Thursday, March 27, 2008
Apparently it's all Darwin's fault
I learned today in my Intro to Deaf Studies class that it was Darwin's book, "The Origin of the Species" that started all of the discrimination against deaf people. Since people believed his theory that humans came from apes, and since apes use hand motions to communicate, people began seeing signed language as no better than the hand motions used by the apes and must therefore not be a real language, but simply a primitive form of communication. It must therefore be forbidden for humans to use it. So, they started forcing oralism on deaf people, thinking they were helping them because they were educating them so that they would no longer be primitive like the apes, but advanced like other humans. This started it all. Kinda makes me wonder if their culture would be different if Darwin hadn't written his book? Probably slightly, or at least not based so much on rejection anyway.
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That is not the only bad impact Darwin had. Describing humans as a sophisticated animal form tended to undermine the issue of morality. And 'social Darwinism', the survival of the fittest, became a justification for ruthless disregard of humans who 'stand in the way of progress', which might just mean they do not want to have their family homes uprooted to make way for profitable development. But I'm sure you knew that. I've learned something from your blog! Thank you.
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