Hanna Mignano

Interpreting Practicum/ Fall 2021

Professional Development

10/1/21

30 min

Signing Black in America

This was a very cool documentary about Black ASL. We had mentioned Black ASL and covered

the topic briefly in previous semesters, but it was very interesting to get a more in depth look into the

subculture and to see just how the signing is different from white signers. It is not as different as I

would have thought, but distinctive in much the same way that black language is spoken, that is to say

it has its own dialect. The signs are bigger and more pronounced, known as “extralinguistic”, often the

whole body is used, in general it has much more sass and is very animated. I was also not aware before

that Black ASL tends to retain two handed signs that would otherwise become one-handed as a

colloquially. I really enjoyed learning about the history of black deaf schools in America and the

hurdles they faced after desegregation. The woman in greed who describes her experiences at that time

shares a story about how she went from a black deaf school to a white deaf school and couldn't

understand the signs. What a shame that at that time those students would have been perceived as

lesser than and would have had to work that much harder just to keep up to overcome a language

barrier. I learned that this is referred to as codeswitching. I was also surprised to find that I was

understanding much of what was signed with relative ease, and could pick up on the nuances of when

Black ASL was being used. Overall I found this documentary to be very eye opening and has piqued

my interest in Black ASL and Black Deaf Culture in general.