Boston Globe Op_Ed Gets It All Wrong

Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young has written an editorial column on the Unity for Gallaudet movement that gets everything wrong. Not only that, it is very biased against the Unity for Gallaudet participants. The FSSA's work is far from done - there is a lot of misunderstanding in the hearing world, and even among deaf (not Deaf) people, that needs to be corrected as a result of the far-reaching coverage of the Unity for Gallaudet protest.

1. She refers to Elizabeth Zinser, the hearing temporary president from 1988, as "Singer." She obviously did not do her homework.
2. She promotes the image of "identity politics gone mad" when the Unity for Gallaudet participants have made it clear that it is not about identity politics at all.
3. She zeroes in on the "not deaf enough" thing. We bloggers have already debunked that, ad nauseum. She also claims that the protestors "backed off" from that "argument" when the argument was never made in the first place. It was NOT the protestors who made the "not deaf enough" remark but the media picked it up from the original source and ran with it.
   
4. She blasts the short but excellent letter written to the Washington Post by Kathleen Wood.
5. Her definition of deaf culture would be accurate if she had not used the word "radical." Deaf culture is not radical.
6. Like many hearing people, she has a hard time grasping the concept of deafness as a disability, yet we do not consider ourselves disabled because we are quite capable people. Our deafness is a disability only in that it creates barriers, and we have to deal with discrimination.
7. She claims most deaf people do not belong to Deaf culture. That may be true, but oral deaf people do belong to the deaf community even if they are not "culturally" deaf.
8. She mischaracterizes many schools for the deaf. She says they pay only lip service to auditory skills. That's an insult to the many schools for the deaf and programs for the deaf that work to teach children to both sign and speak.
   
9. Not only that, she claims oral deaf schools have been targeted for protests? Can someone explain that one to me?
10. She claims deaf people have railed against cochlear implants. Like many in the hearing world, she continues to believe that deaf people as a majority are strongly opposed to implants. As we already know, more and more Deaf people are getting them. Plus she says deaf parents have denied implants to their deaf children? At the protest march to capitol hill, I saw deaf parents with implanted deaf children in strollers.
11. She claims deaf people oppose research into deafness in an effort to find "cures."
12. She has totally swallowed the argument that the protestors don't accept technology. I am not going to bother repeating what other deaf bloggers have said to debunk this statement.