Upon first hitting the pandemic, they sent us home to work remotely. None of us had ever encountered a worldwide contagious health risk. The initial mail from the office came in on the first week of March 2020; we played it by ear. That message assured us that we should work remotely for at least three weeks. They didn’t say that ironically.
As I continued to work from home, I watched the daily updates on the status on the pandemic. Naturally, news networks broadcast what little information they knew. We set our groceries aside for three days waiting for the COVID-19 virus to die on those surfaces. Panic stricken viewers tweeted questions as we collectively watched them scroll across the bottom of that screen.
This included absurd questions like, “Is it safe to pick up take-out from Chinese restaurants?” A collective “fuck you” from me to everyone who continued to call it the “China Virus”, understanding that it spreads fear and impacts Asian people. You suck.
However, this is not a post about the pandemic. This is a post about another very subtle observation.
The signers fascinated me
As I watched the daily public service announcements, I noticed the persistent people off the side who would translate the verbal announcements into ASL; that is American Sign Language. Most people will barely notice. The ones who do notice will rationalize that it’s simply a side effect of watching a public announcement. In other words, since there may be deaf people there in person, the signers are there for their benefit. However, that answer doesn’t quite fit.
The networks who broadcast these announcements had the prerogative to zoom in on the person speaking, like Andrew Cuomo for New York state on many such announcements, but they didn’t. This sparked a question that bounced in my head for days. If the viewer can simply enable closed captioning on their screen, why did they include the signer on the video feed? Wouldn’t it be just as easy to enable the text to appear on the screen and read it?
This question gnawed on me for a while, so I simply asked my friends on Facebook.
The unexpected answer
I have a modest number of friends on Facebook; they number in the low hundreds. When I posted my question, I received responses from a couple of trusted friends who knew sign language. In retrospect, their response completely made sense. However, that answer still surprised me. It was very simple:
A disproportionately higher percentage of deaf people do not know how to read.
If you can’t hear the audio from the broadcast, nor can you read the text from the closed captioning, the only way for you to consume that information is to watch the signer. This is the reason why they kept the signer on the screen during those broadcasts. The natural follow up question is, “Why are deaf people disproportionately less likely to know how to read?”
As I reflected back to when I learned to read (first Spanish, then English), I thought about how I learned to read. In Spanish, even unfamiliar words may be pronounced unambiguously. In English, the way we pronounce words is less strict. We recognize words, not just by their sequence of letters, but also by their sound. If the words lack sound, they also lack dimension.
Much like we struggle to taste food when we can’t smell it, we struggle to read words when we don’t know how they sound. No, it’s not impossible, but it becomes considerably more difficult.
While I can speak Cantonese, I never learned to read it. This is a phenomenon that still baffles my cousin.
Natural curiosity
Our eyes have a literal blind spot; it’s where the optic nerve connects to the eye. A simple web search will give you a number of tests that will demonstrate this phenomenon. We don’t perceive this as a black spot in our vision; our brain simply fills in the details. We generally don’t even notice it. This is just biology.
Additionally, some responses become muscle memory. We conduct activities and navigate our world every day without thinking about the details of what we’re doing. Has anyone ever asked you to describe how to drive a manual transmission? Are you a touch typist? If so, can you point to the ‘K’ key on a blank keyboard without using your fingers?
Subtly, we may stop noticing certain details, like the signer on the announcement broadcasts. Or the fact that scissors and computer mice are designed for right-handed people, and hence implicitly exclude 10% of people. We generally navigate life without giving them much thought because they neither impede nor obstruct us. They have become figurative blind spots.
However, we have spent many years conditioning our brains to certain ‘truths’ that are not founded in any facts. We have heard the assertions so frequently that we have learned to accept them. If everyone I know believes this, it must be true. Studies have demonstrated that between two men of the same build and stature, the black man is consistently perceived to be more dangerous.
Can we instead practice a natural curiosity? Can we start to notice the details from our figurative blind spots? Should we unlearn some of the implicit ‘truths’ that continue to impede us?
Conduct your life generously
When I say ‘generously’, I do not mean the act of gifting your money or worldly possessions. I subscribe to Brené Brown’s definition in the Anatomy of Trust and the acronym of BRAVING:
Generosity: Extending the most generous interpretation to the intentions, words, and actions of others.
Each of our lives are different, sometimes subtly different and other times significantly so. In either case, we cannot hope to understand people’s intentions without knowing them. As we navigate our life with others, why not interpret their intentions, words, and actions generously?
First, we can start by assuming the other person is principled and sane. We can learn enough about who they are and what they believe, but more importantly why they believe it. If we start with the assumption that they’re principled and sane, their reasoning must be sound; we simply don’t know what that is… yet. Finally, we may come to learn that they may indeed be right about their position, and you may be misguided about yours.
If we aim to build a world of trust and cooperation, we should aspire to meet them halfway. However, you can’t meet them halfway if you’re unwilling or unable to move. Let’s each tear down the layers of history and biases we all have.