The Defiance Under Your Radar

There's been a lot of savagery, lately and always.  Things that tear people apart in ways that are so lacking of humanity:

What is it that makes one person view another as less than human? As having less pain, less need, less desire, less hope that their dreams will come true.

In the job that I have, I witness this in some of the most vulnerable contexts. 

I see a lot of its angering pulses as it relates to anti-immigrant sentiment, white supremacist attitudes, and ableist ideas, amongst other things. 

(Here, I pause to be fucking annoyed with the fact that English-language spell check underlines the word ableist with its red dashed line, as if to say "That doesn't exist!" or "That word is not in our dictionaries!", which proves the point even fucking further.)


I find myself swaying to keep the best balance possible on the thread that I have chosen (and, in relation to privilege, has been handed to me) among the roles that I inhabit. I am a person in the world who wants to stop people from being fucked over. I am also a person who needs to respect agency. I am also, as an interpreter, a person who- in following codes of ethics- is not "supposed to be in the situation"- I'm only there to interpret, yet at the same time, in following these same ethics, it is my responsibility to "do any kind of culturally relevant interpreting that aids in communication and understanding".  (This, of course, is ridiculously problematic because it assumes that the interpreter shares or has competent and deep knowledge of all of the cultures in the room. Never going to happen.) 

This is a tall and strange and fucked up bill, but one that I have chosen to take on everyday.

I am certain that this overlaps with every imaginable job to some extent- some more than others. 

It is not something specific to interpreting. 

There are just particular slants and guidelines that apply to it.

(pause)

How do we, as people who value social justice and anti-oppression politics who also choose to work as interpreters, do our best to do what is right and important to do every day?   Even when, and not surprisingly, this shit is manifest among interpreters?  For example, with all due respect to the ADA and all of the access-related legislation, there is no question in my mind that said anti-immigrant and white supremacist bullshit is at play in the fact that sign language interpreters get paid more than, say, Amharic or Spanish language interpreters. In chit chatting a year and some ago with a spoken language interpreter studying to gain legal interpreting status, I learned that after gaining legal interpreting status, he would still only be making just over half of what legally certified ASL interpreters make. 

(pause)


These are things I think about every day. 

I am thinking of them, now.

I just needed to put these thoughts into words,

and to write them.

There is organizing going on across languages,

and I am staying tuned to connect.


-k.

[Image: Mojo Wang aka Mojo Wan (Shanghai, China) - A Boy Without Name, 2013, Digital Arts, via red-lipstick tumblr]