With a lot of people speaking out on so many issues within the last few months, more so during the month that just ended yesterday. 2017 will be a hell raising year.
The use of speak out is a valuable tool, let me add my version…
Keep the candle lighted!
via Discover Challenge: Speak Out
Personal photo; Instagram
I voted. Yep, I did. I voted in both parties.
I am a moderate. Each party has its own values and perspectives. I can get and support fiscal responsibility and I also see the importance of hiring qualified people with disabilities.
This is an election that I have never thought to fear the outcome…either way.
Fear for myself, a white woman who is deaf and a bilingual speaker (American Sign Language and English). Fear for my husband, while a white male, is also a deaf person of second generation and a bilingual.
Fear for my bilingual children, who will take upon themselves the responsibility and burdens that we leave with them after our decisions. Our decisions as Americans through election of representatives.
I voted.
I shared my thoughts in person or on social media. I respected others’ thoughts and I tried to understand from their perspective. This is where we are stumped. We all have perspectives; however, our life’s journey are not the same way. We will share some same qualities that provide similar perspectives, yet be on polar opposites because of our personal experiences.
I woke up Wednesday morning as it was any other day, but creeping within my thoughts was the outcome of the election. Not only the Presidential race, also the Congress and my lovely State of Indiana. Turns out…America bleeds Red.
I spent the day distracted, checking Facebook and news often, to get the pulse of the nation, at least amongst friends and family. I look around my classroom and the hallways and wonder what they think of me now. Now that the country bleeds red, Republican red – not human red.
Now it is the second day after the election and news are not looking good. Trump finds out that the Congress may even block his actions. I said it before and I will say it again, it is not only the Presidential race we should have been watching, but the Congressional races. There are stories of parents who had to pick up their kids earlier in the day because white kids decided to tell the black kids that they should not be here or tell the Latinx that they will be going home.
So when would it be our turn? Yes I ask that because recently I presented at
TEDxValparaisoUniversity about being a part of each other’s communities while retaining our own values, languages and cultures, mutual respect. More people have communicated with simple THANK-YOUs when we go elsewhere and it is appreciated. Now I have to look over my shoulder and wonder… guess what, it already came.
The posting you see to the right was posted by someone who I know and respect and was shared by a friend on Facebook. The irony in this is the person who was yelled at is a hearing person whose parents are deaf. An ally and a dear friend of our deaf community and this is what she gets.
It has arrived. I voted.
As a white woman who is deaf and bilingual, my life and those whose threads go through me connecting, the fear is real. My stomach still hurts and no, it is not ulcers…yet.
At least America agrees with this:
Resources: http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/11/10/white-christians-who-voted-for-donald-trump-fix-this-now/
Good News: http://www.cracked.com/blog/dont-panic/
http://gothamist.com/2016/11/10/subway_therapy_messages.php#photo-1
Daily Post Connection Themes: Smoke, Banned, Transformed, Urgent, Trust, Test.
The last week in September is International Deaf Awareness Week and a new hashtag came up: #hearingprivilege. Naturally, people reacted. The way of the world today is to react as quick as you can and regret your thoughts later.
Most deaf people are not complaining, just showing a way of life that we cherish and at the same time can be negative by outsiders’ perspectives. People think we’re complaining because life is not fair. Hon’, we all know life ain’t fair most of the time. That is why it is a journey that we travel throughout our life.
That is why it is okay to agree to disagree; however, I digress. If one disagrees on basis of not understanding why they disagree, then we cannot agree to disagree. The purpose of #hearingprivilege is to enlighten people about the struggles we go through daily. Many people will have never realized this behavior because they did not have the opportunity to be aware of it.
Examples of the hashtag available on Facebook and Twitter:
#HearingPrivilege is never having my intelligence or work ability questioned based on my language modality. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hearing-privilege_us_57ebd4c5e4b024a52d2bb142?section=women& This article has more hashtags.
or #hearingprivilege is never having to hear the words, “Never mind”, or “I will tell you later” during family dinners and conversations.
This is an opportunity to personally analyze the response we see and react to when we see words that challenge us on a daily or frequent basis. This opportunity I presented to my students with varied responses, average result would be opening of the minds, yet there are some responses where “Hearing Privilege” does NOT exist. Hon’, this is the real world – not the ‘hearing’ world – the REAL world. Privilege exists and will always exist. How we respond to the privilege is what will gain the most in the path to enlightenment.
Sorry, if one does NOT believe in privilege, the ability to be open about the paths that the world turns on will be a narrow one. Even, I as a deaf person, took the time to analyze what #hearingprivilege means because my experience as a deaf person is not always the same as the other deaf person. I will be grateful for those opportunities because of parents who were opening their world to include their children’s worlds. That was why I try to add #deafgain, which is how deaf people contribute to the world through our differences to positively enhance the real world, benefitting others who are not deaf or sign language users.
Sometimes it is hard to accept that privilege and even harder to change, remember it is better to have tried than never tried. Imagine how many new relationships one will have with a diverse group, just because one began to understand and will be able to agree to disagree.
Below is a good video of an explanation regarding #hearingprivilege.
Snapped on iPhone6 and edited/posted to Instagram a month ago. Trees have always fascinated me because of their strength and ability to encompass different parts of the physical world such as roots for underground, branches and leaves reaching to the sky and the trunk being the balance between both. Trees among many are our lifeblood to the world. Without them, we would not exist.
A life’s journey begins in conception. The end of the journey is unknown.
Love, live, learn, teach and embrace your journey.
Today I find it frustrating that people can twist the definition of a movement or a word to fit their own idealistic framework without truly understanding the heart, purpose and drive of the people at the core of the meaning of life.
Do all lives matter – yes; however, lives should not be weighted against who is popular, who is in the majority or because the situation deems it should be.
If Black Lives don’t Matter, when does All Lives Matter? Why should we shut down Black 
folks because we value our lives more than they value theirs. This is total bullshit. Absolutely against the biological and chemical structure of our human beings. It strikes a stake into the very heart of the world we live on. This throws chaos out of balance with no balance in sight.
If Deaf Lives don’t Matter, when does Hearing Lives Matter? One cannot exist without the other, nor can it exist without the underlying biological definition that defines us as humans. Telling us that Sign Language doesn’t Matter is like telling yourselves that your Spoken Language doesn’t Matter. That is what Ms. Meredith Sugar tells people in America.
When this picture surfaced, it is like telling me that Black Lives don’t value Military Lives despite the history of discrimination and slavery.
Really?! Whomever did this (doesn’t matter what color), you would think it was easy to say “Well, ya know military lives don’t matter. Maybe they fought in Civil War, World Wars I and II all the way up to the ISIS situation, but ya know what, military folks, they don’t matter.”
So does any life on this damn beautiful, minuscule, living and breathing world matter? Do All Sea Lives Matter? Do All Trees Matter? Do All Children Matter? Do Australian Aboriginal Matter? Do All Global Lives Matter? Does a single orchid matter? Yes, hell yes they do.
Yet… because we disregard those who are equally important to us as a race or as a species living on this fragile world, no lives truly ever matter to us.
So let me end with a bit of ranting.
When will you shut the fuck up, whining about yourselves and start listening with your eyes, ears, hands, feet well every damn part of you to those who are opposite of you. There would be a damn whole lot you could learn on your journey to ‘enlightenment’.
Argh!
Darkness ascends.
Sounds are silent.
Eyes adjust no better.
Heart beats quick.
Brain scrambles in loss.
A deep breath.
Another breath.
Breathe deeply.
Reach out.
Spread self.
Hands.
Reach out.
Move hands.
Hands and Wall meet.
Feet knows Ground.
Move with faith.
Feel the darkness.
Own it.
What is choice when it is limited?
Many of us as parents make choices for our kids every day. We feed them oatmeal for breakfast instead of cookies because we know it is what will start their day in the best way. We choose to clothe them when we go to the grocery store because if not…well, we just do. We choose to send them to school every day because we know it is what they need to be educated and to provide an intellectual foundation for their future.
However, when a Deaf child is born parents do not have the choice to know the Deaf community by the medical staff at the hospital. Instead, we are cattle prodded to the audiologist and ENT surgeon who present us with options on the types of hearing aids we want to purchase. The medical staff does not provide us as parents the choice to speak to a Deaf person…
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2016 – it is and always going to be a way to dispose human beings, just because they happen to be different from the mainstream or the majority.
Records for more than two or three thousand years talk about how babies and children would be abandoned because they happen to be different – the most obvious are the physical differences and the least obvious would be the sensory differences; nonetheless, de nada baby be gone!
There will be cultures who cherished their people who were different; giving them status equivalent to an elder or medicine man/woman. Those cultures understood what it means to be spiritually connected; a lesser chance for the disposal of such quality of being.
It is unfortunate that after such a long history, we – the different, the despised, the minority – are still disposable. The video below describes the impact of homelessness and how we regard it as individuals and as a global society.
I have to be honest here – I was ready to disregard the video until ‘disposable human’ came into a conversation. It hit me. I am a disposable deaf human being according to the medical profession. I am a disposable bilingual human being according to White America (and so it happens, I am white). I am a disposable female human being despite outnumbering males and so on. I am entirely disposable.
A disposable human being that under all this – I bleed as red as anyone on this world just as the disposable homeless bleeds red on the street.
All of us have layers. You. Me. Yes.
The complicated layers, countless. The simple layers, countless. What about those layers in between? Still countless.
Neat types of layers? Nah. How we rip those layers off depends on how we perceive the sense of self. Journeys taken can build layers or take them off.
One could rip the layer off like one would rip a bandaid off – the quick the pain is the quicker it goes away. Peel the bandaid and suffer the pain – indefinitely or at least until the bandaid is off.
How we perceive our layers within self can be painful so you can either ignore or delve into yourself. We almost never do things halfway – most likely going to either extreme.
We can reframe our layers until the truth is hidden away or it becomes a glaring light, putting one to shame in this world we live in today – either way. We can move our layers around, whether it is intellectual, cultural, linguistically, racially or the like; throughout all that, do we take the time to really reflect on how we present ourselves or choose the layers to cover ourselves to people?
I wonder if most people use layers to place their own fears into shadows. I know I do. I struggle with the sense of my self’s layers, what do they mean? How do they reflect the multi-chapter aspect of my own personal book? Does it reflect how much one does not understand about something and their reaction to the concept?
I had a family friend’s daughter announce that the family would be focusing 110% on their child getting an cochlear implant. This was like early 2000’s. Now the idea of cochlear implants was not new nor the controversy with the idea of such; however, this was someone I knew most of my life and this straightforward news brought a shock to me and some friends of ours and our reaction was not too great. Afterwards, this person just disappeared. At the same time, I had to turn inward to reflect on the reason why I reacted this way, after all we shared a common bond, the deaf community.
After reading the story above, if you wonder if my response was towards technology, my initial response was regarding technology. This is where I had to peel a layer away, to ask myself if it was truly technology that I was reacting to, after all I wore hearing aids. It was a long retrospective reflection. Technology is a tool and rightfully so. Technology is manipulated by our own selves.
So then what? As a human, it was language, communication, social and community that me responding in a negative way. In a way, this person was telling me that the upbringing they went through their entire life was a farce or a negative aspect, a type of upbringing I had, despite having hearing parents myself. Technology was one layer, the rest came up when I reframed how I used technology as a deaf person.
Do we build our own layers or do we have others build those layers upon us? When I think of this, I think of a black person wanting to rip their blackness off themselves so they can pose as a white person because society deems it acceptable. The problem with society is that the concept of layers are multiple and will follow the whims of society, suppressing so many layers that truly make us human.
Ummm…
https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FNowThisNews%2Fvideos%2F1098626593560797%2F&show_text=1&width=560