For a few weeks now, I’ve been thinking about the accusations of separatism that a lot of minorities hear from majority communities. These accusations come in many forms:
“Why would you teach your child ASL instead of lipreading? Wouldn’t you want him or her to learn how to mingle with the Hearing world, too?”
“Why do you only hang out with other gay people? Straight people are cool, too.”
“How come you stay in your immigrant community instead of making a greater effort to assimilate in mainstream American society?”
The list goes on. The words may be different, but the basic sentiment boils down to this: we minorities should assimilate into mainstream culture.
But here’s the thing. Whenever people accuse us of separatism, the central assumption is that the majority community is inherently better than the minority community and that assimilating into the majority community therefore makes one a more complete person. When I see, for example, hearing people bemoan the fact that, without a cochlear implant, a child could be ‘trapped’ in the Deaf community – well, what’s wrong with that? What makes the Hearing world so much better than the Deaf world?
One of the main advantages of being surrounded with a community of like-minded individuals is the fact that one feels a lot less isolated. I know that I definitely felt like I was alone as a teenager – intellectually, I knew there were other deaf queer people out there, but that didn’t help me because I felt alienated from the majority of my hearing straight peers. I could not understand their lives on an emotional level and vice-versa. Hanging out with other queer people lessened this isolation somewhat, but I still felt like they couldn’t understand me and vice-versa because they were hearing and I’m not. I was expected to learn the basics of their lives, so I did, but society didn’t expect the same from them. I know a new person will become true friend when they begin to ask me questions in a genuine effort to understand what life is truly like for me. But it does get tiring sometimes to constantly explain your reality to people who have the privilege of never having to think about life on my terms.
When I found more people who belonged in one or more of the minority groups that I belong to, I felt a lot of relief. I don’t have to explain myself all the time; we can just concentrate on sharing the shit that’s happened to us today without having to explain things like systematic heterosexism – we just get it. Then we can talk about video games or whatever. So I do find it comforting to be around like-minded individuals. I can integrate myself in mainstream society extremely well – the majority of the people that I work with are hearing and straight as a pole – but at the end of the day, being with other deaf and/or queer people is like putting on my most comfortable pair of shoes after wearing a nice pair that pinches.
One thing that people miss when they accuse us of separatism is that our minority communities are far from homogenous. I’m deaf, but so is that blue-eyed black man. I’m bisexual, but so is that Latina. etc. Admittedly, both of these minority communities have issues with homogeneity – especially racial homogeneity – just look at how many white people are in a gay bar and how many white people go to Gallaudet. A lot of the time, it just doesn’t reflect the racial diversity that you’d find out on the streets.
But, personally, I enjoy being with other people who are in intersecting minorities. It doesn’t matter to me if they are hearing and latino and gay while I am white and deaf and bisexual or whatever; I just keep in mind that I don’t know a lot about what they face as a member of those intersecting minorities and chat with them. I feel like I can relate better to people who belong to multiple minorities like myself than to people who only belong to one minority. We may not share the same exact minorities, but we share the feeling of not fitting in completely in many places. And I find that it is easier to find other people who experience intersecting minorities in minority communities than in majority communities.
One final thing that bothers me about the accusation of separatism is that it is so hypocritical. This is honestly what bothers me most about it. People in majority communities say they want us to be exposed to a wide variety of lifestyles, but if you look at their actions, they live in these little bubbles of homogeneity.
To illustrate what I mean – I was thinking about the fact that my parents wanted me to be able to interact with both the Deaf and Hearing world. Interacting with a greater number of people would be wonderful, right? Hence the move to Washington, DC: I could meet Deaf people and Hearing people; I could meet gay people and straight people and people of all varieties of queerness; I could meet people of every shade imaginable from every country and family background imaginable; I could meet everyone from any socioeconomic class; I could meet people of any political leaning and religious affiliation. I would be able to make friends with people who are like my parents – hearing, white, straight – but I also would be able to make friends with people who are like me and with people who are not like me at all. This, in fact, is just what I did at my school in DC.
Except, oh, yeah, we lived in a big house in the suburbs with other people who looked exactly like us. Then we moved to an entire state that is one of the least diverse states in the nation.
What gives? If my parents had truly wanted me to be able to communicate with and interact with a greater diversity of people, why did they retreat into a bubble of people who are of the same class, race, religion, and political persuasion as themselves? I love my parents, but they do have some major blind spots about this kind of thing.
But it’s not just me – I see it all the time. People say that they want their deaf kids to interact with a greater number of people – but that usually only means hearing people who look just like themselves. Deaf people? Forget it, those people are crazy. Black people? Scary. Poor people? Also scary. And so forth.
And that is the crux of my problem with the accusations of separatism: often, people who make those statements haven’t turned the mirror on themselves. They accuse us of unfairly favoring our minority communities, when in fact, the exact same thing could be said about them: the brotherhood of white wealthy men, for example, is a small, closed society that excludes the majority of people.
So, if you are a member of a privileged minority – commonly known as the majority – and you find yourself asking things like, “Why do those gays have to have a special pride march?” and “Why can’t Deaf people just learn to talk so they can communicate with Hearing people?” – please look at your own reflection. Don’t accuse us of separatism until you make a genuine effort to include us. Until you do that, we have every right to remain suspicious of you and retreat to our own communities at the end of the day.
