A friend of mine who runs the blog, DeafEcho, of which I am an occasional contributor, recently wrote this blog post, "Jamaican Skin Bleaching...Parallels with Cochlear Implantation?" I strenuously disagree with his post, and the unnecessary conflation of cochlear implantation with skin bleaching which he made. The two issues are nowhere the same, and are not relevant to each other in any way whatsoever.
As the author is a personal friend of mine, I will respectfully lay out my disagreements with his blog post. I have taken some time to think about this in formulating my disagreement as an oral deaf woman who has a cochlear implant. I also have his permission to use his article, and will excerpt from it in using my rebuttals.
My friend begins his blog post with this:
What I did find fascinating, however, was a quote that appeared under the story regarding the practice of Jamaican mothers not only skin bleaching themselves, but also having their children bleached in the same manner (I’d like to point out here quickly that one reason—but only one… there are others—for the outrage centers around the fact that the products used in the bleaching process are considered unsafe). It read:
I don’t care what adults do to their skin, but when parents start doing it to babies or children, it’s criminal.
A debate on the merits of implanting deaf children with cochlear implants rarely gets very far before you see a comment decrying the cruelty and stupidity of Deaf people and Deaf Culture for their/its disapproval of the practice. To be fair, while the arguments have also been made that hearing parents who implant their deaf children are guilty of participating in the cultural genocide of Deaf children, and that depriving them of exposure to American Sign Language is akin to child neglect, in recent years I’ve seen evidence of those arguments being turned back around on Deaf people. Comments utilizing these arguments often state that Deaf parents of a deaf child who deliberately refuse to implant that child are guilty of child abuse because they are willfully allowing that child to grow up with a disability that cuts him or her off from exposure to sound.
In regards to the second paragraph, the arguments made against hearing parents for implanting their deaf children are that they're committing cultural genocide are the kind of arguments I've heard launched at my mother for implanting me when I was seven years old back in 1989.
Those making those kind of arguments are the ones I find to be ignorant, fearful, and unaware of what really goes into a hearing parent's decision to implant their deaf child. To be sure, there are a few hearing parents that think it's a miracle cure and their deaf child won't need accommodations, but on the whole, these hearing parents, just like my mother, consulted extensively with doctors, went to schools for the deaf, and even approached the deaf community for advice.
My mother saw insularism, ignorance, and anger in the ASL Deaf community when she reached out for help. She didn't want to expose me to that kind of environment if I was implanted because she saw the discrimination against those who were orally deaf and wore implants. She wanted me to have all the tools available to succeed in what is a world that is made for and designed by hearing people. She knew just having the cochlear implant wasn't enough for me. I would need extensive speech therapy, and to have access to the best resources for me to succeed academically. She made sure of that with help from my grandparents while she worked through the aftermath of a very nasty divorce.
I want every deaf child to have the best access to resources, whether it be the cochlear implant, hearing aids, ASL, Total Communication, SEE, and oral speech. I want these parents, whether they are deaf or hearing, not to be ostracized for the choices they make. I don't think it's wrong to implant your deaf child as it is to address a medical condition---deafness. I don't think it's wrong for Deaf parents to refuse to implant their deaf children as long as these deaf children have access to hearing aids, ASL, speech, and other communication modes with a strong support system in place that helps them out academically.
However, where my friend completely loses me with his article is equating the issue of cochlear implantation to skin bleaching. Skin bleaching is not a medical issue, it is a symptom of ingrained racism, of a sense of inferiority that is cast upon them by those who judge based on skin color. Cochlear implantation addresses a medical issue, and it is a decision that is not lightly made by hearing or deaf parents of a deaf child. It is done with extensive consultation with audiologists, doctors, and speech therapists.
In using skin bleaching as an analogy to the issue of cochlear implantation, it does a great disservice to the Deaf community from my viewpoint. I understand why my friend, would see cochlear implantation as something for a hearing parent to "hide" their child's deafness, and to make them more presentable in a hearing environment since he sees the skin bleaching issue in that Jamaican parents are bleaching their children's skin to make them more socially acceptable. Skin bleaching is much more dangerous than cochlear implantation is. The immediate risks from skin bleaching are that of skin cancer, mercury and arsenic poisoning.
Cochlear implantation does have its risks, but due to the advances of surgical technology, it has now become a one-day outpatient surgery with very little complications. When I received the cochlear implant back in 1989, it was much more complicated than that, and I stayed in the hospital for two weeks.
And now, that process is different for cochlear implantees. They still have to meet specific criteria to be a cochlear implant recipient. These implants aren't willingly given out like candy to any deaf individual, whether it be a child or an adult, despite the beliefs of some of those in the Deaf community.
Another point I want to bring up is that in conflating skin bleaching with cochlear implantation, is that it turns off those that my friends and those who share his views want to reach---hearing and deaf parents of deaf children. Why would a hearing parent be receptive to a Deaf community that uses those sort of parallels to tell them why cochlear implantation of deaf children is wrong, and that ASL is better?
In approaching the subject of cochlear implantation by equating it with skin bleaching, it does the Deaf community a disservice. It also doesn't serve the Deaf community well when commentators in response to that article use lies and myths about the cochlear implant. These are what I call "scare" tactics to scare hearing parents away from implanting their deaf children. If they really want ASL to be used by hearing parents of their deaf children, why not talk up ASL and the benefits of it being used as a bilingual language? Why not put forth successful Deaf adults who use ASL and have cochlear implants to attract these hearing parents of deaf children?
Why bash those who wear cochlear implants, and prefer to speak orally, or use other communication methods? In using these sort of tactics, the Deaf community, instead of gaining members, are losing potential members of the deaf community. Over the long term, that Deaf community is going to become obsolete if they keep using these tactics. Some groups, as I understand it, are beginning to understand this and are revising their tactics to talk up ASL and the benefits of bilingualism and the acceptance of those with CIs, whether they be adults or children, into the deaf community.
I hope more people in the Deaf community will come to understand this, and to save deaf culture, to positively promote ASL and acceptance of those who don't use ASL. It works to their benefit to have more supporters of ASL, whether they be hearing, oral, CI, deaf, even if many of those supporters don't use ASL.
With that said, I'm glad to get this off my chest, and I welcome the discussion from others here on this topic.