Group Membership and Exclusion

Deaf people in the United States formally came together for the first time when schools for the deaf were founded in the 1800s. While the primary goal of these schools was to provide deaf people with educational opportunities, an accidental outcome of these congregations of deaf individuals was the creation of a vibrant Deaf community and a rich Deaf culture. With education, community, and culture, Deaf people were able to lead comfortable lives. For this reason, becoming a member of the Deaf community is considered to be a critical milestone for many Deaf individuals as it affords them an opportunity to discover a lifestyle that is well suited for people like themselves as opposed to enduring a life of possible limitations and challenges.

Although Deaf people have been called “The People of the Eye,” the formation and continued existence of the Deaf community go beyond the congregation of individuals who merely share a physical trait—the inability to hear. Rather, Deaf people seek opportunities to be with others who share a similar orientation toward life, one that is visual and without communication restrictions and oppression. To this end, the Deaf community provides its members with political, athletic, social, religious, and literary outlets in a language that is most accessible to them, sign language.

As is true for many communities, language is the fabric that holds community members together. Language is the cement with which communities are built and solidified. Language is the soul of the communities. For Deaf people in the United States, American Sign Language (ASL) is the essence of the Deaf community. In this sense, the Deaf community is best seen as a linguistic community rather than a disability-based group.

Accordingly, the Deaf community revolves around the use of sign language. In this vein, there are many expectations, both explicit and subtle, associated with how sign language should be perceived and how the language is used. Consequently, these expectations have implications for how individuals are welcomed and accepted by others within the Deaf community.

To begin with, Dennis Cokely and Charlotte Baker identified four avenues toward full membership in the Deaf community. These pathways include an appropriate attitude toward and a possession of a linguistic competency in sign language, an audiological condition of being deaf, social relations with other Deaf people, and a political interest in the well-being of the Deaf community. In this sense, people must have the right attitude about what it means to be deaf in order to be fully accepted into the Deaf community. The literature is now becoming rich with descriptions of the kind of attitude that is expected of the members of the Deaf community.

Deaf Studies scholars typically cite sign language as the key element of the Deaf community membership. Thomas Holcomb explained how sign language remains a primary marker of the Deaf community even though today most deaf children attend a public school (as opposed to a residential school placement). Harlan Lane, Richard Pillard, and Ulf Hedberg discussed the communicative, cultural, and emblematic functions of sign language and concluded that they are at the core of Deaf identity. Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan described sign language as “The Language of the DEAF-WORLD.” Barbara Kannapell argued that only sign language could provide deaf people with 100 percent access to communication due to its visual properties, hence its importance in the Deaf community. Carol Padden provided an additional dimension by explaining that while sign language should be considered a primary cultural marker of the Deaf community, a proper perspective on speech (or what she called a disassociation from speech) is also an important [Page 454]criterion. In this sense, an appropriate attitude and usage associated with sign language and speech is paramount to the membership of the Deaf community. The expectation of having the right attitude is a result of painful experiences that are shared by many Deaf people such as being excluded from social intercourse with hearing people, especially their own families.

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