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Impaired," he explained. I used to think that the pride the Deaf Community shares with each other was common knowledge, until one particular undergraduate speech class I was in several years ago. The professor brought up the discussion of the Deaf community. He introduced a true court case about a child who was Deaf. The mother of the child, who was Hearing, wanted the child to be equipped with an assistive hearing device. The grandmother of the child, who was Deaf, did not want the child to be equipped with the device, but rather wanted him to be taught about the Deaf Culture and understand his heritage within that culture. As the professor was describing the case, my thoughts were, "Wow, that would be difficult. I certainly understand both points of view." So I was really surprised when everyone else in the class overwhelming supported the mother and indicated complete surprise that anyone would even argue such a thing in court. I found myself defending the grandmother and receiving the appalled criticism from the entire class. One student, exasperated by my comments about the pride in the Deaf culture, said, "If you had a daughter who had a hearing impairment, would you want her to remain Deaf or get an assistive device to help her hear?" I replied without thought, "I would want her to get an assistive device." The student nodded her head as if she had won the argument. I continued, "But I'm not Deaf. And I could not possibly teach my daughter the pride and the heritage of the Deaf community. If I were that child's grandmother, I would want to teach him about the culture that was so vital to me. The grandmother does not see being Deaf as an impairment, and she does not want her grandson to ever consider himself as impaired."

After letting me sweat it out for half the class period, the professor finally stepped in, looking at a vocal young woman who was African American, and asking her, "If you were a white male in this society, you would certainly have it easier, wouldn't you?"

She nodded.

"So if you had the chance of changing yourself from an African American woman to a White man, would you do so, just to make your life easier?"

She looked at him funny, and then shook her head no.

"This is the same case we have here. Yes, the child would have an easier life if he had an assistive device to help him hear. But we are not just talking about having an easier life; we are talking about being part of a culture."

Before the professor put it in those terms, I had never thought about it quite like that, and neither had anyone else in the class. I even had to rethink my answer to the young woman about automatically getting my young daughter an assistive device rather than considering teaching her about the Deaf Culture. For the first time in that speech class, we were all speechless.

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