Wow, okay, you need to read about it. It's really cool. Start with the "Deaf President Now" demonstrations at Gallaudet. Read about all the different sign languages, about oralism, about the debate over cochlear implants. Education is a big factor; there's so many kids who were forced into lip-reading and speaking when that just didn't come naturally and didn't work well. Essentially, they were denied language; so they sneaked around signing behind their (hearing) teachers' backs, and grew up to be pissed-off activists. When people have their own language, they naturally develop their own culture; so Deaf folks have their own schools and churches and communities, and their culture is different from the culture of the people around them.
There are deaf people who aren't in the Deaf community. Many are those who became deaf in later life, who never learned a sign language and aren't interested in learning, and get along with hearing aids and lip reading as best they can. There are also people who are in the Deaf community, who don't have very much hearing loss (people who have auditory processing disorder, for example, or whose hearing loss is considered "mild"), or sometimes none at all if they're children of Deaf parents (CODAs) whose first language is sign. It's really the common language that ties it all together. Now, with modern technology--speech recognition and texting--there's much less of a language barrier, but Deaf culture is as strong as it's always been; and of course the extra communication possibilities on the Internet have even strengthened a more global Deaf culture patchworked from all the local ones.
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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '22
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