Audism is everywhere.
Even at Gallaudet.
I get that.
But somehow, somehow, I think the fact a cafeteria worker doesn’t know ASL ranks far lower in the scale of problems a deaf person runs into, compared to many other things.
Such as, say, a job interview where one of the two interviewers would not look at me as she spoke to me, and would not look at me when we shook hands.
At least I knew where I stood.
At Gallaudet, at least, you know this would never happen.
And that’s why it bothers me to have audism thrown around as a weapon, a barb towards Gallaudet.
I don’t know if it’s an improvement to get embroiled into judgementalism about the kind of deaf person a deaf person is, but at the very least, at Gallaudet you are never other the moment someone walks into the room, before anyone has said something.
And that alone makes Gallaudet a very special place to be a deaf person.
Gallaudet is as imperfect as we deaf individuals are, as the deaf community is. It has problems, and it has issues. And this week, certainly, it was wounds.
But what it is, for sure, is a place of growth, of change. It is a place where deaf people experience life in an environment where they feel secure.
Secure enough to judge one another.
And that’s okay.
At least you are never other.
People meet your eyes.
And you come to understand how it is to be treated as an equal.
