Looking Through the Kaleidoscope: A Metaphor for Convergences of Identities

This chapter dives into the exploration of how identities and the variables contributing to these identities converge. The author, a deaf counseling psychologist, uses the kaleidoscope as a metaphor to illustrate this process. She describes her own identity exploration as a deaf woman, including the ways that personal and professional identities have been influenced by multiple variables interacting with each other as illustrated by the movement of the various elements of the kaleidoscope. To broaden her understanding of her life journey, she relies on acculturation and intersectional theories and outlines how these theories fit with her experiences. She also examines the implications of deaf identity formation for psychological well-being.

The Impact of Identity and Culturally Responsive School Leadership: Leaders of Schools and Programs for the Deaf

This chapter explores the relationship between culturally responsive school leadership and school culture in schools for the deaf. The author demonstrates how Deaf culture, identity, and culturally responsive school leadership intertwine and influence each other. This chapter reports on observations of and interviews with leaders in six schools for the deaf in the United States. Many current school leaders serving Deaf children lack knowledge and understanding of Deaf culture and Deaf identity. Culturally responsive leaders in the schools for the deaf that were studied were almost all part of Deaf culture. If school leaders are to better meet the needs deaf students’ education and identity development, they must recognize the students’ cultures and identities. The author makes a plea for better equipping potential principals and other leaders of schools for the deaf.

Identity, Ethics, and the Deaf Community

From the vantage point of philosophy, this chapter discusses identities using a philosophical stance with specific focus on the ethics dimension of what deaf identity means. The author, a deaf philosopher, explores the American Sign Language representation of the word philosophy and briefly describes the role of philosophy per se in exploring the roles of metaphysics and epistemology. She introduces an analytical philosophical approach to the topic of ethics and deaf identities that involves concept clarification, analysis of brief examples, and posing specific kinds of questions that are typical of this discipline. The chapter ends with a plea for academics and community participants to continue exploring explicit identification of beliefs about the nature and meaning of deaf identity.

Intersectionality—Beyond the Individual: A Look Into Cultural Identity Development of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children of Multicultural “Hearing” Families

This chapter by a hard-of-hearing psychologist and a hearing social worker focuses on intersectionality as it manifests in multicultural issues arising from the multiple complex social identities of deaf children and youth whose families are hearing and from racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse backgrounds. The authors affirm that intersectionality is not just about dealing with how separate parts of an individual develop. Rather, there is an interactive component in terms of how these separate parts engage each other and the sociopolitical environments that influence them. The child needs to identify and negotiate his or her “diversity within” and then express that complex multicultural identity with clarity and confidence appropriately in different environments. The authors expand on these perspectives and processes using examples to bring issues to life. Finally, they propose an institute to continue the research and create concrete strategies for many situations.

Minimizing the Impact of Language Deprivation and Limited Access to Role Models on Deaf Identity Development in Children and Young Adults: Global Perspectives for Positive Change

The implications of language deprivation for identity development in deaf people are not frequently treated in the literature. For this chapter, a deaf anthropologist/social scientist and a hearing deaf educator partnered to explore the implications of language deprivation for deaf identities and present strategies to encourage the internalization of positive deaf identities in the face of limited linguistic input. The reader will find descriptions of the impact of language deprivation from a global perspective on two periods of the life course: early childhood and young adulthood. To counteract this deprivation, the authors describe research-based interventions that combine language and identity development using creative visual and digital approaches of storytelling and exposure to Deaf role models for both children and young adults.

Lessons Learned: How Studying Cochlear Implantation Reveals the Context in Which d/Deaf Identities Are Formed

With the exponential increase in the use of cochlear implants, much has been written about how cochlear implants may have changed deaf identities. Recent research documents a trend toward a more hearing-oriented identity with potential for positive psychological well-being. In this chapter, a hearing sociologist and ethnographic researcher highlights how the clinical context shapes both parental decision making about obtaining cochlear implants for their deaf children and the far-reaching influence that hearing-oriented systems have on this decision-making process for parents, deaf individuals, and deaf communities. The author describes the nature of these hearing-oriented systems and highlights issues related to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status for cochlear-implanted children. The potential implications for these children are considered. There is a need for research that broadly examines the question of whether and how cochlear implants change the long history of narratives of finding one’s Deaf identity.

Sociological Perspectives on Deaf Identities

This chapter delineates three foundational social questions covering identity and its confluence with society. The authors, deaf academics, use these foundational questions as a framework to examine sociological perceptions of deaf identities. These questions guide the reader to an understanding of the structure of the deaf community, where it stands in human history, and who succeeds in the greater context of society in general. The authors integrate their own personal experiences within an academic framework grounded in sociology to explore the impact of social institutions, including the family, medical and educational systems, and the community influences on the social construction of deaf identities.

Deaf Identities: A Maturing Framework

This chapter provides a brief historical overview of how deaf identities have evolved. Emphasis is placed on the role psychology has played in expanding investigations into the nature of deaf identities and how these identities impact the lives of deaf people. Included is a description of what identity in general and deaf identities specifically represent and how these deaf identities have been categorized in the literature. This sets the stage for the need to incorporate perspectives of deaf identities as conceptualized by academic disciplines other than psychology in order to strengthen the literature on deaf identities. The chapter concludes with descriptions of each chapter and a call to action in researching deaf identities in less-explored multidiverse groups of deaf people.

In Between Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk: Crises of Collage, Mutating Identities, and Collective Subjectivities

In this chapter, the reader will find a careful analysis of the impact of mutating identities written by a deaf educational anthropologist who places himself squarely in the liminal zone of identity as an in-betweener, identifying himself as culturally Deaf and as a deaf person who speaks. Using this as a starting point, he argues for a shift from a politics of identity toward a politics of vitalism that rejects a focus on individual bodies and differences and instead focuses on flows of vitality that emerge through difference and movement across multiple bodies and identities. In so doing, he disavows an essentialist and dualistic “us-them” framework and elucidates the richness of the in-between. This serves as a generative force to move beyond a subject’s struggle for an unattainable unified identity and instead seek connections with multiple bodies.

Examining the Intersectionality of Deaf Identity, Race/Ethnicity, and Diversity Through a Black Deaf Lens1,2

The authors of this chapter, a Black Deaf scholar immigrant from South Africa and a Black Deaf academic from the South Side of Chicago, highlight the limited scholarly exploration of Black Deaf lives within the context of the Deaf community. They present what they could extract from existing literature on Black Deaf historical perspectives, the influence of Black American Sign Language, and what it means to be Black and Deaf. In addition, considering the scarcity of research on non-White Deaf communities, they contribute their personal experiences to highlight the transnational identity issues of Black Deaf immigrants and the identity issues of Black Deaf individuals within the context of the United States. This chapter provides a thought-provoking treatise on what it means to be Black and Deaf with unique backgrounds in the United States.