Bullying and mocking only because they look different?

A recent news of a deaf boy who was bullied and mocked on a school bus only because he was different and wore hearing aids. It got so bad when kids grabbed his two expensive hearing aids and threw them out of the bus window. The deaf boy explained using his clear and articulate voice  on what happened and you can tell he was upset by it all. This reminded me of an incident when I was a sophmore in high school during lunch in the school cafeteria. One hearing guy at the cafeteria table mocked me by putting up an empty paper cup (for ketchup) on his ear as if it were a hearing aid. A fake hearing aid. I wrote that one off as purely a case of immaturity and lack of education. What he did would be construed as a sort of bullying when done in such a mocking manner.

That incident also reminded me of the coda brothers, who are hearing, when they mocked cochlear implant wearers on camera by wearing fake cochlear implants.  There was also another video example with one of the coda brothers who mocked by pretending to be an oral deaf person by making exaggerated lips and mouth movements, and talking loudly thus painting a false stereotype of deaf people who prefer to talk or can speak.  There are deaf and hard of hearing people who talk just fine (for example, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  They may look different, they may speak differently, but so what? Why the need to mock and bully deaf people for who they are?

Watch the video below and turn on the CC button to get the captioning on the main YouTube page by clicking on the YouTube icon first.



Now, you wouldn't like it if hearing people go around on videos and mock deaf people by doing a bunch of fake signing, would you?

I hope that deaf boy's mother will get her money back for buying those expensive hearing aids and there'd be some justice in all this.