We Have a Diversity Problem in the Cueing Community

The cueing community here in America is largely made up of families that are of European descent — that is, pretty white. While we have some families that are Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latinx, and Asian, they make up a small percentage. And that shouldn’t be the case. Cued Speech has been adapted to over 60 languages around the world, including Spanish, Mandarin, and Amharic.

The lack of diversity in our community can probably be attributed to exclusionary characteristics of our nation’s education systems. In the 1970s and 1980s, several school districts around the country established “Cued Speech” tracks in deaf education programs. These school districts tended to serve families of middle class socioeconomic status, which is to say, majority white. In the early days, the spread of Cued Speech was via word of mouth, either from families already cueing or from educators working in those school districts.

I want to be very clear. The vast majority of people who I’ve met and worked with in the cueing community are what you might call “woke” and eager to build a community that is diverse, inclusive, and considerate of the vast range of people who might find us.

However, the need for access is something that doesn’t care what background you come from while the provision thereof is highly impacted by it.

As a third or fourth option given to families by early intervention providers (if at all), Cued American English is heavily impacted by privilege and that is something we need and want to change. Many families find Cued American English through their own independent research rather than from a conversation with the first, second, or even third or fourth early intervention professional that they come across.

Due process is also a function of economic privilege. It costs money, time, and emotional energy to reject a school’s recommendations during the IEP process. Even the best intentioned IEP teams are geared towards providing the path of least restriction for the student. Many people’s interpretation of that consists of the services that they already have in place rather than the student’s needs. That was my family’s own experience.

Anecdotally, we’ve seen incidences where families are intimidated into using already available services in school districts and don’t fight for their right to the services of their family’s choice because they can’t afford to do so or don’t realize that they can.

In order to ensure that our community continues to build itself into a diverse and inclusive community, we need to ensure that early intervention providers have accurate, up-to-date, and high quality materials to provide to families. We need to ensure that those materials get to every single family that seeks out services for their child. This includes ensuring that information is available in multiple languages, not just English. Many families immigrate to the U.S. in order to provide their children with the best lives possible, but they are unaware of the rights and opportunities or options that they have.

We need to ensure that we have a presence and representation at conferences where early intervention providers learn more about how to provide strategies to the children and families that they come across.

IEP providers need to be open to bringing in new services into their school district without being afraid that they’ll have to “start an entirely new program for one child.” We have to challenge an environment where families are presented with limited options without the ability to bring innovation and family preferences to the table.

Additionally, late-deafened adults across the country need to have easy access to cuers and resources in their regions so that they and their families can acquire access to the language(s) they already know and use.

This has been something that we’ve discussed for many years but current events are really underscoring why this is a problem. We can no longer let systematic limitations be an excuse for us to look at our own infrastructure and lament our lack of diversity. This is something we have to work at.

The National Cued Speech Association is currently accepting nominations for their next Board of Directors for the term starting in the Fall of 2020. They are looking for volunteers who are motivated to build the kind of infrastructure that will lead to a highly diverse and accessible cueing community.

That is one of several opportunities we have in front of us to move our cueing community to a better, more inclusive place. I, and many of my colleagues, welcome a dialogue about how we can be and do better to make this world a better place for families across the board.

With thanks to Hilary Franklin for her contributions and insights.