Discrimination And Oppression Of Audism

Audism is when someone is being discriminated against based on their ability to hear or not to hear. The term audism originally started in 19775 by a man named Tom Humphries, to describe how some people feel superior based on their ability to hear (Bauman 2004). It is a term the hearing community does not understand and many do not notice that they are becoming an audist. It can be seen in both the deaf community and the hearing community when people do not trust that someone deaf can make their own choices in life and work as a group to take care of everyone in the deaf community (Eckert and Rowley 2013)
Audism has similarities and differences with other types of oppression. Oppression is the act of treating groups of people wrongly due to unjust reasons. Some examples of other types of oppression would be racism and sexism. Audism is similar to the other forms of oppression due to all types are based of people having negative thoughts and judgments because someone is different. According to Janice Humphrey, audism is “an attitude based on pathological thinking which results in a negative stigma toward anyone who does not hear; like racism or sexism, …show more content…
Due to not being able to hear the sounds, the hearing community feels that the deaf community should not drive. In reality, not being able to hear the sounds on the road may make the deaf community better more reliable drivers. This is due to not having distracting noises, such as the radio, causing the driver to lose focus. The loss of hearing causes a deaf person’s other senses to increase. The deaf community will actually be able to see what is going on and react quicker than the hearing community. This thought is due to audism because in reality what sense the deaf community does not have it has increased the others making them reliable