An Open Letter to Deaf Hawai'i

The human psyche has two great sicknesses:

the urge to carry vendetta across generations,

and the tendency to fasten group labels on

people rather than see them as individuals.
—Richard Dawkins

It has been nearly six months since the protest first started at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. We have read continuous messages in various internet systems, expressing everything from apparently ecstatic support to speculatively homicidal threat. Many thousands of Deaf people around the world must have read everything now in DeafRead, and millions more have heard its contents discussed in the media. In response, letters and emails and comments have come from Deaf and hearing people at every stage of their lives.

I myself have also heard from some of embattled and angry people living on Oahu who wrote me nasty and disrespectful messages, all of them in the form of anonymity. They told me I was wrong about Tent City, about Joseph Mesa, and about Jane K. Fernandes. Judging from this particular group of correspondents, the American spirit of freedom is fast becoming as blinkered as the oppressors at Gallaudet University.

Having written my argument against the selection of the ninth president of Gallaudet University, I would like to take the occasion of posting this blog as an opportunity to respond to these angry people on Oahu. There are by no means straw-man arguments; these are what real people told me that was devastating about JKF. From three courses in journalism, I have learned to simply report them. Their reactions are understandable since they suffer the NIMB (Not in My Backyard) syndrome - an element of the oppressed.

As I argue in my blogs, certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing. In fact, respect for evidence and rational argument is what makes peaceful cooperation possible. As human beings, we live in a perpetual choice between conversation and violence; what, apart from a fundamental willingness to be reasonable, can guarantee that we will keep talking to one another?

One comment I received from an angry Anonymous on Oahu began: “You have no business to be in Hawaii.” Both this statement and the anonymity are un-American… and not of the aloha nature! I even doubt to high heaven that JKF would be proud of this anonymous comment.