"Rewriting the Myths, Redefining the Realities"
I'm responding to John Leo's article about Sound and Fury, published in your
Spring issue.
I saw that program and although I was aware of the "deaf culture" issue and the
fact that, for reasons of language/communication, the congenitally profoundly
deaf are a group apart from all other people with disabilities, it came as a
shock to me to realize that there is a group (surely not big?) which regards
deafness as something to glory in and not to be without. The fact that those
parents did not want their daughter to leave the community reminded me of those
religious cults which keep their youngsters locked away.
I think Cathy Young is absolutely right about modern culture being brought to
the brink of lunacy. Many intellectual elites seem to me to be crazy and bereft
of what your headline calls common sense (but what my mother used to call
uncommon sense). I hate with a passion the cult of victimhood which sees blacks,
women, people with disabilities - you name it - as victims of the rest of
society. While I recognize that attitudes within wider society can complicate
the lives of people with disabilities, in no way do I see attitudes creating or
constituting that disability, as is so often alleged in fashionable sociology.
I have been spinal cord injured for 45 years and never have I gloried in the
fact! I have coped and I have worked all my life to understand and ameliorate
the difficulties of others with disabilities. I have never met a person with a
disability who did not honestly wish their condition would go away. But the idea
of establishing a "political beachhead" in disabilities studies and turning
people with disabilities into something to study in the same way as black
studies and women's studies have done strikes me as negative and divisive. We're
back to disability being the focus instead of people and that way our
differences rather than our shared humanity get emphasized.
It's stupid. We should be getting politics out of disability activism. You'd
think people had enough practical stuff to do without indulging in such
nonsense. And all I can hope is that those parents at least give their child a
chance in the end and don't "lock her away" for good.
Jennifer Bell
Advocacy Awareness Access
Disabled Resource Services
Fort Collins
Offering Cochlear implants to the deaf is a noble
endeavor that would doubtless open up a whole new world for its recipients.
However, it should not be forced upon anyone just because we believe they would
be better off at our perceived level.
As a Christian of immense scriptural knowledge, I am appalled at our past record
(the crusades, holy wars, etc.) in trying to force our beliefs on others, such
as Native Americans, because we know best! In the 17 versions of the Bible that
I study, I can nowhere find such teachings! To attempt to force our knowledge,
experience, understanding, beliefs, or even our feelings on others may be well
intended; but remember that road to hell.
However, in an attempt to share those things with other people, I can find no
moral objections. Allow the individuals to make up their own minds (to try
Cochlear or not) without undue outside pressures. Who knows, they may like the
idea of becoming bilingual!
Harold Chapman
Denver
Copyright 2002 A&H Publishing Corporation