Deaf people’s liberation cannot be left in the hands of sign language interpreters.
[Image description: bald and bearded white man in a green t-shirt signing against a plain blue background.]
Originated as an ASL vlog so the English transcript follows its flow and structure.
Sign language interpreting is a critical site of deaf people’s human and civil rights. Language is among those human rights- a basic right to food, shelter, safety, health care, and access to society. Language is accessed through a number of ways; one is through signed language interpreters. This has been recognized in the United Nations declaration of Civil Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). Along with human rights, interpreters are also an important site for our civil rights. Civil rights includes a jury of our peers, the right to petition the government with our grievances, the right to protest, work, drive, education. Those two realms are very important to us [deaf] and they are in your hands. Yours meaning interpreters- both deaf and hearing. We must place our trust in your hands. Literally. We have no choice but to do that if we want to live fully within this world as politically engaged citizens and participants in society. We can’t live in isolation or in isolated communities. While it’s great that more people are learning sign languages and we’re pushing for more language concordant services, until we accomplish a fully accessible signing society, interpreters as a disability access measure is necessary. This means that all deaf people have a deeply vested interest in what happens in the interpreting profession and all its aspects: education, research, practices, and the transmission of knowledges. We should all be observant and aware of what’s going on. And rather than be bystanders looking through the window, we should break through that window and be in the action ourselves. As researchers, teachers, trainers, practitioners, theorists. We should be the dominant influence in interpreting culture and ethics. How is this related to the RID situation?
Let’s visit a basic principle of Disability Justice. This was developed by Sins Invalid, a group of queer disabled black, brown, and indigenous people.
There’s 10 principles but I’ll focus on one for this video. Leadership should be by the most affected. In sign language interpreting, obviously it’s deaf people at large. But more specifically, multiply disabled, queer, non-white deaf people are the most impacted. Bearing that in mind, let’s remember sign language interpreting has such a significant bearing on deaf people’s human and civil rights. We should lead whenever possible. For those who have quibbles about the RID itself and its purpose/mission, I’ll remind you that it is what it is right now: and the fact is that the RID has a tremendous influence and is encoded in many local, state, and national policies/practices in respect to interpreting. With that level of power and influence, we have two directions.
One is for the deaf community to agitate for changes in local, state, and national practices including new assessments and regulatory measures in tandem with the NAD and local deaf organizations in a way that neutralizes hearing dominance. We have been working on this as evidenced by various local and state actions taking place as well as the regular protests deaf people undertake when the RID reasserts hearing dominance over deaf people. This has been a slow movement because we are small in number and phonocentrism still holds the ear of many a policymaker. We are advocating for more language concordant services (many thanks to Hilde Haualand and Maartje DeMeulder for their work). And technologies are changing in ways that allows us to seek independence from using signed language interpreters. The other path requires hearing interpreters to act, to embrace the notion of access intimacy (see Mia Mingus’ incredible work here). To deeply value your role and position as a broker of human and civil rights in a way that embraces the core values of interdependence- as a positive. And to act in a way that ensures the RID works with, not against, deaf people. How can you shape an organization that leads to create policy and practices that legitimately serves the best interests of deaf people? When deaf people advance, interpreters advance too. That’s what I wonder. But I see that about 11,000 of you chose not to vote at all. Stephanie Clark made a nice vlog about voting as a right, honoring the vote, and the power of the vote- including the power of not voting. But that volume of no-votes- 11,000, communicates to me that there’s a general sense of apathy.
We cannot put our liberation in your hands.
That tells me that the interpreting community, at large, does not care. The profession at large does not care about the organization’s direction, its future, its commitment to centering the most marginalized and oppressed, its commitment to deaf people’s civil and human rights, the character of RID as an organization. So many of you didn’t vote, so you just don’t care? There was an opportunity for deaf leadership, to center the deaf, and you didn’t seize that opportunity. You didn’t care. You had an opportunity to center the most marginalized, in a moment of national reckoning with race, and you didn’t care. You didn’t care about disability justice. You don’t care about the potential and value of deaf leadership in a key site of our human and civil rights. You don’t care about having a future where the organization and by extension, the profession, could be more deaf centered. You had an amazing opportunity and you didn’t vote at all. You don’t care about the organization, and by extension, you don’t care about the quality of deaf people’s lives. What that communicates to me, when you don’t vote in such large numbers, is that I cannot trust you at large. What this means is we need to work harder on other venues for liberation. We cannot put our liberation in your hands.
