White-Impaired

Today we went to a birthday party for a friend. While the temps weren't great (the Valley in summertime feels like the Central Valley, and not what one normally thinks of L.A. summertime temps as being), the hostess was gracious, the food was terrific, and the company was outstanding. In the midst of making new friends, the conversation shifted several times, and at one point, we began talking about labels.

Not clothing, mind you-- but labels. Anyone who's been in a group of deaf people knows eventually the conversation will turn to whether we're deaf, hard-of-hearing, late deafened, etc. We talked about various experiences, discovering our identity, and other areas of shared commonalities. We talked about how the media and hearing people try to be so PC about the term "deaf." All of us agreed we hated "hearing-impaired."

One participant observed that it would be like a black person calling themselves "white-impaired." We had a chuckle about that. But it stayed in the back of my mind. Who in their right mind would label themselves "impaired"? We don't call blind people "sight-impaired." We don't call the orthopedically handicapped "mobility-impaired." So why do we allow the media and hearing people to get away with calling us "hearing-impaired?"

Granted, it's not an earthshaking issue compared with, say, under- and unemployment, or denied access to a multitude of services-- lack of interpreting, captioning, etc. But it definitely is an issue that we as a community need to chip away at, bit by bit. It'd be lovely if we could have local deaf folks visit J-schools that are in their community, and give a short presentation on how to interview with, interact with, and describe deaf and hard-of-hearing people, and maybe pass out a primer on what terms not to use. At the top of the list? "Hearing-impaired."