Hearing social media star signs National Anthem at a baseball game; Deaf community reacts

Renca: Last week on Instagram, a controversial topic was trending among the Deaf community about a hearing person with a large following base, teaching ASL, and this person dismissed the Deaf community’s concerns. This hearing person’s name is Lola Wade, with the username @asl_with_lola and has over 200k followers. What caused this to surface was that Lola signed the National Anthem at the University of Alabama baseball game on April 4th and posted photos of her signing with the hashtag #signlanguageinterpreter.

[Phots and video clip] Credit: @asl_with_lola

We have collected information from various community members and this is what we know about this situation. Lola herself is a high school student who is still learning ASL. She teaches ASL on her Instagram and TikTok accounts, but in her bio, she says she is not a teacher yet she posts videos of her teaching signs and the signs are not accurate. It was Lola herself who reached out to UofA, telling them that she wanted to sign the anthem.

Based on members of the Deaf community’s comments, they said Keene Shank was the one who raised this concern about Lola first. Keene is a young Deaf content creator known by the user name @itskeene.s, did call her out last year for teaching sign language. Lola did make a post apologizing, which is pinned on top of her Instagram account since last year.

[Phots and video clip] Credit: @asl_with_lola

However, it seems that nothing changed. We reached out to Keene to share some things with us. He said that he and Lola did acknowledge each other on social media for a while. He noticed that she started signing songs with her best friend, but later on she stopped doing that. She switched to teaching sign language. Keene tried to reach out to her to explain that it was not right, but Lola blocked Keene on social media.

Last week, a friend shared Lola’s post with Keene of her signing the National Anthem at the UofA baseball game and adding the hashtag #signlanguageinterpreter, Keene said that he had enough.

[Video clip] Credit: @itskeene.s

After addressing that, Keene decided to post a video comparing Lola and a Deaf actress Savannah Dahan signing a song to show the difference between a hearing person and a Deaf person, and that video went viral.

[Video clip] Credit: @itskeene.s

Many members of the Deaf community and allies jumped in to also call out Lola for teaching sign language inaccurately and misrepresenting the Deaf community. Lola has disabled comments on all of her videos and blocked people. We, the Daily Moth, have tried to reach out to Lola ourselves for her comment, but we were not able to send her a message either.

Under Keene’s video that went viral, Ava DuVernay, a hearing Black female film director known for directing “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Selma,” posted a comment showing her support for the Deaf community. We will show a screenshot of Ava’s comment.

[Photo] Credit: @Ava and @itskeene.s

We will show you several videos from Deaf content creators, members of the Deaf community, and allies’ responses to this situation. With their permission, here are short snippets.

Credits: CREDIT to 1divawhip

Lola, I’m trying to tell you like at the end of the day people are not trying to bully you. At the end of the day, people are telling you hey it takes a long time and Deaf people are finally getting the exposure they deserve and trying to teach their own language and you should respect that.

CREDIT to deaf.that

What Lola did was take an opportunity (not meant for her or even remotely close to being qualified for it) for her own personal fain/attention while at the same time taking away access that Deaf/HoH people needed at the game. That access was meant for them.

CREDIT to todayiawaken

Our community is so marginalized and we already face so much barriers related to job opportunities and access to information…Now when it comes to teaching OUR own language and culture, hearing people still wanna claim these opportunities? C’mon now. Learn ASL from deaf people, discussion dry!

CREDIT to deaffamilymatters

Dear hearing people, this is so disrespectful. This must be stopped. It is okay to have your own ASL journey. But what’s not okay is teaching. Why? Because it is not their culture when it comes to hearing people want to learn whatever they want. That’s betray.

CREDIT to inthewrongstory

So there are a lot of reasons why unqualified people should not be teaching ASL, but in my opinion, the biggest one is because it could literally kill someone. And if you think I’m exaggerating, I promise you I’m not. I have met healthcare workers who are following these people on TikTok and Instagram because they wanna learn ASL so they don’t need an interpreter.

CREDIT to signingwolf

“I’m sorry; too fast. Again please.” you say. They repeat their name. I can’t understand! Slow down, please!” you say. They repeat their name. Their hand drops. For those of you who think I am exaggerating…

Renca: Direct links to their videos are in this transcript.

We have reached out to the University of Alabama marketing communication under athletics for their side of the story related to Lola. They have not given us a direct response, but based on several social media posts from other deaf people who reached out, U of A told them that Lola contacted them herself. They did not realize she was a high school student, and they said they apologize for the hurt that was caused. U of A also mentioned that they would consider reaching out to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community members next time.

In general, this seems to be a recurring problem for the Deaf community about hearing people learning ASL and then teaching it on Instagram or TikTok. A few days ago a news article by Insider addressed this concern about hearing people teaching ASL on social media and how they go viral. They mentioned virality doesn’t always come with accuracy. In the article, they reached out to a Deaf person named, Andrew Bottoms, who is a Deaf studies lecturer and program director at Boston University and he quoted:

Full-screen text:

“If there were no deaf people on this earth, there would be no ASL. Hearing folks learning ASL with the intention of teaching takes away the platform from the deaf community.”

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Renca: Deaf community members say that more awareness needs to be raised because learning the wrong signs can cause severe consequences, including costing someone’s life.

Links:

Lola: https://www.instagram.com/asl_with_lola/

Keene: https://www.instagram.com/itskeene.s/

1divawhip: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq5_E3Nt2BQ/

Deaf.that: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq6EkdxptEQ/

Todayiawaken: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8q0cJpURd/

Deaffamilymatters: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq3MhO8Ax3-/

Inthewrongstory: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq89ujhp3T7/

Signingwolf: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq6t1n_J39L/

Insider article: https://www.insider.com/american-sign-language-tiktok-tutorials-viral-sounds-deaf-community-2023-4