase “learned helplessness” when he inadvertently discovered this phenomenon during one of his research projects. I really do believe this is an issue in the deaf community and many of us need to break through self-imposed glass ceilings. It’s like we’re programmed to limit ourselves. This is fascinating stuff, thanks again for bringing it up.
That is good. My 40+ year old husband is nervous about asking for interpreters for the business meetings, opting for notes instead. I told him that he could ask and ADA required that the business provided the interpreters, and he scoffed at me, saying yeah, being deaf meant money for business… loss of money or if tax write off, money gained. So he won’t ask for interpreters… learned helplessness, imposed on him from his deaf mother, embarrassed to ask for more. Sad, isn’t it?
I am very curious about the deaf who have been mainstreamed. Do they have the same problem? The residential schools, and I imagine, Gallaudet too, have a way of overly protecting their proteges.
I noticed while I was still working that the deaf students who were brought up mainstreaming and who came to us late to prepare for college, had a great deal more self confidence than our residential school students. The difference was extremely obvious. The mainstreamers all had “street smarts” (for lack of a better word).
Your subject here is terribly interesting and I would love to hear some follow up on it!
Lantana
I don’t know. As a mainstreamed deafie, I can say I’ve worked in the hearing world all my life — in fact at 40 yrs of age, I’m finally learning about the deaf world. I have done with notes, email, IM. There’s many jobs out there that do not require telephone calling, that sort of thing.
However, I’m absolutely fascinated with the complexity of deaf education, and feel very strongly there should be more deaf teaching deaf, of which there seems to be relatively little going on (primarily because of isolating deaf children in mainstreamed schools). So I could actually be going the other way.
I don’t know if that adds any more info to your questions or not.
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Did you mean to say “A deaf professional in a hearing setting…” not “A deaf professional in a deaf setting…”?
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