Deaf Culture

I just recently watched a movie on deaf culture and some of the things that are considered normal in the deaf community are very different compared to mine. The deaf community is considered its own little community within the hearing world. They consider themselves different, have their own language and community events. They are a very close knit community and I feel like hearing people can learn a lot from how deaf people interact and treat one another.

The video my class watched talked about how the people in the deaf community tend to share a lot of information with each other in order to benefit the others in the community. They share why they were late, very personal information such as marital status, new diets, recent procedures they had done, and anything that would benefit the others in any way shape or form. Generally most deaf people also prefer to get very detailed directions to new places. Using GPS is probably not the easiest if you cannot hear where it is telling you to turn. In contrast most hearing people never give out detailed driving directions or receive them because they would just use MapQuest or GPS.

They hold deaf events in the deaf community all the time in order to keep in touch with one another. I think this is very cool because you don’t see many hearing communities coming together to hold events or to try to stay connected to one another. I like how they all come together and wish more hearing communities did that.

I learned that if they don’t answer the door it is okay to just walk right into someone’s house if the door is unlocked and they know you. Other options are looking in the window or if the door is locked leaving them a note or texting them to let them know you are there. The whole class thought that was a bit rude and strange as would most hearing people. But in the deaf community it is generally accepted. Michael even said his girlfriend, who is deaf, does that when he doesn’t answer the door right away or doesn’t hear it out of habit. Our teacher explained this is because they want to do anything to see the person they are trying to see and don’t want to miss them or think they just didn’t show up. I think it is kind of thoughtful but I don’t know if I want anyone just walking into my house.

The video also showed a polite way to interrupt a conversation as just walking quickly through the middle of it without even signing excuse me. This was something the whole class was surprised about. We thought this was extremely rude and was definitely not accepted in hearing culture. Our teacher explained that, “It would take much longer to sign excuse me and make sure everyone saw it and would create much more of a distraction than quickly walking through and getting on with life.” After she said that it made more sense it really isn’t that big of a deal. It seems like hearing people tend to get worked up over little things in comparison.

Deaf culture can be very different from hearing culture. Before going to any deaf events a person should learn about deaf culture so they are not doing something someone would consider rude. It is just like learning about the culture of a different country before visiting. Some things in the deaf culture can be a bit backwards to hearing people but it is just as backwards as the US compared to some other places in the world.