LANE, Harlan (1992). The Mask of Benevolence. Disabling the Deaf Community. New York: Alfred Knopf. (tr. port. de Cristina Reis, A Máscara da Benevolência. A Comunidade Surda Amordaçada, Lisboa, Instituto Piaget, 1997, pp. 286).
Review by Heather M. Sauber
Illinois State University
April 8, 1996
In the book The Mask of Benevolence, Harlan Lane compares the ideas that much like any minority in this country, blacks, women, Latinos and Asians, deaf people are also seen as cultural outsiders. Although deaf people look like every day individuals, they have their own language, values and cultures, that breaks them away from anyone else. Regardless of race, class, or gender each deaf person is discriminated against in this country as well as half of the other countries around the globe.
Most often Lane sees that the problems that are surrounding most deaf people is the stereotype "deaf and dumb". They are seen that way because the majority of educators, audiologists, and psychologists can not see beyond the mask. The tests that are administered to these individuals are often one-sided. The test givers are just as naive about how to administer the test instructions as the test taker themselves. The deaf persons results are lower than most other people. With a lower I.Q. rate, those who take the test are then seen as retarded.
Because of their lack of hearing and the primary usage of the manual language, American Sign Language (ASL), the deaf person is believed to be unable to perform in a hearing world. The deaf person will continually have a hard time trying to communicate with the people of the world when they are only taught rudimentary fundamentals of the English language. They will constantly be known in this world as "disabled" therefore encompassing them in a stereotype that refers to the fact that they must always be dependant upon someone else.
In fact this is true. For many years, the audist and the deaf person have entered into a world of elective co-dependence. Lane's position comes from a more historical stance. The hearing people believed that it was their duty to care for those who were in need while the deaf, whom were catered to, accepted this need for care because to them it was a sort of nurturing and loving and affection .
Lane also discusses the deaf culture. By other people's standards the deaf culture is not really prevalent, but Lane found that to be just the opposite. Deaf people have their own set of clubs and organizations that help them assimilate into the hearing world. It is often believed that deaf people have poor social awareness, are often isolated, cannot understand other hearing people, and can not communicate. Most like African American cultural stereotypes, deaf people appear to have one more thing in common, they are incompetent socially, cognitively, behavioral and emotionally. The minority itself believes that the only real solidarity is with others of that minority. The deaf person should feel free to flaunt his manual language and not be afraid of it.
Lane makes the majority of his allusions to deaf children along with the problems of Spanish-speaking children. Even though the both groups "come" to this country speaking very little if any of the native language, they are required to grasp it and use it as part of the everyday language. Lane states that:
"when a single language is the national language of the great majority, the dominant language group can inspire to impose that language on all the people in an attempt to replace minority languages outright"(112).
(continuar em: http://lilt.ilstu.edu/gmklass/pos334/archive/lane.htm)
« Les mots sont une bizarrerie pour moi depuis mon enfance. Je dis bizarrerie, pour ce qu'il y eut d'abord d'étrange.
Que voulaient dire ces mimiques des gens autour de moi, leur bouche en cercle, ou étirée en grimaces différentes, leurs lèvres en curieuses positions ? Je " sentais " quelque chose de différent lorsqu'il s'agissait de la colère, de la tristesse ou du contentement, mais le mur invisible qui me séparait des sons correspondant à ces mimiques était à la fois vitre transparente et béton. Je m'agitais d'un côté de ce mur, et les autres faisaient de même de l'autre côté. Lorsque j'essayais de reproduire comme un petit singe leurs mimiques, ce n'étaient toujours pas des mots, mais des lettres visuelles. Parfois, on m'apprenait un mot d'une syllabe ou de deux syllabes qui se ressemblaient, comme " papa ", " maman ", " tata ".
Les concepts les plus simples étaient encore plus mystérieux. Hier, demain, aujourd'hui. Mon cerveau fonctionnait au présent. Que voulaient dire le passé et l'avenir ?
Lorsque j'ai compris, à l'aide des signes, qu'hier était derrière moi, et demain devant moi, j'ai fait un bond fantastique. Un progrès immense, que les entendants ont du mal à imaginer, habitués qu'ils sont à comprendre depuis le berceau les mots et les concepts répétés inlassablement, sans même qu'ils s'en rendent compte. »
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