Let’s Get Busy:
Empowerment and Development Are the Keys

Larry G. Coleman

Gallaudet University

Farmer Johnson’s Mule

Farmer Wilson was a jealous and evil man, and he was jealous of everything that Farmer Johnson, his neighbor, owned. He was jealous of his tractor, his barn, his cows, and even his wife. But most of all, Farmer Wilson was jealous of Farmer Johnson’s prize-winning mule. In fact, he was so jealous, he plotted to kill that prize mule.

One dark night, Farmer Wilson dug a hole seven feet long, four feet wide, and six feet deep. He led the mule to the hole with a trail of oats. He was planning to bury the mule alive.

Well, the mule followed the trail of oats until he fell right into the deep hole. Farmer Wilson began to shovel dirt into the hole as fast as he could. He really planned to cover that mule with dirt and bury him alive. But Farmer Wilson was in for a surprise.

You know, mules don’t like to have anything on their backs. So, every time that mule started to feel some dirt on his back, he would start shaking and shaking until he shook the dirt completely off his back. Then the mule would stomp down on the dirt and pack it into the bottom of the hole. The more dirt Farmer Wilson shoveled, the more the mule would shake it off and stomp it down. And the mule started to rise by shaking it off and stomping it down. The more dirt Farmer Wilson shoveled in, the higher and higher the mule rose.

Well, the mule kept rising to a higher level until he rose clean out of that hole. When he got to the top, he turned himself around and walked on down the road. The next day, he won First Prize as Best Mule (and smartest too!) at the County Fair.

So here is the moral of the story:

If life throws dirt, garbage, insults, prejudice, suffering, or other outside obstacles at you …

just shake it off,

stomp it down, and

rise to the highest level you can!

If you have inside obstacles that get in the way of your development, like the way you think, or the way you act sometimes, then you must be strong. Change the way you think. Decide to act better. Just …

shake it off,

stomp it down, and

rise to the highest level you can.

I am delighted and honored to be able to speak with you on a very serious topic, “The Empowerment of People who are Black and Deaf”—people who are members of at least two oppressed minority groups in this country. Within this context, I am tremendously concerned about the young people who represent our future generations. I am especially concerned about the future development of Black Deaf children.

Currently, there is greater opportunity for achievement in education and in all of the professions: law, medicine, dentistry, journalism, engineering, and architecture. It is clear that we have a huge job to do in empowering ourselves and our children to internalize and operationalize the concept that “we can do anything.”

You saw Ms. Angela Gilchrist, in her brilliant introduction, perform the story of the “mule” who was almost buried alive by an evil farmer who continued to shovel “dirt” onto the back of the mule. Well, what is this “dirt”? This “dirt” is many things, but mostly it is made up of the obstacles that have confronted Black Americans in general, and Black Deaf people in particular.

These external obstacles include slavery, racism, the separate and unequal treatment tacitly condoned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, segregation in jobs, education, housing, and health care—yes, even segregation among state schools for the deaf and Gallaudet University. It is external obstacles (dirt) that told us that Blacks in general are “intellectually inferior” to, but physically stronger and more agile and versatile than, deaf or hearing whites. And this belief, in turn, has reinforced the idea that teachers should have lower expectations for Black students and that Black schools should have inferior equipment and materials and poorly trained teachers. In the book titled Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality, writer Richard Kluger (1977) cites one Georgia county where over 85 times as much money was spent annually for the education of each white child as compared to each Black child.

While the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas firmly planted the idea of equal opportunity in education, bias and discrimination continue to exist. They exist in the form of lowered teacher expectations for students who are labeled “different” and “minority.” This is more of the external “dirt” that murders the spirit, the energy, and the willingness of the Black child to work hard in a climate that is not supportive of his or her achievement. It is a kind of spirit murder. Instead of encouraging these children to learn and grow and seize opportunity, this country’s history of Black oppression and bias against Deaf people has tried to destroy the spirit of that child, like the dirt of the evil farmer.

And it is only through effort, hard work, and belief in ourselves that these obstacles can be overcome. Shake it off and stomp it down! Rise up to a higher level!

Some of this dirt, bias, and racism has gotten inside many of us and many of our children, causing some individuals to accept the false belief that they cannot learn. We must spit that “lie,” that false belief, out of our mouths and get it out of our minds. It’s nothing but the same old dirt. Never believe it; never accept it. Shake it off of you!

We must never accept the idea that we are a failure; we can fail sometimes, and we can succeed sometimes. And when we fail, we must view that failure as “feedback” telling us what we need to do to improve. But when we succeed, we must attribute our success to our ability to be successful combined with our strong effort. That kind of thinking is guaranteed to boost our confidence. Dr. Jeff Howard of the Boston-based Efficacy Institute believes that we must own our successes and use our failures to boost our efforts for the “next attempt.”¹ I strongly agree that the key to our success and to overcoming many of the obstacles we face in life is to work as hard and as strategically as we possibly can.

I would like to conclude by saying that we can achieve anything we set our minds and our effort to do. Here is a little story about “effort” and two little frogs.

Hold On, Keep On

Two frogs hopped off a lily pad in a pond on Farmer Munson’s property. They were having one rollicking good time on this cool summer morning, hopping here and there. They hopped across the meadow and into the barn and—ooops!—by mistake they hopped right into a pail of thick creamy milk that the farmer had left sitting there while he attended to some other chores in the back of the barn.

Those poor frogs were stuck in this creamy, creamy, creamy liquid. One frog, Harry, panicked and started flip-flopping around in the pail, hollering and screaming (in frog talk, of course). Harry called his buddy, Leroy. He said, “HEY, MAN, I’M SCARED! I CAN’T SWIM IN THIS STUFF—IT’S MAKING MY LEGS REAL TIRED!” And Harry scared himself into giving up. He stopped trying and gave up, and he almost drowned in the creamy milk.

Leroy, responding to a voice of strength deep inside himself, was more hopeful. He was determined that there must be a way out, and he kept pushing and thinking and hoping while he was treading water with his little webbed feet. “There’s got to be a way out of this mess. I know it! I believe it! I am determined to get out! Oooooooohhh Harry! Man, why don’t you just hold on, keep on!! Keep treading water!”

Even though they both got tired, they pushed on. For about three hours they kept on treading water! When they finally stopped, they realized that the cream had hardened, and they were now standing on top of a bucket of butter—and they hopped out. The moral is: Hold on! Believe there’s a solution to problems and work hard to solve them. If so, you will find a solution.

And to the problem of our own educational and psychological insecurities and our low self-confidence, we must continue to believe we can do it; we must work very, very hard, read much more, and get smarter and smarter and more and more confident. Also, we must never give up on ourselves or on our children.

About the Presenter

Larry G. Coleman, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Communication Arts Department at Gallaudet University. He is a professional storyteller who does performances and workshops on black folklore and on folklore and humor in general. He has a strong research interest in how stories as symbols can be used to empower and heal psychological wounds and contribute to the process of empowerment.

References

Kluger, R. (1977). Simple justice: The history of Brown v. the Board of Education and Black America’s struggle for equality. New York: Vintage Books.

1. Read Gifted Hands, the life story of Dr. Ben Carson, for a living example of this.