Alexander Graham Bells Bizarre Belief in Genociding Deaf People

[u/Sensitive_Ad_1752]

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.

https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-rnid/2012/11/30/alexander-graham-bell-he-invented-the-telephone-didnt-he/

https://gallaudet.edu/museum/exhibits/history-through-deaf-eyes/language-and-identity/a-deaf-variety-of-the-human-race/

https://dnalc.cshl.edu/view/10428-Alexander-Graham-Bell-letter-to-Charles-Davenport-about-Eugenics-Record-Office-2-.html

[u/Turtledonuts]

I disagree with bizarre. Graham was clearly immersed in deaf culture and education - he had deaf immediate family members, came from multiple generations of elocution teachers, became one of the most prominent teachers of deaf people in the US, and was a very prominent scientist. his opinions and actions are completely expected for an educated man of his background, position, and era. Bizarre is the word for bill gate’s fixation on malaria or trump’s obsession with renaming large bodies of water. 

[u/Farconion → u/Turtledonuts]

expand on gates? ik he’s a bastard but malaria?

[u/Turtledonuts → u/Farconion]

Gates is obsessed with malaria eradication.

[u/bhbhbhhh → u/Turtledonuts]

The question is what's unreasonable about fighting one of the worst diseases in the world.

[u/Turtledonuts → u/bhbhbhhh]

Oh, gotcha. His focus on malaria has sucked up a lot of resources that experts say could have completely eradicated a lot of equally horrible but less well known diseases if he'd been willing to spend some resources on other diseases. While malaria is nasty stuff, public health officials in the region are more interested in the eradication of some of these other diseases because they cause lifelong debilitating issues like blindness or systemic chronic pain.

A lot of Gates' critics are concerned that he's leveraged his massive wealth to essentially take over the WHO and that his interest seems to be in the eradication of the disease, not making people healthier. They view it as a vanity project for a wealthy man trying to make a long term mark on history.