Deaf Identities

More than 30 years ago, Tom Humphries coined the term ''audism'' to describe audiocentric (based on hearing and speaking) assumptions and attitudes of supremacy. Only a handful of scholarly articles mention the concept of audism and not one of those is published outside of Deaf Cultural Studies. In this article, audism is broadly defined in the ideological contexts of individual, institutional, metaphysical, and laissez-faire prejudices. Audism is further explained in the context of overt, covert, and aversive practices of discrimination. Examples of the intersections of the theory and practice of audiocentric privilege are explored. Based on critical observations of audism as a stratifying system of oppression, four recommendations are made: increasing public awareness of Deaf American contributions to society (multiculturalism), infusing Deaf-centric curriculum content in education (equity), advocating intergroup dialogues as a transformative pedagogy that further exposes audism as a social injustice (intercultural responsibility), and promoting community service opportunities (ethical citizenship) for students to do volunteer work in the Deaf American Community.

From the vantage point of philosophy, this chapter discusses identities using a philosophical stance with specific focus on the ethics dimension of what deaf identity means. The author, a deaf philosopher, explores the American Sign Language representation of the word philosophy and briefly describes the role of philosophy per se in exploring the roles of metaphysics and epistemology. She introduces an analytical philosophical approach to the topic of ethics and deaf identities that involves concept clarification, analysis of brief examples, and posing specific kinds of questions that are typical of this discipline. The chapter ends with a plea for academics and community participants to continue exploring explicit identification of beliefs about the nature and meaning of deaf identity.