#audism
The Controversies Around Helen Keller
Welcome to part three of my mini-series on Helen Keller. I took a Disability in Literature class in Spring 2022 that focused heavily on her legacy. In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
In Part Two I discussed her interests in writing, socialism, animals, nature, performing, etc.
In this post I’m going to be discussing some of the controversies surrounding Keller–because there are a lot. Some of these are well known and publicized, and others have been brushed under the rug.
It is important to discuss the controversies around Helen Keller, particularly how internalized ableism can impact a person and disabled communities. I wanted to share this video by Deaf and disabled creator, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, in which she discusses the topic of internalized audism and eugenics from a Deaf perspective. I tried searching for things that discussed her privilege more in depth and found this that includes the following:
“Helen Keller was a socialist who believed she was able to overcome many of the difficulties in her life because of her class privilege – a privilege not shared by most of her blind or deaf contemporaries. “I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment,” she said. ” I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone.”
I wonder if the other part includes people like Anne Sullivan, part of the community who helped her, which was, in the end, afforded to her through class and white privilege because her family was able to afford to find and pay Sullivan in the first place.
Not trusting that your peers have your best interests in mind when it comes to selecting an activity that won’t cause you stress and anxiety because of your hearing, while dealing with the backlash as you are accused of not having enough faith in others, when, ironically, you’ve had to explain to those same people many times why you don’t answer the phone or why you’re over the loud, crowded bar scene or why that guy’s looking at you funny because of your accent.
And then they proceed to tell you that it’s all in your head.
I’m not fucking dealing with this in 2018. Get out of my face with my shit.
It disgusts me how many adults in my life have tried to raise me as a hearing person. It’s their secret way of saying, “No. We don’t accept this.” And to think how I’m not the only one. It happens to all of us, everyone, in different ways. And not just deaf and hard of hearing people.
I’m not sure if I think any of us are obligated to apologize to some hearing people for making them feel uncomfortable for five seconds when we are uncomfortable in their world for a lifetime.
It’s funny how everybody wants to talk about mental illness and depression, but hardly anybody is willing to engage in a conversation upon which we discuss how deafness and/or central auditory processing disorder are oftentimes a huge contributor to anxiety and depression on so many levels. Not only are you constantly navigating an isolating world where you cannot always rely on your ears or your brain to process sound, but you have to understand how other people communicate, worry about accommodations and accessibility, strain yourself physically and mentally in order to mainstream, deal with numerous embarrassing situations that require a thicker skin than most, combat audism in your community, oftentimes family, friends, and coworkers, miss out on many activities and conversations, and struggle every day with accepting your limitations. There millions of us all over the world. Why are we not talking about this?
