A Collective Identity Of Segregated Groups Inside The Social Movement

Identity is a multifaceted concept, but beyond the classical definition of it a number of scholars claimed that the advancement of self is associated with individual’s present and past encounters, likewise, including children’s primary and secondary socialization in family and school respectively, and interactions among oneself and the encompassing social condition. As Deaf individuals have moved since the mid-1980s facing recognition of themselves as a social-linguistic minority group, with contradictory ties with disability movements, so their narratives have demonstrated this requirement for a specific identity.

The idea of a deaf society has demonstrated absolutely criticality in fighting social power from a suppressing hearing-dominant society, who have not just consistently advantaged spoken language over visually interpreted language, yet who have additionally constrained this spoken language on hard of hearing individuals. With community’s absence of understanding of the Deaf people originate challenges in various parts of everyday life for Deaf people: advanced education, medicinal services, employment, state program benefits, innovations, mental health services and other regular things that average people should have. As not a less important part of the society, Deaf people often feel marginalized or segregated. This paper is aiming to propose an idea that segregated groups are more likely to create a strong collective identity than non-segregated groups; therefore, the likeliness of social movements is higher in segregated subordinate groups. With an aim to discover a collective identity of segregated groups, this paper will address the question of how does the collective identity inside the social movement describe the success of the Deaf President Now (DPN) protest at Gallaudet University in Washington.

Ruth Nelson (2008) in his review of “Raymond's Room: Ending the Segregation of People with Disabilities” indicated that individual who has a disability is seen and treated dissimilarly, and has a distinction that seemingly restricts the person in his/her capacity to realize everyday tasks in a similar way and time. Individuals that are physically able to complete their tasks have their own virtues and shortcomings, yet not to the degree that consistently we are reminded of our restrictions or are seen mistakenly and routinely discriminated by individuals around us.

In this manner, Levy examines that “treating (being) Deaf as a medical condition is inappropriate since it is not a disability; that so treating it sends a message to the Deaf that they are of lesser worth; and the treatment . . . is impermissible because Deaf culture is intrinsically valuable”. Lee (2011) emphasized that the success of the Deaf President Now (DPN) protest at Gallaudet University in Washington is one of the leading occasions induced the enactment of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The beginning of occasions started in 1987 when the present president Jerry Lee reported that he would leave the college. On March 1988, Deaf students at Gallaudet University requested to choose Deaf president first time in 124 years history. A number of Deaf students signed the “Deaf President Now” appeal. Despite the common requests of the protested students, the leading group of trustees reported Elizabeth Zinser (the only hearing candidate) as the new leader of Gallaudet University. The declaration provoked students and led to the immediate protest through downtown Washington. On March 1988, more than 500 students shut off the entrance to the university campus with cars. The entire challenge kept going the whole week. In the end, the trustees gave up to the protestors’ requests, which included the selection of King Jordan Deaf head of the College of Arts and Sciences, as Gallaudet University’s first Deaf president.

The hypothetical worldview inside which this paper is found in the social identity theory suggesting that individuals from minority gatherings accomplish coherent social identity by endeavoring to access and enter the mainstream by individual mobility or function with other gathering individuals to achieve social change. This viewpoint is adopted by students, faculty, and alumni of Gallaudet University for its important suppositions which accommodate the usage of a mix of the two strategies to achieve certain types of identities. The possibility that individuals will see their gathering as preferred somehow over others - henceforth its capacity to justify the achievement of deaf people on the eve of DPN. For example, in characterizing the identity of Deaf people, Padden and Humphries (1988) claim that to be from hearing group means “the opposite of what we are”.

The key element of the achievement of the DPN movement was that the Deaf people could unite and build a strong collective identity as “homogeneous” because Elizabeth Zinser was hearing candidate, different from they are. On February 26, 2013, civil rights activist Julian Bond in his campus lecture at Gallaudet University raised the question: What are the components for the civil rights movement to be successful? He pointed out several conditions: a social organization with a competent leader, proponents of the movement, the means of communication, participants; the capacity to mobilize and collect resources, a useful strategy, tactics, and the willingness to challenge existing authority. The DPN movement’s participants accomplished all the things that successful social movement must do. Born said “Much the same as the members of the Montgomery Bus Boycott” they had the most important – strategy.

What we see from the Gallaudet University protest is that collective identity was a key element to organize collective action. Further, this paper will discuss tactics and strategies the DPN movement adopted to achieve social change at local, national and international level. The possibility that social movement will occur is higher in segregated subordinate groups than in non-segregated groups.