S1 E6: Black American Sign Language with Contributions From Nakia Smith, Hosted by Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
In a special episode Taylor Rae shares Nakia Smith’s story—a fifth-generation Deaf activist and content creator, also known as @itscharmay.
Summary
In this podcast episode, Taylor Rae, the host of "On the Outside", features a special episode with Nikia Smith, also known as Charmay on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Nakia is a fifth-generation Deaf individual from Dallas, Texas, who has popularized educating individuals on Black American Sign Language (BASL) and the Deaf community. Due to the auditory nature of podcasts, this is her first-ever contribution on such a platform, contributing instead through email an online questionnaire. Nakia also shares her experiences as a Deaf person, including moments of feeling like an outsider and having to confront ableism. Engaged, with a son, and a significant influencer in the Deaf community, Nikia shares her life proudly. The host, Taylor, discusses different aspects of Deaf culture, like sign names and the dialectical differences between American Sign Language (ASL) and BASL. Nakia's advocacy in sharing the importance and authenticity of BASL is highlighted in the episode, along with her determination to fight for equality.
Transcription
Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman
Today we have a special episode, narrated by me, but with some incredible contributions from Nakia Smith, also know as Charmay on Instagram and Tiktok. Nakia is a proud fifth generation member of a Deaf family from Dallas, Texas. She’s using her experience to educate people on not only sign language but the Deaf community as well. This is Nakia’s first time having her story shared on a podcast, largely because of the limitations of the medium since most Deaf or hard of hearing individuals are unlikely to engage with a platform that is primarily auditory. I am such a fan of Nakia’s and reached out to her back in 2021 to help me with a newsletter I wrote on my blog around Black American Sign Language. For this episode, she shared her thoughts with me via email in a long questionnaire that I sent her. Using that, along with other interviews she’s participated in and my own research on ASL and BASL, I am excited to get into today’s episode.
Nakia Smith is a Dallas, Texas native who has made significant contributions to the Deaf community. As a social media influencer, she dedicated herself to educating people about Black American Sign Language or BASL. Alongside engaging and informative content, she also showcases her creativity through comedy skits that highlight the richness of Deaf culture. She is also happily engaged and a loving mother to her son. Because Nakia can’t hear or speak, she graciously contributed to today’s podcast via email.
Nakia wrote to me about a time she felt like an outsider, writing: “It’s hard to be in space where no one knows sign language. I can give my best example. I was at one an HBCU, a lot of beautiful Black people, a space where I should feel comfortable, a space where I can learn the culture. My whole life, I felt like I was way behind with music, new artists. There was a rapper performing and I asked my neighbor, “who’s that?” And they replied, “you don’t know who that is”. I was always asking myself is it because I’m Deaf? I want to know who that is.”
In a video on TikTok, Nakia shared a story about being in class without an interpreter one day and how he teacher wouldn’t let her leave the class to sort the situation out. When I asked her about it, she responded: “It was a horrible feeling that day. I was so embarrassed! But, sometimes I do see it coming and I was already prepared. I walked in class and looked around for an interpreter but they weren’t there and I normally let it pass because sometimes they do come in little late. Once it gets super late and the teacher didn’t bother to ask me where was the interpreter and that’s when I got concerned and asked her if I can leave the class to get interpreter. The teacher seems annoyed and decided to embarrassed me. I believe in every school, court, police department, fire department should have training on how to approach Deaf or Hard of Hearing person in difficult situations.”
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I asked Nakia, what is a sign name and how did she get the name Charmay?
Deaf culture consists of many valued traditional aspects that are significant to the Deaf community, and one of them is name sign. A name sign is a sign that is exclusively given to the person and it is usually created based on the person’s characteristics, personality, hobbies, etc, which uniquely and distinctively identify a person. Part of the Deaf culture is that only a culturally and lingually Deaf person can assign a name sign, not just anyone. Nakia told me her sign name is with the “N” letter and it same sign as the word “cool”. She recommended I look it up on YouTube which I did. Charmay is Nakia’s middle name, which is why she goes by that name on social.
According to the National Deaf Center, 1.9% of the US population was deaf in 2021. The SIPP estimates that 11,000,000 people in the US, or 4.1% of the population, are deaf or hard of hearing. We use Deaf with a capital D, which is how Nakia describes herself, to refer to people who have been deaf all their lives, or since before they started to learn to talk. They are prelingually deaf. It is an important distinction, because Deaf people with a capital D tend to communicate in sign language as their first language.
Nakia would describe herself as Deaf. She can’t hear or speak but does rely on a device to help her hear, an amplifier, but sounds or music have to be extremely loud. "Hard of hearing" is a term used to describe people with hearing loss ranging from mild to severe and an individual who is hard of hearing may use ASL.
Almost Nakia’s entire family is Deaf. And she notes that not a lot of hearing people know it’s possible to have a multi-generational Black Deaf family. Her grandfather Jake Smith Jr. and great-grandparents Jake Smith Sr. and Mattie Smith have all been featured on her TikTok.
Nakia shares a lot about BASL on her platforms. Black American Sign Language (BASL) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf Black Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the Jim Crow South.
Schools for Black deaf children in the United States began to emerge after the Civil War. The first permanent school for the deaf in the United States, which later came to be known as the American School for the Deaf, opened in 1817 in Hartford, Conn. The school enrolled its first Black student in 1825. Segregation in the South in 1865 played a large role in Black ASL’s development. Separation led to Black deaf schools’ differing immensely from their white counterparts. White schools tended to focus on an oral method of learning and provide an academic-based curriculum, while Black schools emphasized signing and offered vocational training. In the 1870s and 1880s, white deaf schools moved toward oralism — which places less emphasis on signing and more emphasis on teaching deaf students to speak and lip-read. Because the education of white children was privileged over that of Black children, oralism was not as strictly applied to the Black deaf students. Oralist methods often forbade the use of sign language, so Black deaf students had more opportunities to use ASL than did their white peers.The last Southern state to create an institution for Black deaf children was Louisiana in 1938. Black deaf children became a language community isolated from white deaf children, with different means of language socialization, allowing for different dialects to develop. As schools began to integrate, students and teachers noticed differences in the way Black students and white students signed. Several scholars say that Black ASL is actually more aligned with early American Sign Language than contemporary ASL, which was influenced by French sign language.Compare ASL with Black ASL and there are notable differences: Black ASL users tend to use more two-handed signs, and they often place signs around the forehead area, rather than lower on the body. Nakia says “The difference between BASL and ASL is that BASL got seasoning.”
Nakia started sharing BASL on social media because when she was teaching ASL on TikTok, the whole time she didn’t realized some of signs she often used were BASL. She was criticized by some people. It upset her. So, I she to bring her grandpa on and show them where she came from and that they should accept various dialects of ASL.
Nakia commented that she gets asked a lot from hearing people about why she doesn’t use cochlear implants or hearing aids because they felt like it is the best solution. For Nakia, hearing aids scream “Say no to sign language.” She’s not against cochlear implants or hearing aids but it’s her decision. She wrote to me, “I love being Deaf.”
When I asked Nakia if there was anything else that she wanted to share about feeling like an outsider, she wrote, “As Deaf person, influencer and activist, I never wanted to be the face of Deaf community like others have said…I want everyone one day to come together and fight for equality. I’ve always been in my own world. Social media isn’t my thing and this is not what I asked for. I believe…this happened for a reason.” She went on to share, “Life as Deaf person, it’s hard but at the same time…it’s a blessed because we know the true definition of ableism—oppression in our community. Our experience can’t be compared to others.”
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You can follow Nakia Smith at @itscharmay. As always a full transcription of the episode along with citations can be found on my website. All of those links are available in the show notes.
See you out there.
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References
Cheng, Katelyn. “Deaf Culture | Name Signs | Start ASL.” StartASL, 25 Mar. 2021, www.startasl.com/name-signs/.
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“The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Chapter 5.” Www.youtube.com, youtu.be/ayyjje3r1bY?t=49. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
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“What Is the Difference between Deaf and Deaf?” SignHealth, signhealth.org.uk/resources/learn-about-deafness/deaf-or-deaf/#:~:text=We. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
Yates, Shanique. “This 22-Year-Old TikToker Uses Her Platform to Teach Black American Sign Language - AfroTech.” AfroTech, 2020, afrotech.com/this-22-year-old-tiktoker-is-using-her-platform-to-teach-black-american-sign-language. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
