Black American Sign Language
| Black American Sign Language | |
|---|---|
 Fingerspelling of "BASL" |
|
| Region | North America |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: White deaf signers at White schools and Black deaf signers at Black schools. Today, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite public schools having been legally desegregated since 1954.
Linguistically, BASL differs from other varieties of ASL in its phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. BASL tends to have a larger signing space, meaning that some signs are produced further away from the body than in other dialects. Signers of BASL also tend to prefer two-handed variants of signs, while signers of ASL tend to prefer one-handed variants. Some signs are different in BASL as well, with some borrowings from African American English.
Like many educational institutions for hearing children during the 1800s and early 1900s, schools for deaf children were segregated based on race. The first school for the deaf in the United States, the American School for the Deaf (ASD), was founded in 1817 but did not admit any Black students until 1952. Of the schools for the deaf that were founded, few admitted students of color. Seeing a lack of educational opportunities for Black deaf children, Platt Skinner founded the Skinner School for the Colored Deaf, Dumb, and Blind in 1856 in Niagara Falls, New York. Skinner described his school as "the first effort of its kind in the country ... We receive and instruct those and only those who are refused admission to all other institutions and are despised on account of their color." The school moved to Trenton, New Jersey, in 1860. After it closed in 1866, no Northern state created an institution for Black deaf children. Even after these states outlawed segregation by 1900, integration was sparse, as some institutions allowed Black students and others did not.
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