Deaf Crit

The Deaf social movement was propelled in the late 1960s by earlier movements of such minority groups as African Americans and women. During its early stages, the Deaf movement patterned itself after other minority groups, and Deaf people were identified as belonging to a distinct minority group. However, the Deaf social movement, with no formal knowledge of ASL or Deaf culture, blended [Page 159]with other minority groups. The proponents of the Deaf movement primarily worked to reduce society’s discrimination against Deaf people parallel to when Black people demanded civil rights stemming from oppression by the dominant society.

In the 1970s, Deaf people realized that they had a legitimate language separate from the dominant language of hearing people. In the 1980s, Deaf people recognized their own particular ...