(This letter was written over four years ago as a last straw effort to educate. We appreciate the apology. We wish you there would be accountability for so often excluding us from videos in the past by not captioning. We can’t help but still feel hurt after 5 years of frequently blocking and silencing us deaf people, while turning your supporters against us without information. Beyond excited for your growth and willingness to start taking accountability. Much love and health to everyone reading and if you’d like some deaf/hoh and sign language channels to follow there is a list attached. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QebNC1c5BpYygtMpIJcXXjcsD94lV9VrSWpe5Wal-KY/edit?usp=sharing)
December 16, 2018
Dear Libbey,
Greetings! We, several members of the Deaf community, allies of Deaf people, and Deaf artists, want to begin this note by stating that we do not want to discourage people from learning ASL, nor are we behaving as gatekeepers to the Deaf community. Most of us are Deaf/Hard of hearing and we are incredibly grateful for ASL students and interpreters who have embraced their role as community partners and are truly passionate about accessibility and being allies for the Deaf community. We are writing today in hopes that our voices be heard and that you take the time to comprehend and acknowledge the negative consequences of your recent online activity and to express our concern with your business venture to sell apparel featuring ASL, a language sacred to the Deaf community.
What is American Sign Language? Why do we hold it so close to our hearts? The Deaf community here in the United States is a minority culture that is subordinate in political status to those of hearing people. American Sign Language is not simply a language. It is our cultural identifier, the tie that binds members of the Deaf community together. It is a marker of our cultural heritage, which more often than not are taken away from Deaf children and the use of discouraged and stigmatized throughout their lifetimes. Those Deaf children grow up only to discover that a piece of their cultural heritage had been hidden from sight and their incomplete sense of self was as a direct result of their own teachers, their parents, and peers stigmatizing the use of ASL. Too often, we find ourselves as adults, being able to learn and use ASL, to feel our hands and arms move in conjunction with our bodies instead of struggling to speak words that feel like marbles in our mouth. We can relax and watch language flow from someone else’s fingertips rather than struggling to understand even the simplest occurrence. We find our sense of self, our freedom, and a community that embraces us fully for who we are. With ASL, we can finally fly.
Libbey, we chose to write this letter to you because we have been trying to reach you and to share with you our concerns, but you have resisted our efforts and ignored public efforts on social media where we reached out to you. This has been going on for quite a while, and now we feel it’s appropriate to post this open letter to the community in hopes that you will reconsider your resistance to engaging us and be more responsive. Just now, this was the last straw for us - you posted some merchandise that you are trying to sell.
Image Description: Black t-shirt, the quote on top: "I sign songs because", with the quote on bottom: "I can't sing them". with the ILY handshape in middle. The letters and the image is in white.
We are confused by the message that this t-shirt is sending. Is ASL supposed to be a consolation prize for a person who doesn’t have a singing voice? Is ASL only supposed to be used for signing music? Does ASL have value only when it is used to sign music?
In reality communicating with ASL leads many of us to deal with ableism, audism, and oppression on a regular basis.
Several of us writing this are also creators and doing this work is also an exploration of ourselves as Deaf persons, a way to embrace our language much more deeply, and to share with the world what we have to offer. This is where we often run into another barrier - hearing creators who have chosen to appropriate ASL for themselves, to create their own videos, and to sell merchandise and monetize their videos for profit. We have fought so hard to gain access to our own language only to discover that we now have to compete with others who do not value ASL as we do and who have not fought as hard as we do to embrace ASL.
It is clear that you are a non-native signer of ASL, you are hearing, and have truly taken advantage of your privilege. ASL is the language that it requires serious study, both in the language and the cultural context in which it exists. You are profiting from the merchandise sales of hearing made ASL and Deaf culture materials as part of your business model. We do not support this.
Those acts of appropriation damage Deaf creators and the Deaf community because hearing signers generally receive greater exposure, acceptance and even celebration in the dominant culture. What we have observed is that ASL in music videos by hearing appropriators have been diluted, ripped apart, and put back together in mismatching pieces by amateurs who do not value the language as we do.. and they are praised for it. And what’s more, when we share our concerns and ask them to stop, we are vilified, abused, accused of being haters, of having an agenda, being toxic, and told to be quiet.
Your stated priorities and beliefs have come in conflict. What you say does not match what you do. We have been confronted with a series of conflicting statements and behavior patterns that do not demonstrate cultural sensitivity or a deeper understanding of the impact of your actions upon the deaf community.
For instance, you said that you would donate some of your profits from selling merchandise to a deaf organization, but have yet to answer our questions about which deaf organization and what percentage of profits. We are also concerned that you do not understand that the very act of profiteering, alone, is damaging to the Deaf community. There are many very talented Deaf creators and people who have worked very hard to promote their talents, but are oppressed for their language. Their talent is off the charts, their ASL is on point, and their work is of very high quality, but they have lost income because you have kept the spotlight on yourself and on other hearing creators. We also must ask you, why do you feel that you are entitled to any profit whatsoever?
We want to make a clear, unambiguous statement: You shouldn’t be selling ASL merchandise at all.
We also have concerns about your channel on YouTube is not inclusive towards Deaf people or Deaf culture. You present yourself as an ally, as a lover of ASL and Deaf Culture, and yet you have not shared any content remotely inclusive of the deaf community. You frequently post videos where you speak in English without using properly formatted and edited captions. Those videos are inaccessible. Ironically, when you post videos signing without music, you add captions! In addition, you have not posted any content or promoted anything to do with Deaf culture. Our language is rooted in our culture and by not showing Deaf talent, Deaf culture, and community involvement, you have done us a major disservice.
We do not believe that you have prioritized what’s in the best interest of the Deaf community.
Your behavior has also harmed your followers. You have mislead them about your skill in ASL, the accuracy of the sign vocabulary you teach, and modeled culturally inappropriate behaviors to your impressionable followers. Many of them are new signers who are interested in ASL and are eager to learn, and you are doing them a disservice. You are teaching them that it’s okay to disrespect Deaf people, to disregard Deaf culture norms and rules. Your response to our concerns have been weaponized among your followers. Your followers have yelled at us, threatened us, insulted us, and disrespected us. They have lost the opportunity to have genuine interactions with the deaf community because you turned them against us. You used your privilege as a hearing person as a weapon, to abuse the trust they had in you, as a tool to oppress Deaf creators who have shared concerns with you.
Please stop ignoring us. This is more than a matter of “different opinions.”
We have tried to engage with you, and we have warned you, but you have perpetuated this behavior. We know you are already aware of the damage you are doing, as you have had your channel for years, and yet you willingly have perpetuated false teachings and ignored the requests of the vast majority of the deaf community telling you not to monetize and to instead use your channel to promote Deaf talent, culture, and community. We also know your professors have told you not to monetize videos, but you seek ways to work around this. Your professors shared a language they loved with you, told you to take care of it, nurture and grow it, but now you are using it for the cheapest and the most craven thing of all - profit. We want you to stop.
Our intentions with this letter was not to attack you, but to help you understand that your behaviors do have negative consequences and pretending they don’t is blatantly disregarding the Deaf community. We also hope that you will take your channel in a new direction in order to help boost Deaf talent, creators, and the community and to stop allowing your platform to be the face of ASL on youtube. Your anorexia awareness efforts are also incredibly valid, we encourage you to maybe focus on this. We acknowledge that it is highly unlikely you will stop creating ASL content, but we are asking that you listen and please stop selling ASL merch and seeking profit from using our language.
Regards,
Jess, Lee, Sammy, Chrysalid, Bri W., Joy, Katsa, Micah, Arlene, Marcos, Jessey, Cati, Andy, Andrew, Melissa, Riley, Katie, Amanda, Steven, Kent, David, Chris, Jade, Kelsey, Leah, Carly, Bri S., Chie, Mark, Ann, and Chrissy
ASL are the wings we use to fly, but we will not be free until it’s truly our own.