CAD and the AB 455 California Bill

The AB 455 bill is looking more like a bill that needs to be thrown out because it lacks an official definition for the term "Deaf" seen here in the bill. Unless the bill can provide an official definition to the term "Deaf" then perhaps the bill can be saved rather than scrapped.

But there's a problem.

The confusion could be blamed on zealots who wanted to change the definition of the word "Deaf" with the capitalized "D" to mean all inclusive of those with a hearing loss from mild to profound, whether they know sign language or not.  In fact, you have people like Dr. Genie Gertz, Ella Mae Lentz, and  others who are in the same boat and would even agree with what Dr. Grushkin said,

I choose to capitalize "Deaf" for all Deaf (and Hard of Hearing) people, not to signify any cultural affiliation, but to emphasize the common ethnicity of Deaf people. I believe that the d/D distinction is unnecessarily divisive, cumbersome, and ultimately more trouble than it is worth, although it did serve an important purpose in its time. But using Deaf for all does not signify cultural membership, just as not all Black people are necessarily part of Black culture or all Jews are practicing religious Jews.

And compare that to the official definition of "Deaf" according to Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, in Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (1988) who invented the capitalized, big D, word explains the meaning and difference between "D"eaf and "d"eaf:

We use the lowercase deaf when referring to the audiological condition of not hearing, and the uppercase Deaf when referring to a particular group of deaf people who share a language – American Sign Language (ASL) – and a culture. The members of this group have inherited their sign language, use it as a primary means of communication among themselves, and hold a set of beliefs about themselves and their connection to the larger society. We distinguish them from, for example, those who find themselves losing their hearing because of illness, trauma or age; although these people share the condition of not hearing, they do not have access to the knowledge, beliefs, and practices that make up the culture of Deaf people.

In short, the term "Deaf" has always been defined as people who are culturally deaf and signs in ASL. That already defined word has already entered into the collective conscious minds of people for almost three decades. But people have a nasty habitat on putting the term "Deaf" into a bill or a bylaw without providing an official definition as a clarification.

California Association of the Deaf bylaws is another good example who used the term "Deaf" peppered throughout but no definition explaining the meaning "Deaf." Yet also, their bylaws make no reference to the term "hard of hearing," either. They didn't write down "Deaf and hard of hearing" in their bylaws like the AB 455 bill did but used only the  "Deaf" term instead. In other words they made the term "Deaf" to mean all inclusive those with a hearing loss from mild to profound rather than to mean only for culturally deaf people.

 At the very bottom of the bylaws CAD has a definition of the term "Deaf":

"Deaf is a term that includes all the individuals: born deaf, deafened in early, sometimes late childhood, for whom American Sign Language and Deaf community/culture collectively represent their primary experience and existence regardless of hearing disability they have.”

Was that an official definition of "Deaf" from CAD? Curiously so in their most recently updated bylaws as of August of 2011 they presented no definition for the term "Deaf" in various forms such as "Deaf community," "Deaf individuals," and the single term "Deaf."

Over the last three decades Deaf (culturally deaf) people have made a point that they "own" the word "Deaf" and for it to mean explicitly one thing, a deaf culture group that uses ASL. They have always agreed with Padden and Humphries' definition of that term.

Deaf with a capital D is a cultural term, rather than an audiological one. As defined by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries in Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (1988), Deaf refers ‘to a particular group of deaf people who share a language—American Sign Language (ASL)—and a culture.”

Hence, it's understandable seeing the confusion of the bill's language writing in "Deaf and hard of hearing" into the bill when earlier it was written as "deaf and hard of hearing."  Exactly what is the official definition of the term "Deaf" seen in the AB 455 bill?

Well? What is it?

I'm waiting.

UPDATE: Of course, this is something that Tara Congdon failed to realize in her "investigative" reporting on CNN that the bill lacked any definition for the term "Deaf" which might become the unexpected monkey wrench. We'll wait and see, and get a more definitive report elsewhere whether the bill might present a problem or not.