Why, hello there. Once again, I’ve been on the road, this time heading to central Michigan for Biscuit’s 65th birthday party. Unfortunately, one hour before the party started she fell down the porch, and we thought she broke her ankle, so Dad took her to the ER to get it checked out. Meanwhile, the party started, and I tried to play hostess to all these guests, some of whom I did not know. What’s special, though, is that once people told me their names, I knew who they were because Biscuit speaks so fondly of them all! Isn’t that nice? Eventually, she showed up and was able to say hello to everyone.
During the week I attended the Boozy Book Club, a new group I joined this summer. August was different; instead of reading one book together, everyone brought in a book to talk about. I shared True Biz by Sara Nović because I’m always happy for an opportunity not only to share an amazing book, but to talk about the oppression Deaf people face and why it doesn’t have to be that way.
I think I made a good impression; an attendee said she’s part of a charitable group that donates lots of money to ASL (I’m not sure what that means, as ASL is a language, not a cause), and she wanted me to speak to the group. I kept saying no, but that I would ask the president of the local Deaf organization. She insisted she wanted me. Finally, I said, what you’re asking for is the equivalent of asking a white person to be the featured speaker for a Black History Month celebration. I’m always careful when I talk about ASL and Deaf Culture because it’s not my place to teach about them, but our Deaf professor has encouraged us to always inform hearing people about the oppression Deaf people face due to their culture, language, and perceived limitations.
Another thing I thought of was how I’ve seen interviews with folks who were born without a limb asked how they get along with a lack. What does that person inevitably say? They don’t feel they’re missing something they never had. Yes, the world is challenging because it wasn’t designed for them, but they’re not “missing” something. People who were born deaf and learn ASL and partake in Deaf Culture feel the same way. People who had hearing and lost it frequently feel a loss, because they did lose something. This is why it is offensive to people born deaf who are part of Deaf Culture; they feel insulted when someone says “hearing impaired.”
I wanted to discuss a tangential conversation. In the U.S., when people say “the ghetto,” they’re not using it in a positive way, and we’re all picturing the exact same stereotypes: a poor Black community, gun violence, baby mammas, drug dealing fathers, etc. You never picture other ghettos, for instance, a Polish ghetto, a Jewish ghetto, etc. Merriam and Webster define ghetto in many ways, including “a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.”
M&W also note that ghetto can be used in a disparaging way, like when people add it as an adjective for people or behaviors. Last spring, someone I know called children “ghetto,” and I could immediately picture the children they worked with. That’s because “ghetto” is used disparagingly so regularly that there is no doubt what that person meant. I told them not to call children ghetto (side note: I find myself lately frequently calling out racism and classism). Later, I emailed the person the reasons why “ghetto” is not an appropriate name for people, behaviors, body parts, or even places — because those places are also communities. I originally learned about the negative effects of calling a place “the ghetto” from educator Jonathan Kozol, whose work is amazing, informative, and deeply sad. If you have not read him, please do.
Later, after I told the individual not to call children ghetto, another person who was in the room said they took their spouse to the ghetto — knowing I don’t use “ghetto” in a pejorative way, but they said “That’s what it is, the ghetto.” They then proceeded to tell a story about taking their spouse to the ghetto, and the spouse was terrified of the neighborhood. The story was an hour long. I tell you, my heart sighed (and the conversation was not appropriate in general for the setting).
I’ve been on the lookout in my day to day for the way people talk about each other, and I hear a negative connotation, such as “impaired” or “ghetto,” and, as always, my old friend “fat,” used to describe an individual people don’t like (as if it’s a personality characteristic and not a body), I am saying something. Do you call Trump fat because you hate him? Thanks for throwing the rest of us under the bus. I don’t know that I’m changing anyone, but I am certainly tell them who I am when I speak up, and that I won’t be complicit or neutral.
Grab the Lapels 
Oh I’m with you on the language issue Melanie. I emotionally rise up with any sort of labelling I detect, though I don’t always call it out. I detest generalisations which is what labelling is, and it’s usually derogatory, if not also often aggressive.
I’m sorry about Biscuit’s fall. Falling is an issue we start to become aware of from, in fact, around our mid-60s. I am cautious now in all sorts of situations that I never used to be. It sounds like she didn’t break her ankle?
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She went to the ER and got an x-ray, and they said it was a bad sprain. Later, she went to her doctor’s office to get her regular B12 shot, and the nurse asked about her foot. Then, the nurse went and got the doctor, who is a regular doctor Mon-Wed and an ER doctor the rest of the time. He said that it probably IS broken, but it’s hard to see that before it starts to heal. Healing shows calcification, so she’s getting x-rays again soon (maybe today? I should text her). Also, the ER folks gave her an air boot, which doesn’t even address the area where there is severe pain (on the TOP of her foot, not her ankle).
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Oh poor Biscuit. Breaks do seem hard to diagnose sometimes. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for her.
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Thank you 💖
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Oh poor Biscuit! No doubt that was tricky playing hostess to those strangers, but sounds like you handled in beautifully.
I’m at once in awe of your ability to call out people publicly, but also deathly afraid to do it myself. I don’t like ‘rocking the boat’ in public situations, which I know isn’t very good, and really being a bystander to this hurtful language is the opposite of progress, but the thought of correcting someone or giving reasons why they shouldn’t’ use a word makes me sick with dread. That being said, your explanation to that person about why you shouldn’t speak for the deaf community sounds like something I could do, because that’s a valuable way to frame something, maybe they honestly didn’t know. How did that person react?
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The person asking me to speak to her group sort of let it go, and she didn’t approach me after book club to get my information, though it’s possible I snuck out before she caught me. I’m not sure, but maybe she wasn’t interested anymore. If that’s the case, it’s totally her loss.
As the party started winding down, my younger cousins (all early 20s) drew a chalk outline where my mom fell, like they used to do in old detective movies 😂
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LOLOLOL that’s hilarious! I bet your mom had a good laugh about that when she got home.
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You’re really doing a great job of explaining things to people in a non-aggressive way and I think they leave you with new seeds planted in their brains about how to speak about people. Kudos!
I’m glad Biscuit is okay (it sounds like she is?)
True Biz is a great book. I just recommended it to a patron a couple of weeks ago.
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Thank you for saying that. I had a situation with someone who made a racist comment, but given our relationship, I couldn’t go full-out “how dare you?!” because we have a relationship that I have to maintain. It’s been hard, but good.
Biscuit has to get more x-rays because her regular doctor, who is also an ER physician but not the one who saw her right after the fall, said a break usually shows up a week after the incident because they can see healing on an x-ray more clearly than a small break.
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It really annoys me, on Twitter mainly, to have people disparage the appearance of people they oppose politically. I don’t think it proves anything to call Trump fat. Even his amazing hair is just a distraction. Yes he’s vain, but more importantly for a potential President, he’s lazy, mendacious, ill informed and a fascist.
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Right?! THANK YOU! I have have always said that if someone is name-calling, they’ve lost the argument because they haven’t a leg to stand on. However, I got cut off by a bunch of guys in a pickup truck this past weekend, and the driver flipped me off. I was so raging mad that Nick and I started a new game. One of us would say, “I hope….” and then fill in the blank with the worst possible things you can think of that might happen to a person. I wouldn’t play this game with anyone else, but it certainly made me feel better!
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MP-You could “tsk tsk be gone!” It works for me! 😅
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OOooooh, I was too mad for tsking! Seriously, if you were in that car with us, you’d think we were strangers, we said such vile things. Now I’m wondering if people get married just so they have one secret person to carry all the worst parts of themselves and not tattle (unless that divorce happens–then it’s anyone’s guess what happens to your secrets).
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I hope Biscuit’s ankle is ok and the new x-rays confirm it’s not broken!
Good on you for speaking up! So many people say nothing because they feel too uncomfortable and don’t want to “offend” anyone, but really, someone has already been offensive and it’s not more offensive to point that out! You might not change someone right away, but maybe it makes a dent and eventually they change.
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I haven’t heard the report from her doctor yet, but I think preliminary results suggest it’s not broken?
For me, the conversation is less about being offended and more about how such comments are dangerous. I’ve read and studied too much about education, especially K-12, and how sense of self really affects the life path of students. For instance, I recall a chapter from Jonathan Kozol, who wrote that schools in urban areas tend to repeatedly put girls in classes where they learn how to braid instead of STEM — and sometimes repeatedly put them in the class.
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