Politics

Deaf-Mutes Make A Noisy Ruckus

by Frederick Meekins
05/10/06
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Normally, those with disabilities bring warm feelings to heart as they struggle to achieve and get ahead despite their limitations often with a positive outlook most of us could learn from. Ironically, though, the deaf seem to rank among the loudest leftwing activists out there.

At Gallaudet University in the Nation's Capital, students and faculty are holding protests because the new president of the school is not what they consider "deaf enough". It is not that she does not have a sufficient level of hearing loss to satisfy these rabblerousers but rather that she did not learn to speak sign language until early adulthood, married someone with hearing (so much for it being what's on the inside that counts), and dared to mother children who are themselves not deaf (talk about reverse Eugenics). And for good measure, Fernandes is a pariah because she is White (good radicals never let that one slide by).

The school's outgoing President I. Jordan King calls the protests an example of identity politics. For the organized deaf are not about empowering the individual but rather about keeping them dependent upon those running this particular ghetto.

For example, several years ago two deaf lesbians made headlines when they tried to conceive a deliberately deaf child. Furthermore, many with this affliction turn on those that seek relief from their condition through new technologies such as Cochlear implants. Shouldn't such decisions be up to the individual?

Though I am not deaf, I am blind in one eye. If I one day ever became a parent, though I function rather well, why in my right mind would I want this condition inflicted upon my child? Furthermore, though I was born this way and have known nothing else (I still remember my mom sitting me down as a kid and explaining it to me and to this day find it hard to imagine what it's like to see out of two eyes as I see out of my bad eye what you see out of the bottom of your foot), why should I have less sympathy for those who befall this condition later in life or begrudge someone able to have sight restored as if they were somehow a traitor to the nation or faith?

I do not see the airfilter visor of Star Trek’s Geordi LaForge or the electronic artificial eye of Narn Ambassador G'Kar on Babylon 5 as some kind of threat but rather as innovations to be anticipated no less amazing than the starships that allow these characters to sail across the cosmos. These same liberals always tell us our body our choice when it comes to killing babies, so why not the same attitude when it comes to enhancing life rather than destroying it?

Perhaps the auditorially challenged have not heard that the character of an individual is not judged by their disabilities but rather by what they do with their abilities.

by Frederick Meekins