Deaf-Same or Deaf-Different?

Should we say “Deaf-Same” or “Deaf-Different”? For Deaf professionals who work with Deaf communities in developing countries, it can be easy to assume that cross-cultural issues will be rare. After all, many Deaf people share common experiences that often lead Deaf people to sign “Deaf-Same!”

But some authors caution that this is not always true. The author of this book chapter, Khadijat Rashid, shares her experience working with three other Deaf trainers to lead a leadership training workshop for Deaf people in Nigeria and Ghana. All four trainers lived in either the United States or the United Kingdom at the time. But all four were originally from Nigeria and were fluent in Nigerian Sign Language. This gave them many experiences in common with the Deaf people they trained in leadership. But they still found that the workshop trainers and the workshop participants had different world views. It was not “Deaf-Same” but “Deaf-Different”.

This book chapter, “A Deaf Leadership Program in Nigeria: Notes on a Complicated Endeavor” is in the book entitled It’s A Small World: International Deaf Spaces and Encounters, edited by Michele Friedner and Annelies Kuster. The book published in 2015.

Readers can download the book for free at the link in ePub format. Or, readers can purchase a hard copy of the book via booksellers such as Abe Books, Amazon, or elsewhere. You also can ask your best library if they have a copy of the book.

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