A Culture of Oppression: Education, Deafness, and Blackness in America

A Culture of Oppression: Education, Deafness, and Blackness in America

The word ‘culture’ is so malleable, flexible, all
encompassing (at least from a cosmopolitan point of view) that I feel any
person wishing to deny a certain group the right to constitute themselves a
specific culture to entirely out of line. If any group of people can find
something in common with one another that allows them to feel safe, accepted,
and allows them to relate, I believe they should be able to label it their
culture. Subcultures, or cultures that do not necessarily find themselves in
the same social hierarchy as mainstream cultures, are still cultures regardless
of who accepts them. Two examples of groups whose culture status would normally
be questioned are that of Deaf culture, and Black American culture. Both
compose cultural groups because of the systematic oppression they face in their
daily lives. One of the biggest obstacles, on which this paper will mainly
focus, is the struggle for equal educational opportunities. The struggle
against such oppression brings the communities together into a culture of
solidarity.

Deafness is such a trait that brings people together that would normally be excluded from mainstream society, or the hearing culture that remains status quo.
Historically, deaf people have come together to create their own clubs,
businesses, schools, theatre, language, and other institutions that were meant
to foster a sense of pride and dignity. They have not mourned the fact that
they are without the ability to hear sound, but celebrated the other skills
they have developed in its place. Many deaf people reject the term ‘disabled,’
as they believe it is a limiting title that inherently suggests something is
wrong with them. Before the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975,
many Deaf children were told just that.

Deaf children were sent to public schools and placed in
hearing classrooms where no special accommodations were guaranteed to help them
overcome their hearing impairment. They were expected to learn in the same way
as hearing children, which caused problems. Many would graduate from secondary
school with the average of a third or fourth grade reading level (TESOL
Quarterly 244). After the act of 1975 was passed, it was mandatory for all
public school districts to provide education to any deaf and disabled child,
and provide voice interpreters for the students (Padden and Humphries, 116).
This expansion of disability rights spanned over the next two decades and moved
into the workplace along with public and commercial places. Though steps have
been taken, Deaf people still do not live an entirely equal world. They cannot
move very high on the social ladder in areas where predominately hearing people
rule, due to language and communication barriers. Deaf “culture,” where signing
is the preferred mode of communication is threatened as more speech education
and cochlear implants are being pushed on Deaf children. Deaf schools of higher
education are few and far between compared to predominately hearing schools.
The list goes on. As a social minority, Deaf people must fight to retain their
way of life and communicating while the outside hearing world is relentlessly
trying to force them to assimilate.

Black people in the United States face similar
oppression as Deaf people, but the things they are denied are quite different.
Race has been a factor that has contributed to widespread poverty and
socioeconomic inequality for many Blacks in America. Kwame Ture and Charles
Hamilton lament such atrocities in their book Black Power: The Politics of
Liberation. They term such laws, policies, and de facto social practices
keeping Black people from reaching parity with whites as “institutional
racism.” Institutional racism bars Black people from most housing, forcing them
to live in segregated neighborhoods and with this comes segregated schooling,
which leads to poor education, which leads to ill paying jobs—a vicious social
cycle (156). Like Padden and Humphries, Ture and Hamilton believe that the key
to ending such a circle of poverty is quality education.

Quality education means that merely racially integrating
schools is not enough, but that the resources allocated to each school and
spent on each student should be equal. Like Deaf children, many Black children
are passed through the education system year after year without truly mastering
the subjects taught in each grade. The result is a high population of Black
students with underdeveloped skills in math, reading comprehension, science,
and language. For example, white fourth graders are three to four times as
likely as their black and Latino classmates to be reading at the proficient
level (Growing Up American 135). Another consequence of a poor education is an
increase in Juvenile delinquency. If the importance of education is not pushed
for children, they will find themselves out of school, out of work, and most
likely onto the streets. In a world where Black juveniles are five times as
likely as white youths to be incarcerated, or where black juveniles are about
four times as likely to be arrested as their white counterparts, it is hard to
ignore the root causes of these social problems. Black people do not celebrate
the fact that more young black males are in prison rather than in college as
part of their culture, but it is an issue that brings them together. It is a
social consequence of their systematic oppression, which also applies to jobs,
housing, and mobility.

Both groups, the Deaf and the Black people of the United States,
share the common grievance of being a minority. Being a minority comes with the
added baggage of undergoing some kind of structural oppression, whether it be
lack of funding for education, lack of mobility (social and economic), or even
lack of respect from the dominant culture. While facing such great obstacles,
both groups find ways to come together and preserve their way of life. For Deaf
people, this may include sending their children to all deaf schools where
signing is taught over speech. It may also include choosing to live in an all
deaf community, to attend a deaf church, or to work at a business owned by Deaf
people. For Black Americans, it may mean pushing children to succeed
academically, to join Black churches, or do some other community organizing to
keep their friends and family becoming another negative statistic. They key to
community uplift could be through forming labor unions, protesting living and
education conditions.

There is no one solution to any culture’s ills, but in order
for any oppressed group of people to maintain their culture, they must be able
to both celebrate the good parts of their situation and recognize the bad
parts. Sometimes attempting to fix the bad parts takes a little more energy.
Culture is not just what clothes a group of people decide to wear, the dances
they decide to dance, the foods they decide to eat, or the language they decide
to speak. It is an unfortunate truth, but sometimes it is the bad and the
negative aspects of a culture, such as their systematic discrimination that
truly have the power to bring people together. The culture of struggle, the
culture of trying to better the lives of all in one’s cultural group is an
important social aspect that we must not forget to honor.

Works Cited

Edelman, Marian Wright and James M. Jones. “Separate and
Unequal: America's

Children, Race, and Poverty.” Growing Up American. The
Future of Children, Vol.
14, No. 2, Children of Immigrant Families. (Summer, 2004),
pp. 134-137.

Padden, Carol and Tom Humphries. Inside Deaf Culture. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2005.

Swisher, M. Virginia.
“The Language-Learning Situation of Deaf Students.”
TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 2. (Jun., 1989), pp. 239-257.

Ture, Kwame, and Charles Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics
of Liberation. New
York: Vintage Books, 1967.

millenials engaged in today's society (live @ TBA)

Read the original post at Young People For.

"Generation Y, the Millenial generation, has been called many things, the most insulting of which are: impatient, self-absorbed, and uninvolved. We, as members of the generation that grew up with the Internet on our laps and 9/11 in our classroom everyday, disagree. While many pop-culture pundits declare that our generation is not involved in formal politics and traditional community involvement, we have been engaging our world in new and different ways. S.C.O.U.T. B.A.N.A.N.A. (SB), an organization led and founded by young people, is working at the forefront of Generation Y's engagement. We believe young people are the key to social change and important vessels of cultural exchange."
- S.C.O.U.T. B.A.N.A.N.A. 2008

The engagement of Millenals or Generation Y is something that is very important to me and something that the organization thatI run is committed to on a more international scale. At Take Back America, today the panel is talking about the engagement of American millenial youth in grassroots politics across the US - Millenials Rising: Young Voters Revitalizing Democracy.

This engagement is something that we have seen with the most recent political campaigns. Young people are attacking the polls with a fervor unprecedented and for some reason it is frightening to many political pundits. Young people are coming out in force on issues they care about and yet still older generations say that we are just here for the fun of being involved and not necessarily to make a change. The New Left of the 60's and 70's is no longer so relevent, but it is not irrelevent. As millenials and the new face of the new left, we can learn from past experiences in activism and tactics, we can build on the past successes, we can connect the new left with the now left. I say "left" as only a way to play with words. Yet again I want to stress the importance of not cutting anyone out of the movement. We have no time to push out Republicans for the sole reason of being Republican or dividing people over basic party politics when what we are fostering is a movement that is not trapped in a party. The ideas and values we believe in as "progressives" are not only allowed in a liberal mind, or a in democrat's speech book. People are, or at least should be, our passion - not the division of and dislike for certain people. No one can be written off, no one can be looked over as already lost.

The opening speaker said about young people, "we are ready, we have the passion, the dedication - we are tired of the same old politics!" This always reminds me of a line that a speaker told the 2007 fellowship class. To paraphrase: when the politicians are too old to stand up for what's right and make their voice heard, then it is time for them to step down. We no longer have the luxury of letting our government decide what is best and accept it while playing our video games and watching MTV - and we, as millenials, recognize that fact. Young people are no longer just the demographic that can be relegated to a non-influential voting bloc. We as millenials have more resources than any other generation. We have numerous organizations itching to support our work, we have the opportunity to be our own political pundits by way of the internet, we have more social networking sites than probably necessary. Regardless these are huge points for mobilization along with the traditional organizing movement tactics of face-to-face interaction, sit-ins, talk-ins, protests, and putting up flyers.

Call me a millenial - interested in MTV, South Park, hip hop culture, or Facebook - but do not call me disengaged and unimportant in today's society or American politics.

what could be more powerful than power? (live @ Take Back America)

Read the original post at Young People For.

When you begin to recognize your personal ability and resolve to make a difference incredible things happen. There is no doubt in my mind that whether you are a budding activist, a student beginning to learn more than you thought, a traveler meeting harsh new realities, or a weathered volunteer (worker - maybe you get paid to do this) in the progressive movement - your ability to truly impact the course of history is locked in this self-actualization of the power you hold, which is your ability to influence someone else's life. Influencing just one person is important, but that one person is part of a larger global community and they can then influence another person, and the chain will continue. Power is most often alluded to fall into the hands of the politically and economicly wealthy, those who exploit, manipulate, and profit from others, those who sit in the plush offices and government buildings. This I say is not fact. However, one may argue, these people do hold the power - they do make the decisions and they do shape our lives. While this remains a fair argument there still remains nothing more powerful than a person with a passion. No official, no government, no financial powerhouse, no one can stop that person from influencing others except by way of death. So I say give me passion, give me freedom, give me liberty or give me death (paraphrase: Patrick Henry).

Today begins one of the largest conferences of progressive peoples in the US, except maybe for the US Social Forum. 2000 people gather in Washington D.C. to discuss the prospect of reversing the painful and extremely detrimental policies that have shaped or seemingly broken and divided country. The opening speaker told us that we, who gathered today, were the heart of the movement. To that I say no, we are not the heart, we may be a base for launching, we may be the facilitators for a change, but we are not the heart - because the heart of the movement lies in the people, every person. We are the privileged of the movement gathered in a fancy hotel with classic music and opulent settings. While we are the privileged of the movement I like to think that we are also the actively conscious. We do not overlook our privileged place in the movement. The heart of the movement is not ours to possess, but we can be the blood to pump that heart.

Diane Archer was the opening speak on the issue of US healthcare. She noted how public healthcare systems were viewed in a bad light. Many people in America are extremely skeptical of public health insurance, but the private model also has its deep downfalls. The goal now based on the Hacker model is to create a hybrid system where people can choose their private insurance if they want it, but there will also be the public insurance choice. America has one of the worst public health systems in the world, even ranking behind developing countries. We need to make a change. Diana emphasized that it is, "we who move mountains, not the President or Congress." She noted that when we are organized and when we voice our beliefs then we can create the necessary change.

The always powerful speaker, Van Jones, founder of Green for All and dedicated fighter against social inequality inspired action for a green economy. He says, "We need a WWII level mobilization or there may not be a 22nd Century!" The fact that a clean and green economy has more jobs and has the potential to end poverty in America and combat global warming is more than a dream. The wall standing in front of that goal is the political challenge. Our current government is on the side of big business, war mongers, and the polluters because that is what our current government is comprised of: leaders of big business, etc. Jones told us that the solar and wind industries is where we should look to as examples and we need unconditional political will and public support for a green economy to create jobs. The anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. is just next month. He died at 39 years old, Jones noted that he was also 39 years old. King was assassinated not because he was a voice, but because he was able to link the issues. King advocated for an inclusive economy for everyone and even spoke that democratic socialism was a better model. "We will reject 'sink or swim' politics," says Jones. People in America should not be sinking as they were during and after Katrina, no one in America should face that. What I think is more common sense than a repeated mantra is, "we are all in this together." Jones said this and I could not agree more, we are in this together and we need to recognize that we as people are now more than ever a globally linked community. Why can America not be the example for this instead of just presenting an American Dream?

"This movement is about Taking America FORWARD! (Jones)"

Candidate for Maryland Congerss, Donna Edwards, told us that a lose can be a win. I would even say that the we are seeing a new politics of momentum growing in America. Even though a progressive candidate may have lost the vote, they did not lose the attention of the people. This is a great example of where dreams can become realities. Progressive values are shared by many people - the views, values, and vision of the community are shared. Edwards said that if being progressive means health for all, a green economy, and getting out of Iraq where we never should have been, then she is proud to call herself progressive. The political will is lacking in within our political parties. I say this and I am no proponent for party politics at all. The Democrats gained the majority with a issue and goal in mind: get out of Iraq. They got lost along the way in rhetoric that said ending the war did not support the troops. Edwards said that if her family and friends who fought in Vietnamwere stil alive today they would say that nothing more supportive of the troops would be to get them out of harms way. On my way to the conference I met a lady in the Reagan airport that questioned me about my button against the war in Iraq. She talked about peace activists and other protestors at a war memorial. They stood on the ground dedicated to the lives of those who gave their lives in something that many did not agree with. She said that her family members who fought in Vietnam would be upset that there would be protest at a memorial. Because while they agreed with the protestors, they could not agree with the lack of respect. This is something that our movement needs to constantly keep in mind. We may disagree with many people, but that cannot be reason for disrespect. Edwards noted that people often call to honor our troops, but where is the honor in needless death? She emphasized the need to engage international institutions. When she enters congress Edwards said she will need the movement to have her back - because we are the ones with the real power.

People power is real and its actualization is growing within the public. As cliche as it may be, the power is in you! Believe in what you do and others will also begin to believe.

Putting a human face on AIDS statistics in Africa

It is easy to take the statistics, even one of an epidemic,
and never fully understand them as anything else other than numbers. No emotion
goes into reading numbers, no humanity is necessary to analyze graphs, charts,
or percentages. But there is some emotional baggage that comes with hearing the
stories of those individual people who are affected by something like HIV AIDS.
There is something deafening, something biting, something ultimately
frustrating and scary that comes with choosing to take a walk on the human side
of a figure like: "Some 15 million children under age 18 have lost one or
both parents to AIDS," or "...new projections that expanded access to
prevention could avert approximately 30 million of the 60 million HIV
infections expected to occur by 2015" (statistics can be found at
UNAIDS.org). What does 15, or even 30 million people look like? How many tears
shed, how many hearts breaking, how many homes lost, how many and lives
destroyed does that amount to? How do you measure the social stigma-the
loneliness, feelings of despair and helplessness-or the excruciating pain that
comes with those vast numbers of people affected by the HIV AIDS virus?

These were things I tried desperately to grapple with as I
began to study the history and current consequences of AIDS. What I found is
that the issue is much greater than I had ever thought. AIDS is not just a
disease that coincidentally happens to affect mainly poor, southern Africans,
the majority of which are women and children. There are real systematic,
institutional, social, and economic factors that add up to the highest rates of
HIV AIDS infection rates being concentrated among poor, southern Africans.
These factors together are what Dr. Paul Farmer has termed "structural
violence." Structural violence is "historically given" and often
"economically driven" factors that conspire through "routine,
ritual...[and] the hard surfaces" to constrain the lives, well being, and
mobility of people. Examples can include but are not limited to racism, sexism,
political violence, and poverty (Patholgies of Power, Farmer, 2005). The
majority of structural violence is aimed toward the poorer peoples of their
earth, as they are easy to exploit due to their lack of socio-economic voice. I
plan on posting more with specific examples of these structural problems in a
few days, as I am researching this further for a paper, so don't kill me for
leaving off here for now!

Now that I better understand what's going on...what do I
plan to do about it? The last thing I want to do is sit around and do nothing,
theorize and criticize the situation without getting my hands dirty and trying
to fix it. So this summer, I'm forsaking the beach, the movies, the vacations,
TV, internet, shopping, and whatever else people do for fun in the summer to
have what I'm sure will be the experience of a lifetime. I'm going to Africa.

During the upcoming summer, it is my intention to take my
newfound AIDS prevention knowledge and put it into practice. I will complete an
internship at the VumundzukuBya-Vana Youth
Center in Zonkizizwe, South Africa.
Zonki, as they call it, is an extremely isolated village south of Johannesburg. I'll be
there anywhere between 10-14 weeks, depending on the cost of travel and
obligations back in the States. This youth center's purpose is to provide
physical, emotional, and social support for children and youth made susceptible
by HIV AIDS. Many of the children living in the area have lost a family member
or friend to the virus, and some may be infected themselves. Some of the
children live in youth headed households, or are being raised by someone other
than their natural parents. As an intern at the Youth Center,
I would be responsible for planning after school activities for the children
living in Zonkizizwe. These activities include providing health and nutritional
education, promoting academic progress, self expression, social responsibility,
and communication as well as problem solving skills. Educational programming
would specifically focus on addressing high risk behaviors in the environment
that many children in South
Africa experience daily: teen pregnancy,
unprotected sex, drug and alcohol abuse, crime, illiteracy, and poverty. I
would not be leading these activities by myself, however, as I would have the
pleasure of working with and helping the existing native staff at the facility
to undertake these responsibilities.

Getting to know the staff and experiencing life in
Zonkizizwe like they do is one of the things I am most looking forward to. I
also absolutely cannot wait to interact with the children! I realize that many
of them are not proficient in English, but that's OK. I know about two words of
Zulu, the language primarily spoken in the area, so we'll be even. Finding ways
of communicating with each other should be very interesting, and I'm up for the
challenge. Plus, the older kids will be able help me out. My primary reason for
this trip has always been then children...they are the ones that suffer the
most with no voice.

I have chosen this internship because as a Social Relations
and Policy student with a Black American and Diasporic Studies (BADS)
specialization at Michigan
State University,
I am interested in how policies affect the social development of people. I am
especially interested in learning about educational policies and how they
affect the physical, emotional, and social development of Black children across
the globe. I have participated in a mentoring program called My Brother's
Keeper (a program through Malcolm X Academy in Detroit) to understand how post-
Brown v. Board of Education educational policies have affected children of
color in the United States, and now I wish to experience these affects in the
greater African Diaspora. I would like experience first hand how post-Apartheid
educational policies are affecting black children in South Africa. It is my wish to
compare and contrast the experiences of Black children in the educational
system across the Diaspora, and potentially expand my study into a dissertation
topic on my road to earning a PhD in African American and African Studies. If I
don't decide to go into academia, and go in the direction my heart truly lies--
non-profit work-then I'll have some great experiences under my belt to get me
ready for the rest of my life. I know that if I truly wanted, I could do both.
There is nothing stopping me other than financial burden, but even then I know
that where the will's strong enough to do something, there will be ways to make
it happen. I have that will, that drive, and that passion to help others. I
recognize as an outsider my role is not to come in and play the savior to any
group of people, but to listen to their concerns, needs, and cares. From there
I will work with them, to meet the needs in the best way possible, for that is
all I can really do as a human being. I will fill in the blanks and teach
others what I know for the sake of progress, but otherwise I am happy to be a
servant.

I know throughout the course of the summer, my heart will
break and the tears will flow, but I will move on. We cannot stop and grieve
for the sorry state of the poor in this world. There is a time for sadness, frustration,
and anger, but it must lead us to action rather than to apathy. If you have
time to be angry about something, if you have time to cry, then you have time
to love and time to labor toward bettering it. This is what I plan to do for
the rest of my life, no matter how much it hurts.