A friend of mine once told me he doesn’t often read postings themselves. He finds the actual posts “somewhat boring.” While I disagree with him on this, what he said next is true. “Often the real meat is in the comments. That’s where the excitement is.” Anyone who’s hung out on DeafDC for any amount of time certainly knows this (the most recent essays/entries by Shane Feldman are a case in point!). It’s true for a number of blogs.

Here, I get a mixed bag; sometimes I get a number of comments, and some interesting ones. Other times no one says a word. I’m not sure why that is, but perhaps I’m not controversial enough (and no, I don’t plan to aim to acquire the title of “most controversial blogger” in the Deaf Blogosphere anytime soon, thank you. There’s a few folks out there already that certainly (over)qualify for the title, methinks).

Most of the time I either let comments stand (the commenter has said what I would say, or there’s nothing I can really add to it), or respond within the comments section. However, I recently received a comment that I think merits its own post.

On my post about the “Blogger’s” conference focusing on Gallaudet that I attended back in February, Terry Charest stated the following:

Hi,
I am a teacher for special education students and in a master’s program. I am writing a paper on discrimination. My focus is on discrimination between hard of hearing and ASL users. I am also concentrating on hearing people who use ASL, and discriminate against people who are Deaf and do not sign. I know this subject is very sensitive to all parties. I have been in contact with a professor who is Deaf and is considered “not deaf enough” because he wears hearing aides and voices instead of using ASL. If this subject offends you, I appologize. If you could suggest a site, or offer an experience I would appreciate your input.
Respectfully,
Terry

While I’m not sure I’m responding in time for Terry’s own work, I certainly think this is a topic a lot of people might be interested in, or have an opinion on. So I’d like to open the floor to you, my readers, and ask if you know of a website or webpage on discrimination between hard-of-hearing and ASL users, or hearing ASL users who discriminate against deaf people who don’t sign (not common, I think, but it certainly happens, I’m sure), to share it.

If you have a personal experience, feel free to share it here too. I haven’t seen any discrimination per se from hearing ASL users towards non-signing deaf people, but I know I’ve witnessed incidents between the hard-of-hearing and ASL users. Nothing’s coming to mind immediately, but eventually a memory will pop up. When it does, I’ll be sure to share.

This discussion could turn out to be a whirlwind, or perhaps no one will really say anything. But at the very least, we’d be able to help Terry Charest out, and perhaps learn something about ourselves and our community. We might also learn something about ourselves, and in the process, heal or at least confront our biases and their origins.

[I know these types of comments with web links often end up in the spam folder, so I’ll be sure to keep an eye out; if you comment and it doesn’t immediately appear, don’t fret! I’ll make sure it shows up.]

[Also, a belated “Happy Anniversary” to DeafRead! The site’s been online for a year now, as of yesterday. Congratulations and thanks for all the hard work all of you do!]