Era of Epistemological Equity 53
there is social capital in a sense of community, there is also a risk of exclusion. The
solution is in the recognition of “competing affiliations.”We have to draw on the understanding that the force of a bellicose identity
can be challenged by the power of competing identities. These can, of course,
include the broad commonality of our shared humanity, but also many other
identities that everyone simultaneously has....... Along with the recognition of the plurality of our identities and their
diverse implications, there is a critically important need to see the role of
choice in determining the cogency and relevance of particular identities which
are inescapably diverse....
... The freedom to determine our loyalties and priorities between the dif-
ferent groups to all of which we may belong is a peculiarly important liberty
which we have reason to recognize, value, and defend. (Sen, 2008, pp. 4–5)
Taking into account these “competing identities” is particularly relevant in relation
to multiple deaf identities and deaf learners of diverse backgrounds and to aware-
ness of the mobilizing force of unitary constructions of deaf identity and the asso-
ciated risk of exclusion. As such, Sen’s question as to how educational and societal
contexts can create the circumstances in which people will be able to reason about
identity constructions and have the freedom to make choices must be faced by the
fields of deaf education and deaf studies:Is multiculturalism nothing other than the tolerance of diversity of cultures? Does
it make a difference who chooses the cultural practices, whether they are imposed
in the name of “the culture of the community” or whether they are freely chosen
by persons with adequate opportunity to learn and reason about alternatives?
What facilities do members of different communities have, in schools as well as in
the society at large, to learn about the faiths—and nonfaiths—of different people
in the world and to understand how to reason about choices that human beings
must, if only implicitly, make? (Sen, 2006, p. 152)notions of deaf culture and deaf identity have been able to create greater scope for
the lives of deaf people; the challenge is now for these concepts to be employed as
complex and dynamic notions that validate diverse and contextualized practices
of deaf people and that also have emancipatory potential. Deaf people are also
women, children, people of color, Hindus, workers, people in Third World coun-
tries, and so forth. Consequently, deaf people’s flourishing will only be possible in a
shared orientation toward the flourishing of all people.ConCLUSIon
The place to test the success of an educational system is not in the schoolroom nor in
conversation over the social teacup, but out where men toil and earn their daily bread.
—Schuyler Long (cited in Andersson, 1991, p. 99)