Billy asks: [1]
What on earth could be exactly as horrible as deliberately setting out to bear a deaf child?
I’d heard the story he relates, before asking this question some hours ago, and wasn’t sure what to make of it. But upon reading his post, and his question, I think I have the answer… and oddly enough, there’s an article about it today…
WASHINGTON -AP- [2] The nation’s premier school for the deaf announced three finalists for the position of interim president Wednesday – a search that became necessary after Gallaudet University revoked its incoming president’s contract in response to student protests.
Now, why would the students have that much of a problem with the incoming president? The article brushes up against that point:
The protesters said Fernandes was a divisive leader who would not be able to address the school’s lack of diversity, declining enrollment and low graduation rates. Fernandes had refused to resign and said some people didn’t consider her “deaf enough” because she didn’t learn American Sign Language until she was in her 20s and relied on lip-reading through much of her education.
Not deaf enough. Apparently she was guilty of the crime of trying her best to adapt to the world on it’s level. One supposes this would be the deaf he “went to being an “Uncle Tom” in the black world…. not black enough.
Ya know, LeShawn Barber [3] is reporting that the USSC is hearing a case as regards race based schooling. In reading that case, it appears to me that could apply to other cases, too… such as the Galludet case, one presumes.
What I’m suggesting, here, is that the drives for both those situations are quite similar. You’re right, Billy, it’s sick. But what it also is in the case of your story, is the “parent” not wanting to deal with a child that is substantially different than they, themselves are.
There’s a word for that; it’s called bigotry. Some people just taken farther than others. Some people include their own kids in it.