With Thanksgiving (et al.) barreling our way, there’s been an uptick in conversations in the deaf world about what it means to go home for the holidays, particularly when home is a place where communication is hardest.
In the US, only 8% of parents ever learn enough ASL to have a conversation with their deaf children, so signing deaf people are often isolated from their own immediate families, and in a season when extended families are gathering, communication with those folks can be even tougher. But even hard-of-hearing, and late-deafened people (like the elderly) who use spoken language can struggle during a loud holiday event—assistive technology like hearing aids and cochlear implants is not very good at differentiating from the thing you want to listen to and, say, someone dropping the gravy tureen in the next room, which makes following a conversation difficult. And it’s never a good time trying to lipread people who are talking with their mouths full.
The result of all this is a phenomenon known in the community as Dinner Table Syndrome—that feeling of being alone and isolated in the place where we are supposed to feel at our safest.
Back in early pandemic I interviewed deaf scholars about how Dinner Table Syndrome has shaped our community, and examined the effects of DTS during the shift to remote gatherings for the BBC here, if you want a deeper dive.
If you have a deaf or hard-of-hearing person in your life, there are some tips to help facilitate communication at family gatherings here. Most are common sense—learn the manual alphabet, turn the closed captions on the TV, bonus points if you do it without complaining! And don’t say “never mind.” (If you know a deaf or hard-of-hearing person, you have probably seen the visceral reaction we almost universally have when we ask you to repeat yourself and you say “never mind.” It is that “never mind” and it is the hundred “never minds” before that one, graveyard of things you were supposed to “tell us later” and then never, ever did.)
Pragmatically, the tips at the link above are good. They are helpful, even. But are they inclusion?
Technically, yes. But I also think (know) there’s a better way. Today when we say “inclusion,” particularly in educational settings, we usually mean taking a deaf or disabled kid and dropping him into a typical classroom. When it comes to opportunities for social interactions with kids like him, he’s S.O.L. Maybe that kid is successful academically; often he isn’t, but more than learning, it’s the look of inclusivity we’re trying to achieve. We gave him the privilege of being near the “normal” kids, with a goal of that normalcy rubbing off on him, and as a society, that’s the extent of our obligation.
But what if inclusion meant…actually including people? What if, instead of demanding deaf people be surgically altered and then work work twice as hard to communicate in spoken English, we worked together to communicate? What if an “inclusive classroom” did include a mix of deaf and hearing kids, but all the kids learned to sign? What if nondisabled society viewed disabled people as having something to teach them, too?
The question doesn’t disappear at the end of twelfth grade. It persists in our workplaces, and around our dinner tables. It flows out into the streets. As various groups have mobilized across the country in the last month, in shows of support for the hostages, or to advocate for a ceasefire, almost all these actions have been inaccessible to disabled folks. It’s a reminder that most people’s solidarity has limits, and it’s frustrating because, if the “all” in “until all of us are free” means all, you’re not going to get the job done without us.
There’s more to inclusion than physical proximity. And yeah, doing it right takes work. (It already takes work now—we’re just doing both shares for you.) But it’s worth it. Not just for us, or that hit of saviorism dopamine, but because we have a lot to bring to the table. If you let us.
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