[Star Traveler]

You said -- "There are any number of `Helen Keller' jokes lurking about this post, but I won't be cruel to the memory of a truly great woman, who if I recall correctly didn't wish to regarded as `different' because of her disabilities."

It's a "fool's quest" to regard someone like that as "normal". To regard someone like that as normal is to mistreat them. It's to have a lack of understanding. It's to fail to communicate. It's failing to recognize the facts in front of your face.

The deaf *are different* and they always will be. They are in a different culture, they think differently, they comprehend differently, they speak differently, they understand differently -- they are different.

That's recognizing that they are of a different culture and dealing with them in that manner.

Regards,
Star Traveler

[elcid1970]

OK, all that "Children of a Lesser God" stuff.

But when I see someone who is demonstrably different, I don't say, gesture, or do anything to draw attention to their differentness. Common courtesy, IMHO.

But there is a P.C. quality to the nonnegotiable demand that deaf people are different and apart, and prefer it that way.

Here's a story, in 1919, at the worst of the "Black Sox" baseball scandal, as a lighter tale emerged:

Boston had a deaf-mute pitcher named Dummy Taylor, who thought it was perfectly safe to tell the umpire exactly what he thought of him, using his fingers.

But the umpire, whose wife was deaf, understood sign language too, and had Taylor tossed out of the game.

Have the deaf always been this airtight closed community?

[Katya]

I understand the cultural argument, but at Gaullaudet it's grown into a new stratosphere, where people are often divided by how many generations of deafness their family has achieved. It's also a bastion of leftwing political correctness...which makes it all so hypocritical. An acquaintance of mine adopted two hearing impaired girls from a third world country. She's decidedly leftist herself and is often appalled at the way people separate themselves at that school.

[wallcrawlr]

I understand the concept of wanting to be with others that are similar..especially language but I completely reject this concept of yours that the deaf are so different.

The deaf *are different* and they always will be. They are in a different culture, they think differently, they comprehend differently, they speak differently, they understand differently -- they are different.