Through Deaf Eyes Documentary Analysis

Through Deaf Eyes is a documentary conveying various aspects of Deaf life, such as school, culture, and deaf history. It was filled with information and provides a great overview. Although my reactions varied throughout the movie, I really enjoyed it. The parts about how segregation impacted the black and white deaf communities interested me; I hadn’t considered how that would affect deaf culture.
When we first began to watch this movie, I was excited to have the opportunity to learn more about Deaf life. It was nice that we were required to watch the movie, because while the movie had been suggested before I had almost forgotten it, even though I had wanted to see it. The film gave an introduction to life on planet “Eyeth,” but in doing

I had not considered the affect segregation had on deaf history.
In 1925 a Deaf African- American couple tried to attend a National Association of the Deaf (NAD) convention. After this, the NAD banned black people from taking part in the Association. This ban was in place for the next 40 years.
Like all schools at the time, Deaf schools were separated into black deaf schools and white deaf schools. For the next 40 years the black and white deaf communities flourished separately. The signs and cultures changed and some things became unique to each culture. When segregation ended and black deaf students were allowed into white deaf schools they noticed something was different. All the students used sign language but their signs, or manner of signing, was different. The deaf white students used only a few signs, fingerspelling a majority of the time, whereas deaf black students used signs a majority of the time. In the film, Carolyn McCaskill said that she felt “humiliated” when the white students would point out that her signing was different than theirs, it made her feel as though her signing was “inferior.” Black people do have their own way of signing, tending to use even more body expression than white signers. For instance, while white signers may sign “girl” black signers will get their head into it, signing “girl” like “yeah girl”. As Carolyn said, “that’s just the black way of