Summary Of A Lens On Deaf Identities By Irene W. Leigh

As Irene W. Leigh writes in her book A Lens on Deaf Identities, the face of the Deaf community that is acknowledged in the public eye is often the “homogenous white face…with the presence of diverse ethnic groups barely acknowledged or purposefully kept out of sight in the literature.” This statement reflects the reality of the optics of the Deaf community—one which aligns with the groups who hold power in the current political structures across the colonized world. White people are often the default, and those who are seen, and everyone who doesn’t fall into this category falls away—at an increasing pace depending on if one has multiple marginalities (class, gender, sexual orientation, etc). Holding multiple marginalized identities makes

Johnson, preferred named of Najma, is a Black, Deaf Panqueer activist. She graduated from St. Mary's School for the Deaf (SMSD) in Buffalo, NY. In 1995, when she was attending St. Mary’s, Buffalo was named as one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. Najma speaks about about her experiences at SMSD were opposing in many ways; while SMSD exposed her to ASL, which she hadn’t had the opportunity to learn before college, she also had to deal with extreme sexism, queerphobia and racism from classmates and residents of Buffalo. It was through thinking through and surviving this cognitive dissonance that she began to remedy all the parts of her identity, and she began moving towards identifying as a culturally Black Deaf woman. Later, she attended Gallaudet for graduate school, where she was heavily involved in queer activist spaces, and became involved in Zumi, a group for Black lesbians in the Atlanta area whose “mission is to empower and affirm the lives of lesbians of African decedent through scholarship, leader development, support/discussion, social activities, drumming, outreach and education.” She was the only Deaf person in this group, and she found comfort within the space because she found that others in Zami were confused on supporting everyone, no matter how many marginalized identities they held. It was one of the first times she felt like she didn’t have to pick and choose an identity: her Blackness, her queerness, her Deafness, her womanness, but

He was the first Black Deaf South Afrikaner to publicly come out as gay, and later the first to publicly announce his HIV positive status. In an article titled “Deaf, Gay, HIV Positive and Proud,” authors Karin Willemse, Ruth Morgan, in conversation with Meltese, contextualize all these identities, and how Meltese has come to figure out how to live in the intersections of them all. They write that “in addition to being Deaf and gay, John Meletse is an HIV positive, black, unemployed Sowetan. Judged from the dominant hearing, heteronormative, white middle-class South African perspective, he is multiply disadvantaged.” Through places and people, Meltese came to reconcile each of his identities as something to be empowering, rather than disempowering. He says that after coming out as both gay and HIV positive, he says that he hopes to be a role model for Deaf youths: “It is important for learners to know that I am both Deaf and IV positive as Deaf learners do not have any HIV positive role models…In the Deaf world, HIV is still highly stigmatized and there are no Deaf people that I know of besides myself who are publicly out as HIV positive.”5 Meltese has gone on to become a largely prominent HIV/Aids activist in both Hearing and Deaf communities, even through his initial depression and shock after learning he was positive. However, we also learn that while Meltese has worked to both accept and see his