Alexander Graham Bell; An audist agaist deaf people

Title: (Bell, Alexander Graham: An Audist against Deaf People, n.d.) date: 2023-03-09 type: reference project: @BellAlexanderGraham

tags:: #source projects:@BellAlexanderGraham

Reference¶

Anon. n.d. Bell, Alexander Graham: an audist against Deaf people. Available at https://www.handspeak.com/learn/379/ [Last accessed 9 March 2023].

Summary & Key Take Aways¶

Alexander Graham Bell is well known for his scientific inventions, he is also sometimes known for his "work" for the deaf community. However this article shows the darker truth of Bell's involvment in the deaf community and his genicidal, and ableist beliefs.

In reality Bell and the organization that shares his name push "oralism" which is the idea of teaching deaf people to speak spoken language and to try to remove signed language as people such as Bell precieved signed language as lesser. In doing so he was trying to destroy deaf culture and prevent a "deaf race" which is purely rooted in ableism and eugenics (as noted in the article only 10% of children of deaf parents are deaf).

Overall the general belief that Bell helped the deaf community is wholey incorrect and repersents a major misunderstanding of the deaf community by the general population and we need to make sure to be more mindful of the beliefs and motives of scientists and technologists because so often historically their actions have been based in racist, sexism, homophobia, ableism and so on. And aknowladging these flaws is an important part of investigating these historical figures.

Links¶

Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell's ableism bigoted people in the history of the internet