RISING TO THE CHALLENGE: BECOMING A BEACON

Written by Dr. Suzette Garay Dr. Jenny Gough

For more than twenty years I’ve taught, evaluated and mentored students in Interpreter Education Programs. As a BIPOC Deaf educator who also happens to be a non-native ASL signer, I have experienced the racism and audism that contributed to the mass resignation of the most diverse

Board of Directors in RID’s history. Our field is now populated by professionals who graduated from IEPs that did not serve them well.

Very few students understand the value of learning from someone who doesn’t fit the stereotyped ‘ideal’ of the ASL language of the

White dominant Deaf community. Instead, they are trained through an oppressive hidden ‘agenda’ which is represented in conventional views of interpreting that have not been questioned by the educators themselves. Most teachers in IEPs tend to address ‘diversity’ as an add-on rather than as a lens for examining the deep relationships among racial disparities, whiteness, and marginalization.

There’s a problematic tendency in IEPs - and thus within the whole field - to treat antiracist activities and curriculum as an exclusive category of analysis rather than as an actual way of living in the world. It is critical to understand the multidimensions of how IEPs erase identities, lifetime experiences and wisdom just by the color of your skin or, in my case, by the mere fact you are not the (stereo) typical Deaf role model for students to learn from. I am hopeful that sharing my perspective can be a starting point for further discussions in critical race theory and the need for antiracist training in the IEPs. I do support the recent wave of RID certification maintenance requirements in Power, Privilege and Oppression, this needs to continue. But white graduates of IEPs entering the field should not be at stage one of recognizing their own whiteness, moving through the early stages of white fragility, and beginning to grow an identity separate from the socialization of white privilege. This groundwork needs to be already foundational.

Conversation and learning needs to explore how the interpreting profession itself, including RID, is heavily invested as a Whiteness institution. The evidence is pervasive. For instance, there are few BIPOC Deaf or Hearing instructors teaching in IEPs (what role-models do students have to begin with?), and frequently these leaders are limited to teaching courses pertaining to their “own kind”-- rarely did I have or see opportunities to teach the fundamentals of interpreting. It is as if the core courses can only be taught by the White Dominant Deaf or White Hearing instructors, and, in parallel, that White Deaf and White Hearing educators are unable to teach about antiracism and diversity. The implicit messages suggest BIPOC cannot handle teaching the core fundamentals and White people have no investment in antiracism. Neither is true, but together these two biases reinforce white supremacy.

So how can IEPs and RID start to seriously build up connectedness and belonging? How can White interpreters and White interpreter-educators fully embrace the upcoming BIPOC interpreting students, current BIPOC interpreting peers, and BIPOC Deaf consumers they will likely serve? I want to offer a rubric, BEACON, to serve as a framework for curriculum revision: Belonging, Empathy, Acceptance, Connectedness, Opportunity, and Negotiation (BEACON). These concepts represent neglected factors in sign language interpreter training. Too much of the ITP curriculum is invested in ASL in an academic setting and not enough in natural community settings. Students are unprepared for real interpreting because the classroom offers only one kind of experience with non-negotiable roles for students, faculty, guest presenters, and working interpreters. This instructional setting does not expose students to out-in-theworld experiences in the community settings where judgment must be exercised about whether to interpret simultaneously or consecutively, how to handle delicate ethical situations, and what it means to engage respectfully within and among various Deaf communities.

The thrust of a BEACON-inspired curriculum is to invest in longterm relationships with diverse Deaf consumers by cultivating appreciation of the vast range of signing/communicative styles, diverse cultural legacies and connections, and practices of empathy that provide an alternative to the privileged white lens. Specifically, the BEACON model develops skills in several areas, including: accepting constructive feedback from BIPOC; learning to recognize and how to intervene in specific, situated dynamics of racial bias that occur within interpreted interaction (that is, not only in the classic audist instance of White Hearing against White Deaf); how to provide appropriate guidance and institutional supports for students of color who are very often entering college without any of the benefits

There's a problematic tendency in IEPs - and thus within the whole field - to treat antiracist activities and curriculum as an exclusive category of analysis rather than as an actual way of living in the world. It is critical to understand the multidemensions of how IEPs erase identities, lifetime experiences and wisdom just by the color of you skin...

of those who come from families who already successfully attained higher education; how to adapt instructional materials and testing to fairly assess students with various cognitive learning styles; how to support White students through positive growth and development when encountering the realities of privilege for the first time; and distinguishing between cultural aspects of interpreting and quality of interpreting (these are not the same; neither are they mutually exclusive). All of these improvements to interpreter training are long overdue and desperately needed - not only for interpreters of color and Deaf communities of color, but for everyone.

The point is, the skills needed to make IEPs and the entire profession amenable to BIPOC are the same skills needed to effectively address audism on behalf of all Deaf people. These are prosocial behaviors that can only be acquired through exposure and practice. Unfortunately, most of the diversity experiences that are promoted by IEPs are not supported with a deep antiracist infrastructure, this means they often have the unfortunate result of reinforcing prejudice rather than cultivating positive trust, confidence, and self-worth in each and every human being. The truth of institutionalized white privilege is that most White educators and most White interpreters lack quality experiences with BIPOC, so this may feel like a hard and scary reach. But it is so possible! We have to keep building accountability and hold each other open to the light.