Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Diversity and Accepting one another

Like many other cultures in this world, Deaf culture shares a common sense of pride in their Culture and language (i.e. ASL). There are different levels of self-pride of the Deaf culture and there is nothing wrong with pride unless it interferes diversity and unity of other cultures in this world. Unity of cultures results from a group of people coming together to form a community around shared experience, common interests and respecting each other. Like any other cultures in this world, Deaf culture is an identity just as much as Scottish culture which also an identity.

The problem with using pride in the wrong way leads to prejudices and discrimination. Militant "Deaf Pride" activism is one of them and I see these activists as an arrogant minority trying to impose its will on everyone else. Whether the culture will accept hard of hearing individuals or whether hard of hearing accept the Deaf culture. This is about feelings, attitudes, perspectives, and personal lives of each individual deaf/hard of hearing persons. In terms of advocacy, we need to look at various agendas that should be discerned carefully to make sure we don't sound like a militant. We can over-come our flaws by remembering that our own pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes because pride is a fundamental flaw of our nature.

What we all need is diversity and unity with proper pride with our cultures. We all are living in the same country and we are actually living in a society that we all have to live together.

5 comments:

RLM said...

Jim,

I am with you all the way about the real importance of inclusiveness within the deaf community.

What should we do about the handful of oralists and hard of hearing individuals and AgBAD persistently imposed their audistic intentions toward us?

Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLMDEAF blog

OCDAC said...

If the Gally Kappa Gamma Fratskulls start an inclusiveness campaign, others are likely to follow. Until that happens, nobody else will be listening to people who preach inclusiveness.

whimsical brainpan said...

I hope someday everyone will come together without prejudice. I fear it will not be in my lifetime though.

Karen Mayes said...

Nicely written posting.

Would be a dream come true if we all agreed to embrace the diversity than to allow ourselves to be divided by the word "diversity".

Keep blogging on.

whimsical brainpan said...

You have an award at my place. I'll be back to visit later.