The Interpreter Archetype

This is an episode describing our standards of professionalism through the archetype. From there we address and discuss some of the problematic layers of the archetype that is prevalent in our field. Has this been your experience? How do we fix it?

Transcript

 Welcome to, if I'm honest, on today's episode, we are addressing the interpreter archetype. And this is a concept that I am using to talk about our standards of professionalism. And I start the episode by describing national standards of professionalism, which are based on white supremacy and how we derive our standards from that, right?

And then from there, I define what the interpreter archetype is like, who it is, what it looks like, right? And what, and then in the problematic layers of that identity. And one of them is, This whole kind of anti-Audist ally button and the problematic things that come as a result of that. And then I talk about the other problematic expectations on following and enforcing rules of, um, as, as that a ally, uh, on dress and language and how the fact that our language has changed to make.

This kind of professional genre that it disadvantages us in the communities that we serve. So this is the beginning of the conversation. So come on in the room and let's have it. Welcome to, if I'm honest, a podcast where we address and discuss issues in the sign language interpreting profession using an anti-racist lens.

Here we intentionally take up space and we say the thing we named a thing that previously hasn't been named in Efforts to change. Challenge and dismantle problematic narratives in our field. And we do this because an anti-racist interpreter is just a better interpreter period. I'm your host, keisha osborne, and I've been having these conversations for over a decade.

On an individual level, I think it's high time that we expand the conversation to include you. Let's talk about it. Welcome to if I'm on it. On today's episode, I wanted to take the opportunity to address some of the larger systemic ways that our field lends itself to problematic narrative that expects that we all fit in this professional box, which I'm calling the interpreter archetype.

I wanna define what the interpreter archetype is, how it expects that we blend and meet this standard of professionalism and a sense we lose our identity and it impacts our language. And then how? The change in who we are in our identities adversely impacts the communities that we serve. All right, so buckle up and let's get into it.

Now, before I address the interpreter archetype and the specific standards that are specific to the interpreting field, I have to address that our standards are based on the national standards and why they are problematic and built on white supremacy culture. In fact, I read a tweet in my research that said that standards of professionalism are racist, sexist, classist, and just downright oppressive.

And so, I think we have to address that first before we can look at our standards and see how we have adopted some of those problematic narratives. I did a lot of research leading up into this episode because what I wanted to do is make sure that I didn't have some kind of implicit bias. I wanted to make sure that I understood how standards of professionalism are built on white supremacy culture and what it means for them to be racist, sexist, and classist.

Right? Because I think it's a big thing to say that a lot of people won't. Respond well to, but let's like look at it and see how these standards can be oppressive and specifically who they target and how they adversely impact them. So I can't look at everything, right? But there are two big things that I think are really important that we look at that will also apply to the interpreter archetype, and it is the expectations.

On language and the expectations on duress. And in these two examples, I think we can see and find good examples of how these standards can be classist, sexist, and racist. So in terms of language, I think we all know that the expectation and the language of business and the language of professionalism is standard varieties of English.

That means that people who don't use standard varieties of English, including immigrants, people who use English with an accent, people who use. Underprivileged varieties of English like A A V E, uh, Appalachian, English, Southern English, all of those people are more likely to experience some form of oppression and bias as a result of the professional standards of language.

Right. I, what I like about this example is that we can see that these standards of professionalism don't just impact black and brown people. It also impacts white people. In this country, there is such a strong attitude around language, right? So we have this attitude that standard English is the way that everybody is supposed to speak, and that is the idea that's pushed.

And if you don't use this variety of English, then you're looked at as some kind of less than I've heard Southern people say who have a stronger accent. Than I do, even though I am a Kentucky girl, that because of their accent, they are viewed as stupid. Right. And in the same way that people who use various dialects and accents on English and America, it also adversely impacts deaf people.

Right? And it is one of the driving forces of why there's such a pathological view and medical perspective on deafness. It's the expectation that these. People who are broken need to learn to speak and read and write like the rest of the world. The inverse of this is as a black woman who can use standard varieties of English, I have gotten, oh my God, you're so articulate.

Wow. Right, and the subtext there is, you're so articulate for a black person. And so that's language, attitude. So the next thing I want to talk about is dress and how dress can be sexist, racist, and classist. I think all across the country we have seen a number of examples where dress standards can be oppressive.

And I can hear the rule follower saying, well, somebody set the standards. And that's just a rule. That is a statement and a stance that you can take as someone who is privileged and not being adversely impacted by these expectations and standards that are specifically targeted at people with marginalized identities.

In other words, it's a stance that you can make when you're in the benefactor. Of the standard and not the person being oppressed by it. It's designed for you. Right? And so let's talk about that, right? The larger professional standards on dress and these standards include expectations on both hair and dress.

Let's map these, uh, hair and dress standards to classism sex and racism. Um, I think all across the country we have seen these examples, so let's provide some of these oppressive examples. One example I found was just here recently and the Missouri House. Floor. One party decided that the standards of professional dress for women needed to be changed.

They had a group of men who determined that the professional dress or the way that the women were showing up to the house were unprofessional and that they needed their arms to be covered. Right? And there was a woman who was speaking on behalf of the party who said, we shouldn't have to tell a woman that she needed to cover her arms.

Right, because not covering your arms is unprofessional. So that's one example. Another example that I can think of and I think about often is the example of the New Jersey wrestler who had locks, um, who was asked to cut his hair right then and there, or forfeit the match. This wrestler had been involved in this poor for quite some time, and it had been determined that his hair was short enough.

It did not violate any of the rules, but the referee insisted. That he either cut his hair right then and there or forfeit the match. And so with coaches watching, with parents watching the wrestler opted to be a team player and have his hair cut with surgical scissors right there on the wrestling floor.

Um, and in this specific realm, There was an expectation and a standard that adversely impacted this young man. Uh, we also see standards like this all across the military. Um, recently the military standards had changed, but previously, uh, they did not allow locks. They did not allow wigs. They did not allow a number of things, and the design of the hair was supposed to be pulled back into a bun.

Like the, I mean, how many black women can pull their hair back into a bun without a relaxer? Like, let's just think about that. But that was the standard professionalism. Right, and I can think about, for me personally, a personal experience that I had is I went to a high school that had hair standards and all of them were targeted at black women.

So we couldn't have braids, we couldn't have locks, we couldn't have unnaturally colored hair. There were so many things that we could not do. Like the military, if I were to have blonde hair, which I do now, this is a little blonde. This is a little blonde. But if I were to have blonde hair there, I would've been suspended until I changed my hair back into a natural hair color.

And because blonde is not a natural hair color on black people, it was an unnatural hair color. But for a white girl to dye her hair blonde, because it is a natural hair color for white people, it was allowed. You see what I'm saying? So it was very problematic. They didn't allow braids or cornrows or any of those things.

And that's just another space where the standard of hair, there's an attitude around it that is oppressive. And then finally, specific to classism, the standards of wearing a suit to an interview or to work was designed to keep people of lower socioeconomic statuses out. So if you can't afford to a suit, You can't go to the interview, you can't go to work.

These people were pigeonholed into specific types of work and not able to rise economically. All right, so I think I've given us an idea of how standards professionalism can be prohibitive and oppressive. Like you have to talk a certain way and look a certain way in order to be in the workforce. So I wanna take.

This idea of oppressive standards and apply it to the interpreting profession. And from there we talk about the interpreter archetype. All right, so what is the interpreter archetype? It is our standard of professionalism and the box that every one of us is supposed to blend into. So one of the reason that the interpreter archetype looks the way it does is because of sheer quantity, the largest makeup of our field is made up of white women.

That same, um, ratio of women in the field also make up the majority of professors and teachers in ITPs. So if that's what the makeup is, of course that influences our perspective on what professional is supposed to look like. You have these people teaching us how to be them, and because I think it needs to be said

That isn't inherently bad. What's bad is expecting keisha a black woman from Kentucky with Locs who uses a AAV E to fit in the box that looks like a white woman who wears interpreter dress, a k a business casual, solid colors all the time. Which means black because that's what contrasts with her skin tone.

She has a Midwest accent that is kind of void of any regional or cultural characteristic. Has been formally educated and gone to an I T P and identifies as an anti-audist ally. This is not a box that I'm going to easily fit in. It was not a box design for me. Right? And so that means I have to alter who I am and my identity and how I show up in order to fit in this box, to be identified as a professional and as a result of that, if I don't fit in the cake times that I don't fit and I don't use the right language and I don't look a certain way, and I have this hair, which I do think has evolved some.

I experience more oppression, more discrimination, more racism as a result of not fitting nicely into the interpreter archetype. So I think it's important that we unpack some of the problematic layers of the interpreter archetype, which would be. Dress language, which I think also includes like this whole notion of I went to an ITP, or being formula educated and then finally identifying as an antio ally, which I think I've talked about before.

It's like this is an identity you can't just own. Uh, but as a result of identifying as someone who is a good hearing person, we've created a highly competitive and dangerous environment for people when they make mistakes. So before I address dress as a problematic layer of the interpreter archetype, I need to start with a caveat and acknowledge that I understand why we have an established dress code.

And part of the reason was because deaf people were having such a hard time understanding CHI's, that they were like, Hey, we gotta pick a struggle. I can't compete with your patterned shirt and fight to understand what the heck you're trying to say. Like, we gotta pick one. We can't do both. Right. So that was one thing.

They were like, help me, help me. That was one reason. But another reason was that, um, I can remember in undergrad, one of my professors saying the reason that the dress code was established is cuz we needed to stop CODAs from showing up to doctor's appointment in cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts and flip flops.

Right, because we're trying to instantiate interpreting as a profession and not a trade, but as a result of these rules, these standards have started to be weaponized against people of varying identities. So I can remember there was a Facebook page and I never belonged to because of the drama that I heard about it, but it was called the Reality of Interpreting.

And I can remember there was a, an interpreter who showed up to a professional job and she had on open toed shoes. It was a platform job, right? So she was wearing it, a suit, and she had on open toed shoes, baby. They read her the riot act. They read her for filth on these open toed shoes, as if that was truly a distraction from the message, as if that was going to so adversely impact her effectiveness.

But her open toed shoes were a problem. Or another example was, I can remember her undergrad having a conversation about wearing a pattern skirt, like with polka dots or colors on it, and saying that that was too distracting. What the weaponization of standards is to prove I'm a good interpreter. I'm good, I'm good, which is inherently based on the moral code of white supremacy.

Right is there is such a thing as a right way to do professionalism or professional dress and there's a wrong way of professional dress. And when you don't meet the standards of professional dress, then you get read the riot act. You get ate up and demolished by the masses who are somewhere trying to prove to themselves and to other people that they are good.

On the back of proving that, that interpreter is "bad". I think the point of the page was to help improve and foster the next generation of interpreters by talking about issues. But what I did instead was just perpetuate problematic narratives that adversely impact lots of people, not just marginalized identities, but like.

People who don't neatly fit in this box that clearly has expectations on what is right and what is wrong. What drives this mob mentality and the weaponization of these standards and rules is the layer of the interpreter archetype of identifying as an anti-audist ally. Initially, I think I wanted to start with dress and I kind have been leading up into that point, but I, I think I wanna make the switch to talk about the anti-audist ally because that whole sense of allyship is what people are weaponizing to prove that I am good, I'm a good hearing person, right?

Because we, in the same way that we see some white people on the journey of anti-racism feel shame about being white, we also see. Hearing people feel about being caring in deaf spaces. And so instead of just sitting with the reality that we grew up and were conditioned with oppressive mindsets towards deaf people and like unpacking that and addressing it, we behave like crabs in the bucket.

And so we create this mentality to prove that I am good by attacking other people for mistakes or for minor things that really aren't that deep and don't adversely impact the deaf people if we just let them speak for themselves. And I think the other thing that I have to say is I heard this thing about allyship and someone said, being an ally is not an identity, but it is a task.

It's not something that you just get to claim for yourself, but it's something that's given to you by the work that you do. So 'crabs in a bucket' is an ineffective way of showing allyship. Really, it's a reflection of how you feel about your own oppressive status. Allyship instead is you sitting with the harm and doing the work to say, should I weaponize these standards towards someone else, or should I just let them develop their own sense of professionalism without judgment, without malice, without attacking them, and just do the work on me? That has nothing to do with someone else. This whole anti-audist identity could be a whole entire episode by itself. We have all seen how interpreters have bandwagon and attacked other interpreters for decisions that they made.

Right? And so honestly, it's just so unproductive. What is better and more productive is to say, if I was in that situation, what would I have done. And if I would've made the wrong decision? And there are times that we do make the wrong decision. Let me sit with that. Let me unpack the ways that I am oppressive to deaf people.

Let me check in to see if this particular situation, if I was in it, what I would've done, how it's harmful, and not do that again. Right. Like that is a relationship me against me, and it doesn't include attacking someone else's for the decisions that they made because everyone is human and we don't get to avoid the human experience.

And some of this is just simply about minding our own business. Okay, so the next layer of the interpreter archetype that I wanna address is dress right, like I had started there, I jumped to anti artist ally, and now I wanna go back to professional dress. And we have to talk about the reality that the standards of solid colors contrasting with your skins are based on standards of whiteness.

And I, I think it's probably change and develop more now. But let's still talk about it. In December, 2011, I interpreted the wedding of my, one of my good friends, and I can remember at the time I was told by the vast majority of the professors who were white women, the staff interpreter, who's also a white woman, they told me that I could not wear black.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a light-skinned black woman, but it was just a simple idea that a black person, black can't wear black. Not an actual look at what actually contrasts with my skin, but just the idea black on black doesn't work. And so I was so conflicted about it that I asked my friend after I talked to my professors and they told me that I should wear white.

I asked my friend, I'm like, Hey. I know this is a traditional wedding. Uh, I wanna support, you asked me to interpret your wedding and I'm being told that I should wear white. How do you feel about that? She wore a white dress in Kentucky. She wore a white dress in Kentucky. And so I asked her how she felt about it and because she was also in the program, she was like, cool.

She didn't care about that kind of thing. She was really cool, laid back friend. Um, and she was okay with me wearing white, but I never forgot it. Like it really stuck with me. This notion that black didn't contrast with my skin. But when you are teaching a standard that is based on standard of whiteness and not necessarily common sense, then what happens is as a result is that black people get oppressed.

In fact, I have a friend who, dark skin, who graduated from the program. Two years before I did, who just last year wore a black top to work for the first time. Like just think about that. Like it stuck with her so long. She felt like she could not wear a black top to work. She wore black bottoms. She wore color, but she couldn't wear a black top because she was told that black did not contrast with her skin.

And just to be clear, black contrast with everybody's skin. In fact, I get more complaints when I wear white to work because it kind of glares, or it's not easy on the eyes than I do when I wear black. Like that's problematic. And it also tells black people something about them, like she's carrying that around and it's this traumatizing idea that if I wear black, then I'm, I'm bad.

Right. If I break that standard of professionalism, I'm, I'm bad. And deaf people aren't gonna be able to see what I'm saying and that's bad. I have another example that I'd like to tell about how these standards are so stringent in the minds of some and weaponize that even a little deviation from what is quote unquote the norm is problematic.

Right? So there's a good friend of mine who was interpreting on Zoom during the pandemic and he's white passing, um, and he was wearing a maroon button up shirt. A collared shirt, uh, and it had cream buttons on him. And friend, a good friend of mine who had been in the field for 20, 30 years was like, oh my God, he's wearing cream buttons.

And I said to her, are you telling me that deaf people are not gonna be able to see his message as a result of these cream buttons? Are you telling me that a deaf person wouldn't? Wear this shirt and we would have a hard time understanding him. Like what are we saying here? And why are these SP rules so stringent that wearing a shirt with cream buttons made him bad?

There is such a level of shame, um, that is divvied out in this field as a result of breaking the rules, and that's problematic. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we should just throw out the rules and that the rules don't matter and that there aren't standards that we shouldn't follow. I'm not suggesting that I'm merely addressing the oppressive practices that happen as a result of breaking this rule.

This is something a conversation could solve. And more importantly, it's one for deaf people and more often than not, while I think these rules adversely impact everyone, especially people who don't fit neatly in the box, I think they more often adversely impacts black and brown people because the, the standards are based on whiteness and not on.

Us These centers don't just impact dress, but they also impact other types of expression like nails. I can remember when I was an undergrad and I was about to interview for my itp, which was highly competitive. Uh, and I had french tips. I just got my nails done. I had acrylic french tips, and I thought they were super cute.

And when I asked the SAP interpreter who's white, uh, she told me it was unprofessional and that my nails would be distracting. And then I remember after I graduated from the program, I ran into a white interpreter who had French tips and I wondered, and I thought to myself, were they. Nails distracting because my hands are brown and not white.

Or were they distracting because they were actually distracting? And I think the people that we need to ask is deaf people. And so once I started asking deaf people, they were like, yeah, I don't, yeah, it's, it's fine with me. I'm okay with that. But I think another example is like we find in hair. So naturally my hair is not.

Going to be considered as professional. And then even more than that, like I get zoo animal experiences like, oh, what happened to your hair? How'd you get elected? What did you do? Do you do it every day? I get these kind of like strange questions, but I can also remember, and I talk a lot about my personal experiences, that there were like three, um, women in my itp, uh, that, that had pink streaks in their hair and they had nose rings, and when we graduated they colored their pink streaks back to their natural hair color.

And they took their nose rings out because those things were deemed as unprofessional. So the oppression isn't limited to black people. It isn't limited to people of various gender identities. It is pervasive and impacts everyone. The final layer that I want to talk about, uh, of the interpreter archetype is this kind of notion of a Midwest accent, which is void of any regional or cultural characteristics.

And basically the expectation is, is that we use standard English most interpreters. Intentionally curbed their cultural or regional accents. But I talk to interpreters all the time who work very hard to curb their accents and to kind of eliminate those cultural or regional representation that includes black and brown people because.

Those accents are deemed as unprofessional. In addition to that, like this notion that we need to stay on top of current events, so I was, when I was getting my master's in the M A I program at gallad, one of the things that they encouraged us to do was stay on top of current events, expansion of vocabulary, listen to nbr, right?

And so I was doing that on a regular basis. I was listening to NPR all the time. I have intentionally bought books, uh, and read books to increase my vocabulary so that I could be a good platform interpreter. And what happens is this idea and expectation and standard requires that we curb our identities and our sense of self that shows up in language and we fit it in this box that is professional language.

The, the reason that this. Adversely impacts us, but also adversely impacts deaf people is because what dialect is being prioritized? The genres of interpreting that, that are being prioritized are platform interpreting, right? And so now not only are we working to curb our own sense of self, that shows up in language.

We are doing it so that we can meet the needs and match the language variety of a slim number of deaf people. And what's worse than that is what, what do those deaf people look like? What is being prioritized as a privilege? Variety of English and a s o. In the spaces that we are going to work in, where we'll be using this dialect represents, it's like the top 1%, the most privileged deaf people.

What happens is, as a result of that, because we have gotten rid of our cultural identities and our regional dialects, we are no longer able to meet the needs of the community that talk and speak like that. An example is because standard English and platform interpreting is being prioritized so much, I am not able.

To talk to people who talk like my family. Everything sounds like an interpretation, right? And it's all professional. When conversations between friends, intimate conversations aren't professional, they're casual. We no longer know how to do that. This is what happens being prioritized. And there's such a large culture around privileging specific varieties of English and asl, right?

Or or specific types of interpreting, such as platform interpreting. And when I think about the discourse around the. Good voicers here in the DMV area. There are names that come up. There's Carolyn Wrestler and Jen vod, and you hear those names over and over again. And I can remember as a grad student approaching Carolyn wrestler and being like, Hey, how do you do what you do?

And the the advice is that these people talk like this all the time, right? So you have to really be intentional in order to achieve this kind of hierarchical goal of being amazing interpreters. You have to. Change the way you talk in your everyday language, which is terrible. So there's not a push for us to maintain our own language, which is unfortunate because being able to represent someone's language in the way they actually use language and not in the way that I think they use language that makes you a good interpreter.

And I think a one great example of that is Paris Tik, who recently did the circle on Netflix with Raven. And the way he was able to represent the language that she used, the way that he honored her A A V E and her youth and how she used language is equally as important as the work that Carolyn Wrestler and Jen Vot do.

Ooh, let me say that again. The work that Paris did in maintaining the culture, the language, the youth, and the identity of this black woman, The kind of work he did is equally as important as the effective work that Gin Vo and Carolyn wrestler do in platform interpreting, and we need to make sure that's prioritized, and because we don't prioritize that.

Had I done the circle, Raven would've sounded like a white interpreter and a black body, and it would've damaged the integrity of her voice and personality. And sometimes it's completely com professional to cuss, to use a v e, to use slang, to use colloquialisms, to use all the language that that person that we are representing would use that is not deemed largely as professional language.

I think the other thing that we have to talk about is ITPs promote this kind of language, attitude around professional language. And what they expose us to. So in my ITT P I was privileged to go to two ITPs. I went to Eastern Kentucky University. I went to Gallad to get my master's, and I can tell you that there was not a single example or sample that I worked from of a black person who used black A S L.

There weren't many examples of people who didn't use standard ASL or, or academic asl. There weren't many examples of people who used different varieties of ASL or accented asl. Now sure, they did give us workshops and about cussing and words that might be used. They did give us, um, examples of, How people could use language, but they didn't show it to us.

They didn't expose it to us on a regular basis, and so I didn't know that I was a white interpreter in a black body until I did my first solo card. Thorenton. I will never forget this as long as I live. I had just finished my masters black deaf woman, nine o'clock in the morning. She is drunk and she is calling her boyfriend.

She calls him, they talk about something. I don't know. He gets mad. He hangs up on her. So the call was pretty benign, but when she called him back, when I tell you she was spitting fire because he hung up, so she's cussing him out. I did not cuss at that time. It was not natural to me. I also wasn't sure of how to represent her language.

And so I'm on this voicemail and I can tell you we left like three voicemails cuz she's mad and he had turned his phone off after he hung up the phone. So she calls him back and she's leaving voicemails after voicemail. And I could not. She saw me and she was excited to see me because of the skin match, but I couldn't represent her culturally because I didn't have the practice to do that.

I had never seen the N word signed at that time, and the only reason that I got it is because she said, bitch ass first. That context was the first time I had seen the N word signed on, the inward signs on the job. This was a community that I wasn't taught to represent. This was a community that wasn't considered in my education.

These are people I didn't know, people I hadn't seen before. This was language I hadn't seen. Right? And while I had seen these people growing up, I had been so far removed from using the language of the community that I was ashamed and I was embarrassed. I couldn't meet the need that she had, that she was excited that I would meet in seeing someone who looked like her.

That's a problem. That's a problem, and it's a problem that I think as we start talking about it, we have to, you know, I graduated with my masters in 2014. I don't know if any program is doing this well, but I can tell you this is a language attitude being taught by omission and it has to be addressed. On the flip side of this, I can think about a colleague of mine and a good friend of mine who moved to DC came from a large deaf family, and when she went back, her aunt didn't understand her.

Right, like this isn't just this, these language attitudes and what happens as a result of that language and privileging a specific variety of language doesn't just impact the English. It also impacts a s l. When I first started learning a s l, I started attending a a deaf church, and these were. People who worked in the community, these were people who were tradespeople.

These were social workers. These were people who didn't use the academic language that has been privileged. These people were like, your everyday people. They were like my people, and it bothers me that I may not be able to provide access for them. And all of this having an ITP education, um, and the expectation that you must use language in a certain way, and if you don't, then you aren't professional, creates a feeling of inadequacy.

And this particular thing really impacts codas who are community grown L one s, who can't talk about the work in the same way the interpreter archetype can because they didn't go to ITPs. And that's unfortunate because they have skill and they have expertise that all of us. Don't have access to as L two s.

These are the ways that I find the interpreter archetype to be incredibly problematic. And right now I just wanna talk about it. I don't have an answer of how we fix it, but I know that it needs to be addressed, not just because we don't lose ourselves trying to fit into a box. Some of us were never designed to fit into, but also so we don't lose our identities.

That shows up in language by prioritizing a language variety that only a few people are going to use in the first place also so that we don't inadvertently impact the community that we serve, like we are able to have a larger. Repertoire of language that we can pull from, so that we can represent more members of the deaf community and not just those who have the most privilege.

This has been, if I'm honest, I'm your host, Keisha Osborne, and this is a place where we have hard conversations Until next time.