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A week ago, I came up with this joke as a way to vent about interpreting. It wasn't about white interpreters; it's about not having black male interpreters to work with when I needed them. I was working with the editor on the documentary film, "Signing Black in America." *thread*
I'm one of the associate producers on the film and I'm also one of the scholars who are doing the work on Black ASL. Naturally, I have to be on the film talking about Black ASL. The editors and procedures agreed that we needed to have black interpreters on the team 1/x
We were in DC so it was relatively easy to find black female interpreters in the city. But then there's me. I am a black deaf male and the film will be released to the public. So I need to have a black male speaking persona who is knowledgeable about linguistics. 2/x
There are black male interpreters in DC, but it's not easy to find them. I had to ask a friend for a list of them and I got the list. I sent them the email and I got one response. It was a lucky find because he happened to have a degree in linguistics. 3/x
I knew him from before but we didn't work together that much. This was our first opportunity to work together on film. The thing about working with an interpreter is that there is a lot involved in the communication process to make it work. 4/x
1 - we have to understand each other. 2 - I have to prepare some materials for them to review. 3 - We have to trust each other, well, in my case, I have to trust them because I can't hear what they say. 4 - They have to know my persona I want to project. 5/x
It may seem simple, but it's not. Like I said, we didn't work together. He got my materials. I was prepared for the interview. Lights on. Camera on. And go. I was signing as clear as possible and it seemed like everything was going fine. 6/x
But then I got interrupted in the middle of the interview by the interpreter and he wanted me to clarify something. Sometimes it's necessary to do that because it's important to get the info right. But we're on camera and I didn't want the interruption appeared on camera. 7/x
For me, the flow is important so I wanted to start over but I didn't know where to begin. So I asked them (including the interviewer and the interpreter) where I should start. The interviewer was hearing. The camera person was hearing. They didn't know ASL. 8/x
They depended on the interpreter to know what I was saying. So I looked at him and I got nothing. I expected some kind of involvement to help me look good as an academic on camera, but I was on my own. I know every interpreter is different and 9/x
I am responsible for my communication, my words. But I have worked with interpreters who care about how I project myself through their voice and this is on camera, but this is a different one. So I had to make the best of it. Now the goal was to sign clearly on camera and 10/x
the spoken interpretation could be edited later. Months later, I got the transcript of my interview and could spot a few mistakes, a couple of them were substantially incorrect. The interpreter caught the mistakes as well and was willing to redo them. 11/x
The wording was mostly good, but I put in my own interpretation of my signing to make myself appear like an academic on camera. The flow and the content were important to me. Then I didn't hear back from him since. I don't know what happened. That makes me sad. 12/x
I am thinking to myself, "Is this how it gonna be?" I know some interpreters are sensitive about their work, but I care about how I appear to people through their voice. My friend, Stephanie Feyne, studied the effect of interpretation on the perception of deaf professionals 13/x
You can find her study via the link: academia.edu/34098931/Paper… 14/x
It really makes think about how hearing people might perceive me. I am a tall handsome man who is educated and the privileges help me so far, but I am also black and deaf. So I have to prove myself as an academic through signing, writing, and speaking. 15/x
I've worked hard to make myself clear through signing so I got that down. I also work hard to write well despite my lifelong writing anxiety stemming from my childhood in deaf education. But speaking, that's where I have to work with interpreters on this. 16/x
Since the age of 10, most of my interpreters were white women. Early on, I didn't think much of it. I was happy that I had access. I never had an interpreter in pre-school or elementary school so I spoke for myself. Understanding people were another matter. 17/x
I had my first black interpreter when I was in high school. Looking back, I was lucky because it was quite rare to see black interpreters. There were 3 at my high school. 3 out of 10, I think. But one of them was really good and she was a Jehovah's Witness. 18/x
It's almost always the case that Jehovah's Witness interpreters sign very well, but that's another story. The other two black interpreters, one was okay, but the other one was less okay. The white interpreters I had at the school were generally good. 19/x
A church was another place I could see black interpreters. I had never seen a professional black interpreter, until I moved to DC at 22. By that time, I had formed a negative bias against black interpreters. It took me a couple of years to see that they could do the job. 20/x
But even in DC, I didn't get to work with black interpreters often. White female interpreters were always available so that was the norm. Next were white male interpreters. And then black female interpreters. From time to time, black male interpreters. 21/x
And then in about 2013 (I was 33) I was invited to do a workshop on Black ASL at a African American Interpreter Summit. There was about 20-30 black interpreters including instructors in one room. Just the sight of it made an impact on me. It took 30 years for me to see that. 22/x
I remember feeling proud and sad. Sad that it took this long to get there. Sad that there are many black deaf people who may not get to see this in their lifetime. Look at the numbers from the RID 2018 Annual Report. 23/x 
For years after I started on tenure-track in an interpreting department, I noticed things that explained why the number of black interpreters were low. Double standard. Microaggression. Racial aggression. Social and cultural capital. Isolation. Misunderstanding. 24/x
You can find all of those in the master's thesis written by Erica West Oyedele who looked into the factors that help them to persist in interpreting. digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewconten… 25/x
So back to the interview I was doing for the documentary "Signing Black in America." It was important to have black interpreters on the team because I want people to know that they exist and that they are professional. I want people to hear black voices on the film. 26/x
I also want people to hear that black interpreters can code-switch. They have in their language bag the infinite amount of linguistic resources that they use in their interpretation process for almost every situation. But there is not not many of them. 27/x
And some of them are sensitive about their work, for a good reason. They have to deal with a lot of crap as black people who are doing the work that is normally done by white interpreters. They have to deal with racism on the job with their employers, peers, and consumers. 28/x
And this affects me as a black deaf person who wants to have a speaking persona of a black person. On camera. On radio. On a podcast. I've learned that some of them are intimidated by me and my linguistic background. So that shrinks the pool even further. 29/x
So...that's why I made the joke about me having a speaking persona of a white woman because that's what I have available. I can always try to find a black interpreter but if they are not available, I have my default ready: a white woman speaking persona. 30/30
Thank you for following my thread. The "Signing Black in America" documentary is still in the works, but you can check out "Talking Black in America." I am working with the same team that produced the film. languageandlife.org/documentaries/…
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