The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community

``Audism'' is the term that Northeastern University psychology professor Lane, who is not deaf, uses in this forceful indictment of what he calls ``the hearing establishment,'' which he portrays as a colonial power overseeing the needs of deaf subjects. Hearing ``experts'' (at least the ones who can hear) demean deaf people, who, he writes, view themselves as an ethnic group, and who tend to marry among themselves. A deaf mother recalls her response upon learning that her newborn was deaf: ``I wasn't disappointed. I thought, it will be all right. We are both deaf so we will know what to do.'' Lane derides the financial motivation of those who urge upon deaf patients cochlear implants, a procedure with mixed results based on a painful, complicated bone-drilling process. Those who are deaf, he observes, are not handicapped; they have heightened visual powers. His book is an eye-opener. (May)