Not This Too, SCOTUS

It’s been 32 years since the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed.  When I was growing up, there was no such thing as accommodations for people with disabilities, like my Deaf parents.  Their education was limited by restrictive language practices at most of the schools for the Deaf.  Hearing professionals had decided that Deaf people needed to assimilate into the hearing world and, therefore, they were forbidden to use sign language.  My mom went to Lexington School for the Deaf where she was brain washed into thinking that signing was shameful and animalistic.  Luckily for my dad, his school allowed the use of sign language.

There was no close captioning when I was growing up.  My parents didn’t watch the news or most programs because they didn’t understand what was going on.  Mouths moved too fast to accurately lipread more than a word or two.  There were no interpreters in little bubbles signing what was going on.  In fact, there were no interpreters.  Deaf parents relied on their hearing children (called KODAs—Kids Of Deaf Adults) for phone calls, doctor appointments, and just about everything else.

Deaf people were limited in the types of jobs they could get.  My dad was a printer; my uncle was a machinist.  My mom was a keypunch operator.  Deaf people could work in factories and on assembly lines.  In the 1960s, Deaf people could not be lawyers, doctors, managers, or any other position that required easy communication.

Hearing people generally looked down on my parents, thinking them “deaf and dumb”.  There was this attitude that somehow my parents were lesser than hearing people.  They were dismissive at best and, at worst, patronizing and paternalistic.  It’s as though they believed that in addition to the ears not working, Deaf brains must not work either.  My parents chafed under this kind of treatment.  It angered them.

They didn’t hear everything hearing people said about them.  We KODAs did.  It was a hurt we carried within us.

Things began to change in the 1970s.  In 1973, the Vocational Rehabilitation Act passed.  Sections 503 and 504 protected people with disabilities from discrimination on the job and in education.  Wow!  Suddenly, there were rights and opportunities not only for my parents but for anyone with challenges whether it be visual, mobility or what have you. 

Yet, by 1976 regulations to arm the Act with teeth weren’t signed.  Wearied by the delay, a country wide protest and sit-in was organized.  I stayed overnight in HEW Secretary Califano’s office with a roomful of protestors who were Deaf, blind, in wheelchairs, other mobility challenged and a handful of able bodied.  That’s a whole other story I need to tell.  We got the regulations signed.

My parents were middle-aged in 1976.  They were thrilled to be able to receive captioned TV on Line 21.  Had they wanted, they would have been able to qualify for a wider variety of jobs and education.  Now they were entitled to sign language interpreters for doctor visits, court appearances, job trainings, conferences, and classrooms.  In 1978, I became a certified interpreter under the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID).

Following that came more laws to assist people with challenges.  Next was PL94-142, which provided for the least restrictive educational environment.  Deaf adults took up the study of law, medicine, management, science and just about any subject they desired.  Hearing parents of deaf children could choose to mainstream their kids in hearing schools.  The children were provided with interpreters who stayed with them during the school day.  For years, I worked in the schools as an educational interpreter.

And, finally, in 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed.

My fear now is that SCOTUS could take all that away with another bad decision.  They seem to be on a track to undo all the fundamental rights protections passed in the last fifty odd years.  They’ve already undone Roe v. Wade.  They also decided that Native American reservations are not sovereign, breaking yet another treaty.  They seem to be targeting the right to contraception next, to be followed by gay marriage.

I don’t doubt they would gleefully return people with challenges to second- or third-class citizens.

I will fight it if I see even a hint of that type of thinking anywhere.

I remember what it was like for my parents.  I remember what it was like for me.  Not again, ever.