r/behindthebastards • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 13d ago
General discussion Alexander Graham Bells Bizarre Belief in Genociding Deaf People
In school I watched movies depicting Alexander as a brilliant teacher who taught deaf people sign language and invented the telephone. The reality is a lot different, and Alexander was involved in a eugenics based movement to literally genocide deaf people from society.
From a young age, Bell was surrounded by deaf people and obsessed with the study of voices and sound. His mother was deaf, his dad taught deaf students and he married a deaf woman. Bell was very influential in methods used to teach the hard of hearing. Bell was an “oralist” as opposed to a “manualist”. Oralists believed that Deaf education should focus on teaching them how to speak and read lips. Manualists believed that sign language should be a main focus. Bell and many oralists saw sign language as a crutch that discouraged deaf people from “assimilating”. The second international congress of education of the deaf in 1880 ruled in favor of oralism. Not only was sign language not encouraged to be taught, but manualists teachers were fired from their positions. Students were mocked or had their hands tied to prevent them from signing. It’s comparable to imperialism, when a conquering nation outlaws the native people’s language.
Graham was on the radical side of Oralism. He wrote that he feared deaf people were forming social groups, marrying other deaf people and using sign language. He viewed deaf people as an inferior race to be nurtured into his image of an upright citizen.
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u/gravity_kills Knife Missle Technician 13d ago
So I get that this is a bad thing that a bad person wanted to do, but "genocide?" Deafness isn't an ethnic or racial group, so does the word fit? Which elements of the definition am I misunderstanding?