View@RIT/NTID Presents Black ASL: History, Culture, and Language. A Webinar by Dr. Joseph C. Hill

Summary

The webinar "Black ASL: History, Culture, and Language" presented by Dr. Joseph C. Hill, dives into the unique experiences and dynamics within the Black Deaf community. Emphasizing historical segregation, the structural racism that persists today, and the linguistic variations like Black ASL, Dr. Hill illustrates the complex interplay between race, culture, and language. Through historical timelines, studies on sign language differences, and personal stories, he highlights the importance of understanding Black ASL's cultural significance and the need for continued research into its evolution and impact, reflecting broader societal structures.

Highlights

• Dr. Joseph Hill shares insights on Black ASL in a riveting webinar session 👨🏾‍🏫.
• Historical segregation played a significant role in shaping Black ASL 📜.
• Differences in signing styles and language development are discussed in depth 👋🏾.
• The webinar includes personal stories, amplifying the lived experiences of the Black Deaf community 🗣️.
• Dr. Hill calls for more resources and educational efforts to spread awareness about Black ASL 🌐.

Key Takeaways

• Black ASL holds a rich history rooted in segregation and cultural evolution ✊🏿.
• Language can be a tool of both oppression and cultural pride ✌🏽.
• Dr. Hill emphasizes the need for more research on Black ASL 🕵🏾‍♂️.
• Integration of Black Deaf schools took many years, highlighting systemic racism ⌛.
• Resources and education are key to understanding and appreciating Black ASL 📘.

Overview

Dr. Joseph C. Hill's webinar on Black ASL sheds light on the intersection of race, language, and culture, focusing on the Black Deaf community's experiences and the unique dialect of Black ASL. The session explores the history of segregation and its long-standing effects today, particularly within educational contexts for Black Deaf individuals.

Through an engaging mix of historical context and personal narratives, Dr. Hill presents the vibrant and evolving language of Black ASL, touching on structural racism and the profound cultural identity embedded within signing. This webinar highlights why linguistic differences matter and how they reflect broader social and cultural dynamics.

Emphasizing the need for continued research and education, Dr. Hill encourages greater recognition and respect for Black ASL, underlining its significance in the broader tapestry of American history and culture. The session serves as a call to action for allies and educators to incorporate this knowledge into wider learning environments.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Introduction and Welcome The chapter titled 'Introduction and Welcome' opens with the speaker greeting the audience, checking to ensure that both visual and captioning tools are working properly. The speaker also acknowledges the presence of voice interpreters, making sure that accessibility features are in place for everyone attending.
• 02:30 - 04:00: Introduction of Dr. Joseph C. Hill and Webinar Overview The chapter introduces Dr. Joseph C. Hill, who is part of a webinar series presented by NSF and aimed at the NTID and RIT community. The host, Lorianne Macko, expresses her excitement and gratitude for the participation of attendees, emphasizing the importance of the webinar series.
• 04:00 - 05:30: Presentation Begins: Black ASL - History, Culture, and Language This chapter is an introduction to the fourth webinar in a series, featuring Dr. Joseph Hill. The host thanks interpreters Angela Hauser and Emily Call, and mentions the presence of a captionist for the session.
• 05:30 - 17:00: Exploration of Language, Race, and Racism The chapter delves into the intricate relationship between language, race, and racism. It highlights the importance of accessibility in discussions, making use of technology like subtitles to ensure inclusivity. The session involves interactive elements such as live Q&A, reflecting an open environment for addressing these complex themes. The presence of experts, including Lenore Chas, adds depth to the exploration of these societal issues.
• 17:00 - 27:00: Black Deaf Education and Segregation History Dr. Joseph Hill, an associate professor in the ASL and Interpreting Education Department at NTID, is introduced as the speaker for a presentation focused on Black Deaf Education and Segregation History. Audience questions will be answered at the end of the presentation.
• 27:00 - 40:00: Linguistic Characteristics and Studies of Black ASL The chapter introduces Dr. Hill, a leading expert on Black American Sign Language (Black ASL). It highlights his career-long focus on the Black deaf community, emphasizing his work in recording their history, culture, and language. The chapter sets the stage for Dr. Hill's presentation on these topics.
• 40:00 - 43:00: Personal Stories and Experiences in Black Deaf Education The chapter begins with the speaker preparing to share their screen and introduces the topic of Black Deaf education and Black American Sign Language (ASL). The speaker acknowledges that some in the audience may already be familiar with these subjects.
• 43:00 - 47:00: Challenges and Future Directions in Black Deaf Education The chapter explores various challenges and future directions in Black Deaf education, covering a wide range of topics including history, culture, and language. It delves into the historical context, focusing on the schools and laws that were established. Additionally, it discusses a relevant book on Black and Deaf communities in America and includes videos from related projects. The chapter aims to provide insights into the future prospects in this educational field.
• 47:00 - 62:00: Q&A Session In the chapter titled 'Q&A Session,' the discussion focuses on the relationship between race and language. It begins by addressing common perceptions of race, then extends the dialogue to include how language, specifically visual language, plays a role. The chapter highlights current events such as those that occurred in 2020, reflecting on their significance in the context of race and language.
• 62:00 - 64:30: Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements The chapter discusses the complex dynamics between police, the community, and people of color, highlighting the nuances of racism and discrimination. It touches on how some individuals attempt to avoid overt racism but may still engage in discriminatory language. The chapter references a quote from Walt Wolfram, a sociolinguist who studies language patterns related to these social issues. This part of the work seeks to acknowledge these challenges and perhaps offer closing thoughts on addressing them.

View@RIT/NTID Presents Black ASL: History, Culture, and Language. A Webinar by Dr. Joseph C. Hill Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone hello hopefully you can see me uh hopefully you can see the captioning as well hopefully it's working with the voice interpreters and everything hi
• 00:30 - 01:00 everyone my name is lorianne macko and i am thrilled to welcome you to our fourth in our series of webinars so i want to thank all of you for joining us today i am thrilled to be providing this webinar with the nsf and to providing this to our alumni and our entire ntid rit community
• 01:00 - 01:30 thank you for joining us today again this is the fourth in our webinar series and we'll talk about the rest of those that we have planned a little bit later on for today we are fortunate to have dr joseph hill with us before i introduce him i just want to briefly say thank you to our two interpreters that we have with us today angela hauser and emily call we also have a captionist and you'll be
• 01:30 - 02:00 able to find that transcript at the bottom of your screen you can click to have subtitles on or off depending on your preference and our caption is today is lenore chas so thank you so much to all three of our access service providers we are also going to be doing a q a session and so if you take a look at the bottom of your screen there is a box for q a you can type in any questions
• 02:00 - 02:30 you have and we'll be answering those questions at the end of the presentation hopefully we'll get to every question that you have alright so without any further ado i'm going to introduce dr joseph hill he is an associate professor at ntid he works in the department asl ie department which is the asl and interpreting education department
• 02:30 - 03:00 he is one of the leading experts in this topic and we are so fortunate to have him with us today dr hill has been studying this topic throughout his whole career focusing on the black deaf community recording their history culture and diving into their language so i'm thrilled to introduce to you dr hill and i'm going to give him the floor and he will start his presentation thank you so much hello everyone thank you
• 03:00 - 03:30 so i'm going to begin by sharing my screen with everyone we're going to be talking about black deaf and black asl maybe some of you already know this
• 03:30 - 04:00 information maybe you don't but we have a wide range of information that we're going to be talking about history culture and language we'll go through all of that talk about past history focus on schools laws that were established and then talk about a book as well related to black and deaf in america and then we'll have some various videos from projects that we've worked on and we'll talk about what the future looks like in this area
• 04:00 - 04:30 obviously for this presentation we're going to be speaking on race and the impact of language just in general when people think of race you think of race itself but when you relate that to language for example visual language think about 2020 and all that is happening in our times right now
• 04:30 - 05:00 with the police with the community and for people of color also you see people who try to avoid racism but still will use language to discriminate you could see it in the quote from walt wolfram in my presentation he's a social linguist who studies
• 05:00 - 05:30 african-american english along with the person who said the second quote john rickford who is also a social linguist social linguist studies the relationship between language and culture it is also my field both wolfgram and rickford note that people will often substitute language discrimination for racism
• 05:30 - 06:00 claiming that they're not well spoken or are using broken english this implies things like a poor education or other factors that some think may justify for example not renting them an apartment so it's important to look at how language can be used to privilege some and disadvantage others that's part of what we'll discuss today
• 06:00 - 06:30 now related to the book that i was telling you about and how i was talking about wolf and what he had been focusing on there was a dvd that was related to this book when it first came out and what we've done now is remove that and everything is online we have lots of videos that are connected to this book the hidden treasure and so each chapter itself chapter one will have a film or a video online that coincides with it
• 06:30 - 07:00 as well as chapter two and so forth and so we're looking at various data that has been collected the book focuses on black deaf people in residential schools for the deaf and the gold really linguistically when we were looking at various films that we videotaped and studied signs and parts of signs facial expression movement we were looking at white signers versus black signers of
• 07:00 - 07:30 course there weren't many but we were collecting as much film as we could looking at linguistics checking out the data seeing the sign usage and that was the information that we were collecting many people were very curious as to what black sign language looks like and what the difference is and so there are eight different features that i'll be talking about and of course that information is has
• 07:30 - 08:00 been distributed currently we have been looking at it in the past and we're going to touch on all of those features just to help you get a sense and a better understanding of black asl now i can't see all of you but usually when i give this talk i ask the audience to think about something that usually comes in a metal can an aluminum can with a pop tab
• 08:00 - 08:30 when you open it what's inside usually fizzes and you drink it what do you call the liquid in the can answers will include pop soda or coke or something else entirely there's a variety of names for this drink and different people will tend to prefer different words now is this a random phenomenon no there is a reason for it and you
• 08:30 - 09:00 could see it here on this map now if you use the word pop you could look for it on this map and see that pop is used mostly in the blue area between washington state and oregon all the way
• 09:00 - 09:30 east to parts of new york state maybe that fits you you might say well i use pop and sure enough i'm from michigan for example i know i'm from ohio and i definitely use pop so it makes sense to me if you use soda you can see it on the map a big area around california a little cluster in the middle of the map then somewhere in the northeast if it fits that makes sense
• 09:30 - 10:00 as for coke it's important to understand that in this context coke doesn't just mean the drink in the red can with white lettering it applies to all soft drinks for example orange soda might be called coke even sprite might be called coke ginger ale also coke it becomes a generic term for soft drinks this kind of thing is based on region and on history and the length of time involved so far we've been talking about english
• 10:00 - 10:30 not sign language now let's look at sign language now this map here this was published in 1995 this data was collected of eight different cities this was the largest collection yeah at you think eight cities is not large but that was a large collection
• 10:30 - 11:00 and so we're looking at specific vocabulary and variations in the vocabulary we're looking at the phonology and the variations in phonology for example if you were to sign early you can sign it backwards or forwards the hand shape is the same it's just a variation in the movement or no it's a locational difference
• 11:00 - 11:30 for example chicken when people sign chicken some people sign it this way there are various ways that you may see that one word depending on where you're from the location of which you live now to look at this flacked up
• 11:30 - 12:00 if you ask someone if you are familiar about black deaf people coming together and gathering you will see various things appear in the communication and of course that's obvious in general you would see that in any language but we want to look at words and the signs of each word they're different and you're going to notice those differences for example if you were to see a picture
• 12:00 - 12:30 of like on the left here the beaker all of the containers you would equate all of that to the word science which we signed science here now in north carolina in that state science is signed this way that's their sign for science now if you look at the middle picture a
• 12:30 - 13:00 towel we may sign it like this or like this you may also see it in this way now that's a north carolina sign black deaf people sign towel in the past that way and the very last picture the sign for bathroom north carolina science bathroom this way
• 13:00 - 13:30 all of the words that i showed you other states from residential schools for the deaf that had black people in there may sign it differently like texas they signed it this way virginia residential schools would sign it this way bathroom so you're going to see a variation depending on location
• 13:30 - 14:00 and when seeing all these variations of english vocabulary really you have to look at all of the language and its history and its location people will use words some based on sign on sounds some based on location where
• 14:00 - 14:30 they're living some based on you know their identity and social distancing of others they may not be influenced by other people in another area and so then there have their one sign now of course we're talking about the past with this picture and looking at this timeline from american slavery on we all know what slavery looks like i think you can
• 14:30 - 15:00 understand and you and if you don't know you can definitely look online you can get books 12 years a slave roots is a movie you could look at you can see the atrocities that occurred during slavery but if we focus on the yellow area on this timeline and residential schools in that area were also segregated
• 15:00 - 15:30 people often think of racism as something that happens between a person and another person where one degrades or demeans the other based on their skin color to them it's just one on one phenomenon it's a person discriminating against or oppressing another person looking at the diagram you could see where it fits into the blue area discrimination based on prejudice and
• 15:30 - 16:00 bigotry but for black americans we are often really thinking about structural or systemic racism that means the entire system we exist in policy institutional behavior cultural representation media representation is built to oppress on a constant basis even if everything looks fine to you on a day-to-day basis
• 16:00 - 16:30 the functioning of the system itself is continually harming black people if you're a white person and you think everything appears to be fine and functioning properly the truth is that in some ways whether intentionally or not you are helping ensure that the process of oppression continues another form of racism is internalized black americans are constantly subjected to negative messaging about themselves that messaging can be internalized and
• 16:30 - 17:00 then turn against other black people so we have black people blaming other black people for perpetrating their own oppression these are the three main forms of racism for today we're going to focus on structural racism for example structural racism here's a perfect example if you look at this picture here of course this is a previous picture a historical picture of chicago
• 17:00 - 17:30 think about families with children who purchase a home they want to feel safe want to feel comfortable and secure and want to go to look for a place to purchase they may not have the money to do that and may need to actually secure a loan a homeowners loan so if you are a white family and you go to the bank you secure a loan
• 17:30 - 18:00 and you move into the neighborhood now a black family who wants to secure a loan may go to the bank and be denied and so now they haven't received that loan also if you're looking at this map you're going to also see here on the side the lake now people would not allow a lot of black people to live in that area the yellow on the map is the white
• 18:00 - 18:30 neighborhoods where white families would be encouraged to move real estate is a form of intergenerational wealth so over time as property values increase the gap between the whites and the black wealth only grew the roots of the gap stem from redlining so these policies enacted a long time ago continue to still have a visible effect today
• 18:30 - 19:00 and though redlining is now illegal and banks can't discriminate in lending they often will categorize black families as high risk setting them up to default on loans and eventually undergo foreclosure that still happens today another thing we saw in the past
• 19:00 - 19:30 black americans wanting to fight for equal rights and whites oppressing that or blocking that now you see the existence of black lives matters and so you'll see what has happened in the past is still being carried forward and so there has not been that improvement so black lives matter actually was established to show that you know all lives may matter but
• 19:30 - 20:00 when you come against specific situations and someone is not hearing you or listening to you and you are oppressed that then nothing has changed and you can see on this timeline here different things that have occurred what's happened in the past and that it still persists you would think that we would be done with it but here we are again with those things so before i move on i just wanted to talk about
• 20:00 - 20:30 intersectionality and this is the sign that i used think of various identities deaf hearing so forth and then the systems that fit into those various identities and how they connect or collide so that's where the sign comes from so the identity you don't have just one identity you have to think about the
• 20:30 - 21:00 system that you're living in as a person and so for me as a black deaf man and maybe there's a black deaf female we may have similar experiences in a way but a woman is going to have a very different experience than i am as a man so there are going to be some sectionalities that they have that i don't have
• 21:00 - 21:30 or vice versa and you can see pretty clearly up here white deaf males and you can see of course if you're deaf then the equality is a little bit less but then if you add anything on to that race or gender when it comes to salary you're going to see that they're going to be behind even more
• 21:30 - 22:00 so before 1865 the end of the civil war slavery was still practiced in the south which meant that black people in the south had no right to education although there are pockets of free black people the vast majority of black americans in the south were enslaved in the north although again there were areas where slavery was still
• 22:00 - 22:30 practiced it had been outlawed in most of the northern states so black people including black deaf children were able to go to school this was not the case in the south so the schools for the deaf in the northern states were integrated there were black deaf students going to schools for the deaf in ohio and connecticut before 1865. but in the south states like north
• 22:30 - 23:00 carolina and south carolina for example black children weren't allowed to attend white deaf schools after 1865 well there's a short video i'd like to show you depicting 17 different states starting around 1865 showing the number of years between when a black deaf school was established and when it was integrated
• 23:00 - 23:30 after 1954 when segregation was banned you can see that some southern states held out for a while after 1954. so this graph shows the number of years
• 23:30 - 24:00 between establishment of black deaf schools to desegregation
• 24:00 - 24:30 what that video shows is the time between the establishment of a
• 24:30 - 25:00 black deaf school and its integration with the white deaf school you can see that the longest stretch happened in washington dc at kendall elementary school which took 101 years to integrate then louisiana was the last day to set up a black deaf school in 1937 i think so that's a long time after dc school for black deaf children was set up then
• 25:00 - 25:30 louisiana was also one of the last to integrate in 1978. bear in mind the states weren't able to fully integrate right away in 1954 many took 6 10 even 15 years now i want to highlight one school for the deaf in particular one whose history is fascinating in texas although most schools for the deaf tend to be either exclusively for deaf students or include
• 25:30 - 26:00 blind students their schools for the deaf included students who are deaf blind or orphans so this school educated hearing orphans alongside students who are deaf or blind here's a short video with more information
• 26:00 - 26:30 very interesting just the history of the
• 26:30 - 27:00 groups within the schools for the deaf
• 27:00 - 27:30 hearing orphans were also included
• 27:30 - 28:00 and now looking more at a different
• 28:00 - 28:30 timeline
• 28:30 - 29:00 you know because we've already talked
• 29:00 - 29:30 about the establishment of black deaf
• 29:30 - 30:00 schools
• 30:00 - 30:30 prior to that the segregation that had occurred but the parallels of the language you know deviating from each other and then being integrated and you'll see the differences from that now in this book that was published in 1983 there was a black it's called black and death in america
• 30:30 - 31:00 and this really just showed how black people signed with their families with their friends socialization that occurred and just the differences that we had within the group and then our study that we did most recently in the comparison between the two and that study was specifically in texas now if we look back at various states that had residential schools for black
• 31:00 - 31:30 deaf students of course we didn't have them in every area but the national science fide foundation did not have enough of information um on a wide range so we picked six these are the six that are up here north carolina texas arkansas alabama virginia and louisiana and so we went to all of those areas and picked two groups from each state over 55 why because they experience
• 31:30 - 32:00 segregation we also focused on adults under 35 because they grew up post-integration and we looked at all of that and then what i'll do is i'll show you a film of people in texas and specific signs that they used and what they look like and this is a group of senior citizens so 55 and up
• 32:00 - 32:30 next i'd like to show you people who are
• 32:30 - 33:00 55 years old or up in louisiana
• 33:00 - 33:30 very interesting to look at that and see the signs
• 33:30 - 34:00 the differences in the numbers that they used for the days of the week now these are people in texas age 35 or below and i want to show you the variations in their signs which is very different from that of senior citizens
• 34:00 - 34:30 very interesting as well you can
• 34:30 - 35:00 definitely see the differences and the variations now there's another film i'd like to show you as well this is new
• 35:00 - 35:30 and it's from signing black in america which is actually going to come out this year i've been working for a total of two years now and it will pretty soon it will be released but this is talking about deaf family in louisiana and the signs the signs of modern times so take a look at this
• 35:30 - 36:00 interesting as well
• 36:00 - 36:30 and you see all of those ranges of ages
• 36:30 - 37:00 and areas now they did have some studies prior to this there was an essay that i actually found that was published in 1965 from a book from dictionary of american sign language and that was one of the first publications that actually listed specific examples and representations of what the signs look like and the variations within the signs and if you look in the back
• 37:00 - 37:30 it actually talks about black deaf sign language but specifically in the south and so that was from the 1970s where the study was done um and it talks about the phonology of the language and then in the 80s we started to see more representation from various areas in various cities so you start to see more coming up up until today when we're really starting to look back and replicate some of the
• 37:30 - 38:00 information that we've had in the past and see what has been maintained in the language now like in the 80s or has left for example two-handed versus one-handed signs like have or have with just one hand and both are fine want
• 38:00 - 38:30 don't want looking at that and looking at black deaf people again and seniors and their signs and you notice that they both generations prefer two-handed signs another one talking about location for example no on the top of the head the top head location or some people say no where it's closer to the cheek or
• 38:30 - 39:00 down on the chin and of course of course all of them are acceptable some people call them lazier signs if they're down that's more judgmental so we're not looking at judging we're looking at what's being done and that's it and collecting data on that so i've seen differences in location differences in signs some of them are preferences like no don't know what for and you'll see them either be close to the top of the head or further
• 39:00 - 39:30 down on the head so we found those when looking at the signs we also looked at signing space and we noticed that there were bigger signs often not all the time but often within the black community like if somebody's running or leaving you'll see the signs will reach further um if someone is spelling a noun it may be small but if someone is
• 39:30 - 40:00 pointing or using a gesture you're going to see it bigger you see repetition in signs more body shifting much more often we see that in black death in the in the actual socializing and conversational signs now for the vocabulary like i just gave you examples of obviously you see the difference older black deaf people when you're looking at you'll see their signs but the more
• 40:00 - 40:30 younger generation african-american english you will see that come up like boy um my bad those kind of things those are regional black cultural words that will show up in the sign language so you will see those appear more frequently in the language which is very different and you will see those on the mouth whereas older deaf tend not to use their mouth a lot and younger deaf will then mouth a lot of those words so those were differences that we
• 40:30 - 41:00 saw and that's incorporated in the newer study that we're doing which also focuses on rhythm black depth versus right white death and what the rhythm of the sign is we're looking at race as well as gender and you notice differences for both of them you know it's a small data set but we are noticing more and more adding and now we're noticing more differences
• 41:00 - 41:30 so i'd like to show you now this film which talks about black deaf people's view on sign and the pride that they have in the way in which they use the language it's based on various topics that came up and you'll see it in here let me show it to you it talks about deaf culture what's you know better and what they view so here it is
• 41:30 - 42:00 the next one is definitely from a newer
• 42:00 - 42:30 documentary one of our co-authors who
• 42:30 - 43:00 wrote a book carolyn magaskill so this is her own story in alabama at a residential school for the deaf that was segregated talking about leaving that school and then moving to a mixed school and what the feeling was so let me show you this and here's the name of the film signing black in america
• 43:00 - 43:30 uh
• 43:30 - 44:00 now prior to closing
• 44:00 - 44:30 i showed you the young black deaf group
• 44:30 - 45:00 and their signs and what they felt about their own signs
• 45:00 - 45:30 in the past compared to now is definitely more positive more sense of pride and you can see that
• 45:30 - 46:00 so from all the historical information
• 46:00 - 46:30 to now and what we've learned
• 46:30 - 47:00 let me show you that based on previous studies we've really looked at differences based on identifiers that we saw language culture location all of that included and in the past of course the black deaf culture has not stayed the same it's changed just like the white deaf culture has changed educational mainstreaming
• 47:00 - 47:30 desegregation all of that has been an influence now what we don't know so far we've studied black deaf individuals in specific areas from california new york city michigan
• 47:30 - 48:00 but there are so many other places that we don't know throughout the united states and so what we need is to really start collecting more data from various areas we need to work on that to incorporate it black deaf students who are in schools right now what do their signs look like that's another question mark that's going to be completely different from their older counterpart parts and so we need to get that information that's an unknown
• 48:00 - 48:30 also the stylish variations and how they're represented we need to get more of a study on that based on the location um the last thing i wanted to do a close there's some really beautiful words that really touched me um and i wanted to show you that
• 48:30 - 49:00 really good now if you'd like to see
• 49:00 - 49:30 that actual film
• 49:30 - 50:00 you can see it on pbs it's not national
• 50:00 - 50:30 you have to actually request it in your local area the pbs station in your area because there are specific cities that have it already you can contact them and say
• 50:30 - 51:00 that you would like to see that film added to their programming and they will make that available so i definitely have some acknowledgements of course first to the national science foundation spencer foundation who provided support to me also i want to thank the black deaf community who was involved
• 51:00 - 51:30 allowed me to document and look at the history and their language and i want to say thank you to all of you now what we're going to do is open it up for questions okay thank you this is lori ann speaking so what i'm going to do is sign the questions that have come up in the qa box and then you can answer so
• 51:30 - 52:00 it looks like we have several questions ready i'm going to start at the top and go down to the bottom so our first question for you dr hill is um is internalized racism the same as this conscious racism could you speak to that i'm seeing these words of internalized versus this conscious racism and are those two concepts the same
• 52:00 - 52:30 could you speak to that a little bit and this is dr hill speaking so it's internalized racism and what this is laurie ann speaking internalized racism versus this conscious racism this is dr hill speaking i would say that this conscious racism is a type of
• 52:30 - 53:00 racism that's accepted unquestioningly it's just the way life works people go about day to day without thinking much about it internalized racism on the other hand is more about taking perceptions and attitudes from society toward black or brown people and project them into their own people it can also
• 53:00 - 53:30 include self-hatred for example so i hope you could see the difference lauren saying okay wonderful so the next question i have for you one of our participants asked about the way to sign black they've seen black signed with a one hand shape and it signed with a b hand shape as well and this person was told that the b hand
• 53:30 - 54:00 shape was to be used only by the poc black community and they're asking if this is true this is dr hill speaking i get this question all the time so you have two signs for black one with a one hand shape one with a b hand shape and there's a lot of discussion about who is it's appropriate to use you know which sign i think
• 54:00 - 54:30 for the black community signing black with a b hand shape that's fine in some areas white people can do that as well and in other areas the black community black deaf community feels a lot of ownership over signing black with a b hand shape i'm seeing a lot of discussion a lot of discourse around this and it seems like this topic is still evolving i think right now you what
• 54:30 - 55:00 you're seeing is that the b hand shape used for black is really referencing a lot of culture it has a strong cultural connotation versus signing black with the one hand shape so i believe that's where the conversation around that is going at the moment this is lorienne yes it seems to be an evolving conversation our next question um is what kind of advice you would have for teachers who want to
• 55:00 - 55:30 include this topic more in their education and is dr hill speaking i think it's important um to look for resources at the end of this presentation i have a lot of resources you can go ahead and look at my website you can look at dr joseph www.josephchill.com if you go there you'll be able to see a lot of my research and you'll be able to most importantly find
• 55:30 - 56:00 resources i have resource lists available for people who are looking for more information and that's a great place to start in getting this information into your classroom it's not perfect it's not a complete list but when i do find more resources i update it so that's available for the community and this is lorianne i want to jump to another question some people have been asking about where they can find this presentation in terms of the recording so i wanted to let all of our
• 56:00 - 56:30 participants know that this presentation will be put on youtube um there'll be a transcript there will be captions and once we get all of the editing together for the video it will be on youtube so just to let our participants know our next question is as we become more aware of black signs are there signs other than how to sign black person that as a white person i should not use so as people are becoming aware of their
• 56:30 - 57:00 signing choices are there resources about where they can find appropriate signs inappropriate signs do you have any suggestions for that and this is dr hill speaking i i mean i try to keep a list of resources of you know appropriate signs but really it changes so quickly it's impossible to keep it up english changes so fast you know the words that people use 10 years ago are
• 57:00 - 57:30 not the words people use today and it's the same thing in sign language so documenting that is a challenge linguists are really struggling with the speed of language change so it's important just to think about the signs that we're using uh today may not be appropriate in the future and the signs that people have used in the past may also not be appropriate as well can become problematic i think what i would tell people is try the best you can to educate yourself talk to people and
• 57:30 - 58:00 pay attention to what you see community members using in conversation and if someone calls you out on your language just to be attentive to that this is lorianne speaking yes absolutely that constant learning and awareness is key i think and we're running a little short on time but we do have time for a few more um in terms of the emphasis on asl and that's what we've been talking about but i'm curious if there are similar
• 58:00 - 58:30 patterns in other countries cultural sign languages for example french sign language italian sign language do you know if there are similarities between their sign language and american sign language and this is dr hill speaking are you talking about black communities in those countries black signers in those countries honestly i really i'm not sure i would emphasize that linguistic variations develop based on history and the history of racism in this country is
• 58:30 - 59:00 incredibly strong the culture of segregation that we had for so very long caused the this linguistic variations to develop in the community so you'd have to look at the history of these different countries and regions to determine what kind of language development trajectories people are going to be on you can't take one country
• 59:00 - 59:30 and apply that experience to others there's going to be a whole mix of experiences throughout the world in terms of the impact on language development i really do think that you have to look at how people who were in isolation from each other start to develop their language and communication if there was no segregation if there was no isolation then the language would probably develop you know in parallel and it all comes down to history this is lori ann saying i have time for
• 59:30 - 60:00 one more question we have a lot of other questions so if your questions haven't been answered don't worry we're going to save these questions we will give them to dr hill and we'll figure out how to get those answers available for you so in terms of our last question um we we did not have any black deaf educators in our school one of our attendees is saying who would we contact to have someone come and teach their own culture rather than
• 60:00 - 60:30 hearing it from us the white deaf teachers so who can we reach out to uh as a black deaf student you know how how does that happen um and this is dr hill saying yeah this is a huge problem um we don't have enough black deaf teachers and that's a big barrier for our black deaf students even as you come through college that support is missing the barriers uh to success that exists in the
• 60:30 - 61:00 educational system such as testing or just general support barriers that's a huge struggle for black deaf students and then once they graduate school and get out into the workplace they experience the systemic racism that perpetuates in that system as well this problem is is complex and you have to start changing at every level to allow more um changes it's just it's
• 61:00 - 61:30 an incredibly complex situation and this is lori ann speaking when you think about the whole system you can see impacts on people's lives at every single stage of their development and we have so many questions left to answer uh we do unfortunately need to close the webinar now but from the bottom of my heart i want to thank you dr hill for sharing your time your knowledge your wisdom and your research with us
• 61:30 - 62:00 thank you so much for giving this presentation and again this is going to be uploaded to youtube for our participants and our community to watch it the last questions we weren't able to get to we are going to give to dr hill and let him answer those so thank you so much for joining again thank you for the interpreters and the captionists for those of you who have submitted some questions thank you so much for your participation if you're curious about more webinars
• 62:00 - 62:30 or when this will be up take a look at the ntib alumni association page and thank you so much for coming once we get the youtube link available it will be able to be shared and everything so thank you so much everyone thank you again dr hill
• 62:30 - 63:00 you