Oppression and Passivity
(this is a long post, but definitely worth reading completely cuz it does explain why there is passivity in the deaf community. e)
This is in response to a Frustrated Teacher: OSDÂ
It’s a vicous circle, isn’t it?
Not to be a hypocrite, let me be the first to admit that I’m not a current member of the NAD. I let my membership laspe sometime after the Starving for Access Protest. Back then Andrew Lange was the president and The Tactile Mind Weekly was still up and running. During a couple of issues a huge debate flared up over what the NAD was and wasn’t doing (I think this was either right before or right after Starving for Access… I can’t remember for sure). Mr. Lange wrote in a long letter saying basically that we all have to go to this or that meeting or whatever and get the issue on the table. Generally he seemed to mean that we had to work the issue through the system that the NAD recognized, or at least that’s the impression I got. And that turned me off. A few of our readers wrote in to say–in so many decidedly uncivil words–that they felt turned off, too.
And that’s not so hard to understand, is it? After all, the political temperature of the Deaf Community these days is a lot like Global Warming. It’s not just “noticeably hotter,” as the media would have us believe (about Global Warming, not Deaf Community Politics). It’s… I don’t know. It’s scarier, isn’t it? If Starving for Access and the recent Mississippi uprising can be compared to those few recent 75+ to 80 degree days that we’ve been having in the middle of January out here in DC, then what is UFG comparable to? Hurricane Katrina? In any case you’re left with a new appreciation not only for not only what the environment can do to to you personally (because the destruction of the city you live in at least kind of personally involves you, don’t you think?), but also what the community can do to you.
And it’s scary if there’s a perception out there that political organizations (for us the NAD, for Global Warming, the Bush Administration) aren’t moving quickly enough. You’re sitting there thinking… damn, in another twenty years everything that hasn’t sunk back into the ocean is going to be on fire! Meanwhile the government is saying you can help by switching over to a more efficient lightbulb. Go figure.
But you know what? About a month ago I had the privilige of having lunch with Nanch Bloch, the current president of the NAD. And we discussed pretty much these same topics (I also threw in the topic of my rising cholesterol, which is why I couldn’t order a cheeseburger, but that’s neither here nor there).Â
Nancy said something interesting. It stayed with me ever since, and I hope she won’t mind if I paraphrase it here: “As if constantly fighting for our civil rights means we aren’t doing anything. As if constantly fighting to keep television programs captioned isn’t doing anything.”
She was frustrated–I could tell. And this was only a few weeks after the BOT made its decision on JK. Everybody’s nerves were frazzled. I mean, it’d be kind of hard to argue that the NAD didn’t step up in UFG. They did. They did in the midst of plenty of voices and letters–some civil and some not–telling them to stay out of it. Maybe it wasn’t JK’s actual removal that was Hurricane Katrina… it was 134 students being arrested that made things too hot for everyone. When things get that bad real leaders step up. That’s why, going back to the Global Warming comparison, our state and even (actually, mostly) our city governments are doing far more to reverse the problem than our Federal Government is.
I for one was glad that the NAD did what it did in UFG. They made a believer out of me and my membership is gonna be renewed in short order, trust me on that. But you know what? How much good is it gonna do? Because we’re still a community of people who have been trained to equate standing up for ourselves with inappropriateness and incivility. We’re still a community of people who, not so long ago, had almost completely surrendered to widespread apathy. And what’s more we’re still stuck in it–that’s why those Mississippi students fought largely on their own–that’s why there aren’t angry lines of protesters outside of the MN police station that employs the officers who beat up Doug Bahl. That’s why our schools are being closed on the whims of the largely hearing–yes, still largely hearing–administrators who run them (in fact let me trot back to rub that in your faces one more time… still largely hearing in a post-DPN world where deaf people can supposedly “do anything except hear”… what do you make of that?).Â
And that’s what else? Just yesterday some guy came on the Deaf DC blog complaining about how everyone was just complaining. His example was one of the writers who bitched about the growing impossibility of trying to do something as simple as ordering a pizza through the Relay. A few days earlier, some writer in The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote about how weird it was that the community should react with such vehemence to the mere placing of an upper-level administrator. Jesus, it seems that, between the guy who was bitching about people who were bitching about the difficulties of ordering pizzas and the CHE writer who was bitching about the community’s bitching about JKF, it seems that there’s no room whatsoever for any of us to be mad about anything at all. Isn’t that weird? For every person out there who is angry about what happened to Muholland, there’s the equal and opposite reaction of all of those who would write in to say “Good God, get over it already! People are fired all the time! That’s the way the world works! Even hearing people have a hard time ordering pizzas! Even hearing people get fired! Not everything is audism! Grow up and deal with it!”
Why Jane Mulholland can be let go from OSD, and what kind of resistance can we as a community raise to that decision? I see scattered outrage… I see angry letters being written… but what else?Â
The result? Widespread confusion. Why doesn’t the NAD have a couple hundred thousand more members? Same answer–widespread confusion. The widespread efficiency of internalized oppression.Â
I wrote a reply to that guy on Deaf DC and said: “Hey, apply that argument to Native Americans. What would you say? Stop bitching so much about people grabbing up your land? Because it happens all over the world–you aren’t the first people to be booted out of their homes by colonizers? Grow up already and deal with it? “Yeah, I just bet that’s the kind of colonized people our colonizers wish we would be… people who are busy kicking our own asses (out of a sense of worthlessness that they beat into us in the first place) that we can’t pull ourselves together long enough to start kicking theirs.
And that, my friend, is the vicious circle. How much more effective could the NAD be if it had ten thousand more highly pissed off members unwilling to put up with this shit anymore? And yet it doesn’t have them, because the first reaction you see to righteous and justified anger is “Grow up! Be civil! Be patient!”
 Do me a favor. Go and ask those kids in Mississippi if they want you to be patient
Go ask Jane Mulholland.
Chris Heuer
Reprinted with permission by the author
www.gallynet.org
Commentary: This makes a lot of sense to me. The questions still beckon to us:  How can we help the OSD? What can we do to break the vicious cycle and empower ourselves? Not only how can we break the apathy and become proactive, but also help our deaf leaders become proactive, too?
If one can tolerate the writings, many of the posts at GallyNet are thought-provoking. It’s definitely worth checking that listserv.
email contact: mishkazena@aol.com
(this is a long post, but definitely worth reading completely cuz it does explain why there is passivity in the deaf community. e)
This is in response to a Frustrated Teacher: OSDÂ
It’s a vicous circle, isn’t it?
Not to be a hypocrite, let me be the first to admit that I’m not a current member of the NAD. I let my membership laspe sometime after the Starving for Access Protest. Back then Andrew Lange was the president and The Tactile Mind Weekly was still up and running. During a couple of issues a huge debate flared up over what the NAD was and wasn’t doing (I think this was either right before or right after Starving for Access… I can’t remember for sure). Mr. Lange wrote in a long letter saying basically that we all have to go to this or that meeting or whatever and get the issue on the table. Generally he seemed to mean that we had to work the issue through the system that the NAD recognized, or at least that’s the impression I got. And that turned me off. A few of our readers wrote in to say–in so many decidedly uncivil words–that they felt turned off, too.
And that’s not so hard to understand, is it? After all, the political temperature of the Deaf Community these days is a lot like Global Warming. It’s not just “noticeably hotter,” as the media would have us believe (about Global Warming, not Deaf Community Politics). It’s… I don’t know. It’s scarier, isn’t it? If Starving for Access and the recent Mississippi uprising can be compared to those few recent 75+ to 80 degree days that we’ve been having in the middle of January out here in DC, then what is UFG comparable to? Hurricane Katrina? In any case you’re left with a new appreciation not only for not only what the environment can do to to you personally (because the destruction of the city you live in at least kind of personally involves you, don’t you think?), but also what the community can do to you.
And it’s scary if there’s a perception out there that political organizations (for us the NAD, for Global Warming, the Bush Administration) aren’t moving quickly enough. You’re sitting there thinking… damn, in another twenty years everything that hasn’t sunk back into the ocean is going to be on fire! Meanwhile the government is saying you can help by switching over to a more efficient lightbulb. Go figure.
But you know what? About a month ago I had the privilige of having lunch with Nanch Bloch, the current president of the NAD. And we discussed pretty much these same topics (I also threw in the topic of my rising cholesterol, which is why I couldn’t order a cheeseburger, but that’s neither here nor there).Â
Nancy said something interesting. It stayed with me ever since, and I hope she won’t mind if I paraphrase it here: “As if constantly fighting for our civil rights means we aren’t doing anything. As if constantly fighting to keep television programs captioned isn’t doing anything.”
She was frustrated–I could tell. And this was only a few weeks after the BOT made its decision on JK. Everybody’s nerves were frazzled. I mean, it’d be kind of hard to argue that the NAD didn’t step up in UFG. They did. They did in the midst of plenty of voices and letters–some civil and some not–telling them to stay out of it. Maybe it wasn’t JK’s actual removal that was Hurricane Katrina… it was 134 students being arrested that made things too hot for everyone. When things get that bad real leaders step up. That’s why, going back to the Global Warming comparison, our state and even (actually, mostly) our city governments are doing far more to reverse the problem than our Federal Government is.
I for one was glad that the NAD did what it did in UFG. They made a believer out of me and my membership is gonna be renewed in short order, trust me on that. But you know what? How much good is it gonna do? Because we’re still a community of people who have been trained to equate standing up for ourselves with inappropriateness and incivility. We’re still a community of people who, not so long ago, had almost completely surrendered to widespread apathy. And what’s more we’re still stuck in it–that’s why those Mississippi students fought largely on their own–that’s why there aren’t angry lines of protesters outside of the MN police station that employs the officers who beat up Doug Bahl. That’s why our schools are being closed on the whims of the largely hearing–yes, still largely hearing–administrators who run them (in fact let me trot back to rub that in your faces one more time… still largely hearing in a post-DPN world where deaf people can supposedly “do anything except hear”… what do you make of that?).Â
And that’s what else? Just yesterday some guy came on the Deaf DC blog complaining about how everyone was just complaining. His example was one of the writers who bitched about the growing impossibility of trying to do something as simple as ordering a pizza through the Relay. A few days earlier, some writer in The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote about how weird it was that the community should react with such vehemence to the mere placing of an upper-level administrator. Jesus, it seems that, between the guy who was bitching about people who were bitching about the difficulties of ordering pizzas and the CHE writer who was bitching about the community’s bitching about JKF, it seems that there’s no room whatsoever for any of us to be mad about anything at all. Isn’t that weird? For every person out there who is angry about what happened to Muholland, there’s the equal and opposite reaction of all of those who would write in to say “Good God, get over it already! People are fired all the time! That’s the way the world works! Even hearing people have a hard time ordering pizzas! Even hearing people get fired! Not everything is audism! Grow up and deal with it!”
Why Jane Mulholland can be let go from OSD, and what kind of resistance can we as a community raise to that decision? I see scattered outrage… I see angry letters being written… but what else?Â
The result? Widespread confusion. Why doesn’t the NAD have a couple hundred thousand more members? Same answer–widespread confusion. The widespread efficiency of internalized oppression.Â
I wrote a reply to that guy on Deaf DC and said: “Hey, apply that argument to Native Americans. What would you say? Stop bitching so much about people grabbing up your land? Because it happens all over the world–you aren’t the first people to be booted out of their homes by colonizers? Grow up already and deal with it? “Yeah, I just bet that’s the kind of colonized people our colonizers wish we would be… people who are busy kicking our own asses (out of a sense of worthlessness that they beat into us in the first place) that we can’t pull ourselves together long enough to start kicking theirs.
And that, my friend, is the vicious circle. How much more effective could the NAD be if it had ten thousand more highly pissed off members unwilling to put up with this shit anymore? And yet it doesn’t have them, because the first reaction you see to righteous and justified anger is “Grow up! Be civil! Be patient!”
 Do me a favor. Go and ask those kids in Mississippi if they want you to be patient
Go ask Jane Mulholland.
Chris Heuer
Reprinted with permission by the author
www.gallynet.org
Commentary: This makes a lot of sense to me. The questions still beckon to us:  How can we help the OSD? What can we do to break the vicious cycle and empower ourselves? Not only how can we break the apathy and become proactive, but also help our deaf leaders become proactive, too?
If one can tolerate the writings, many of the posts at GallyNet are thought-provoking. It’s definitely worth checking that listserv.
email contact: mishkazena@aol.com
January 11th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Wow, he hit the head on the nail… I’ve always admired his posts.
Wish he’d do this in vlog.
But he’s right, though.
What will it take – many more times before it finally kicks in?
January 11th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Preventing the fire or putting out the fire, which is better? From my personal experience with NAD, it’s better to wait and see how the fire is blazing forth. NAD is not issue-oriented; NAD is issue-aligned. NAD likes to adjust itself with issues so that they could have “meetings” to discuss recommendations for “preventing or putting out the fire.”
About eight years ago, I was informed that my storytelling event was removed from the first National Book Festival two days earlier (after I gave my Social Security number because Laura Bush would be there). A few of us were upset and we contacted NAD. You can guess what happened. We were thanked for the information and they would review. In a few weeks, they came up with recommendations to “prevent or put out the fire.” It was a complete turn-off, and I became estranged.
January 11th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
he sure got that on the finger! (right idiom?) It is very frustrating to be all motivated and try to do things but, man…. one person? Many times I had tried to do SOMETHING, doing research on how to get events or programs set up, to find out what is needed, etc.
I’ll give you an example: When I moved here from MD, I found there was no HIV/AIDS prevention and education program for the deaf community here. I talked with many professionals for feedback and opinions on what was needed. I found the only organization that has HIV/AIDS services. I talked with someone who was interested in working with me. I ended up doing research on grants, writing a project (harder than one thinks!) and setting up an appointment with an organization. I asked for an interpreter there. That day, I showed up with the friend,the interpreter didn’t show up. I was too determined to let that stop me. I grabbed the blackboard (that was available in the meeting room) writing information. Copies of the project and grant information were given to the attendees. There were interest after the meeting. I had hope. I called back in two weeks, they said “still looking at the project, but cannot accept the grant because blah, blah, blah. Can you do volunteering?” I said, “sure. I would be happy to volunteer.” In two weeks later, “I have to go to meetings. Can we talk later?” I left msgs. No one called me. I’m telling you, I knocked on doors. I even found other organizations that say hiv/aids prevention is NEEDED but to volunteer their own organziation, no. I’m telling you.. one person couldn’t do everything. I guess that’s why I decided to write articles about HIV/AIDS in deaf community. My hope is that if someone read the article and go “wow, that’s serious” and want to do something (and be a staff of organizations) DO SOMETHING about it!
Elizabeth, to be honest with you, I ran out of energy after running forth and back, having doors slammed in my face or getting the comment “I want to help you but golly, I can’t.”
I don’t know what else to say….
January 11th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
OSD problem is very very serious because the people behind the ouster are very much the folks who are of same mentality as those aligned with JKF! the Know-Nothings!
Already has the identity of the insider who has most to gain from the ouster but more evidence are coming in.
Suggest you read Jane Mulholland’s last email before she was cut off to get the sense of what is going on. Along with the emails received from others in response to the crisis.
NAD still has not stepped in with this bizarre removal.
Best to get involved without having to wait for NAD.
Oregon Legislative is now looking into this case along with bills being drawn up to remove OSD from ODE’s control and establish board and governance similiar to Florida’s and other states where the state schools are independent along with amendments to Parental Choice laws.
Next major step is a big big meeting at OSD’s Peck Gym Monday Jan 15th 6 to 9 pm. The time was deliberate because it also enable the parents to attend the meeting along with their children with alumni and staff. Retired staff stepping in to help because some of current staff are afraid to speak up because of this insider I spoke of.
- David, blogger Deaf Schools United
January 11th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
To W. David Samuelsen in #4
Do you still save Jane Mulholland’s last email? I would like to read it.
Thanks much.
January 11th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Jean, I just happened to find Jane Mulholland’s last email after saw your question about this. Here is the link:
http://blog.deafread.com/dsammy