Tag: black

“I have to make sure my hands aren’t ashy before signing,” Nakia Smith, who is deaf, told nearly 400,000 followers.

In one of the dozens of popular videos she posted on TikTok last year, Ms Smith compared her habit of adding a dab of quick lotion to her hands before she started signing the sip of water that a hearing person takes before starting to speak.

Since Ms Smith created her account last April, the little ritual has attracted millions of eyes, drawing attention to a corner of the internet steeped in history and practice of a language some scholars believe too often overlooked. : American Black Sign Language, or BASL.

The variations and dialects of spoken English, including what linguists call African-American English, have been the subject of intensive study for years. But research on black ASL, which differs considerably from American Sign Language, is decades behind schedule, obscuring much of the history of sign language.

About 11 million Americans consider themselves deaf or hard of hearing, according to the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey, and blacks make up nearly 8% of that population. Carolyn McCaskill, founding director of the Center for Black Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University, a private Washington university for the deaf and hard of hearing, estimates that about 50% of black deaf people use Black ASL.

Now, young black signatories are celebrating the language on social media, exposing millions of people to the history of a dialect preserved by its users and enriched by their lived experiences.

Shades of Black ASL

Black ASL users are often faced with the assumption that their language is a lesser version of contemporary ASL, but several researchers claim that Black ASL is in fact more aligned with the early days of American Sign Language, which was influenced by French sign language.

Ms Smith, whose sign name is Charmay, has a simple explanation of the difference between the two languages: “The difference between BASL and ASL is that BASL has a seasoning,” she says.

Compare ASL with black ASL and there are some notable differences: Black ASL users tend to use more two-handed signs, and they often place signs around the forehead, rather than lower on the body. .

“Here you have a black dialect developed under the most oppressive conditions which in many ways has turned out to be more standard than its white counterpart,” said Robert Bayley, professor of linguistics at the University of California at Davis. .

As white deaf schools in the 1870s and 1880s moved towards oralism – which placed less emphasis on signature and more emphasis on teaching deaf students to speak and lip read – black signatories have better maintained American Sign Language standards, and some white sign language teachers ended up moving to black deaf schools.

According to Ceil Lucas, sociolinguist and professor emeritus at Gallaudet University, many white deaf schools were indifferent to the education of black deaf students.

“The attitude was, ‘We don’t care about black kids,’ she said. “We don’t care whether they get oralism or not – they can do whatever they want. And so, these children took advantage of the presence of white deaf teachers in the classroom.

Some black signers also tend to use larger signature space and emoticons to a greater extent when signing compared to white signers. Over time, Black ASL also incorporated African American English terms. For example, the black ASL sign for “tightWhich means “cool,” which comes from Texas, is not the same as the concept sign for “tight,” which means snug or tight. There are also signs for everyday words like “bathroom,” “towel,” and “chicken,” which are completely different in ASL and black ASL, depending on where a signer lives or grew up.

Just as black hearing people adjust the way they speak “to meet the needs” of their white counterparts, black ASL users use a similar mechanism depending on their environment, according to Joseph Hill, an associate professor at the National Technical. Institute of Rochester Institute of Technology. the deaf.

As one of the first black students to attend the Alabama School for the Deaf, Dr McCaskill said the code change allowed him to fit in with white students, while still maintaining his black ASL style.

“We’ve kept our natural way of communicating to the point where many of us subconsciously switch the code,” she said.

Ms Smith said she noticed others communicated differently to her around college, when she attended a school that consisted mostly of hearing students.

“I started signing like other Deaf students who don’t have deaf families,” said Ms. Smith, whose family has had deaf parents in four of the past five generations. “I became good friends with them and signed as they did to make them feel comfortable.”

Noticing how her relatives sign – her grandfather Jake Smith Jr. and great-grandparents Jake Smith Sr. and Mattie Smith have all been featured on her TikTok – Ms Smith notes that they still tend to use signs that ‘they learned growing up.

Generational differences often emerge when Ms Smith’s older parents try to communicate with her friends or when they need help communicating on doctor’s appointments, she said, illustrating the evolution of Black ASL over the generations.

Just like any black experience, deaf black experiences with Black ASL vary from person to person and seldom are a perfect match for what others expect them to be.

A language born of oppression

Similar to much of black American history, Black ASL was born from the immoral seeds of racial segregation.

One of the most comprehensive looks at language comes from the Black ASL Project, a six-year study launched in 2007 that draws on interviews with about 100 subjects in six southern states, with results compiled in “The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL. “(Dr McCaskill, Dr Hill, Dr Bayley and Dr Lucas are authors.)

The project revealed that segregation in the South played an important role in the development of Black ASL.

According to the team’s study, schools for black deaf children in the United States began to emerge after the Civil War, with 17 states and the District of Columbia having black deaf institutions or departments. The first American school for the deaf, later known as the American School for the Deaf, opened in 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut, and did not initially accept black students.

The separation has led to black deaf schools being very different from their white counterparts. White schools tended to focus on an oral method of learning and offer a curriculum, while black schools tended to focus on signing and offered vocational training.

“There was no expectation that black deaf children would be prepared for college or even continue their education,” said Dr. McCaskill, who began to lose hearing around the age of 5 and has attended the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind in Talladega, Ala. .

In 1952 Louise B. Miller, joined by other parents in Washington, sued the District of Columbia Board of Education for not allowing black deaf children to Kendall School, the only school in town for the deaf.

The court ruled in Ms. Miller’s favor under the precedent that states could not provide educational facilities in their state for one race and not the other. Black students were allowed to attend Kendall School in 1952, with classes becoming fully integrated in 1954 after the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Desegregation was not immediate in the South, however, as most schools resisted racial integration until threatened with loss of federal funding. In Louisiana, the state’s white and black deaf schools delayed integration until 1978.

In 1968, Dr. McCaskill became a part of the Alabama School for the Deaf Integrated First Class. As a teenager in a newly integrated classroom, she had a daunting realization: she couldn’t understand her white teachers.

“Even if they signed, I didn’t understand,” she said. “And I didn’t understand why I didn’t understand.

A new generation takes ownership

With the pandemic forcing many people to flock to virtual social spaces, Isidore Niyongabo, president of National Black Deaf Advocates, said he has seen online interactions grow within his organization and across the community. deaf black people.

“We are starting to see an improvement with the recognition of black deaf culture in America,” Niyongabo said, adding that he expected it “to continue to spread around the world.”

Vlogs and online discussion panels – for millions of people, essential parts of pandemic life – have helped create a more cohesive community, he said.

Last year, the documentary “Signing Black in America” ​​and the Netflix series “Deaf U” brought the stories of deaf people to a wider audience.

Likewise, Ms. Smith’s TikTok videos have gained attention across the internet, including and particularly among black audiences.

Ms Smith said she could see herself working with other black deaf creators online to turn up the stories of black deaf people, contributing to the recent explosion in Black ASL content which, among other things, has pundits optimistic about it. future of Black ASL and its preservation.

“History matters,” she said in a video. “Am I trying to divide the language between ASL and BASL?” No, I just carried the story.

Especially on social media, younger generations of black deaf people have expressed themselves more about Black ASL, proudly claiming it as part of their culture and identity, said Dr McCaskill.

“Historically, so much has been taken away from us, and they ultimately feel like ‘it’s ours’,” she said. “‘It’s mine. I have something.'”