When Mayor Brandon Scott delivers a speech with American Sign Language interpreter Billy Sanders, the Baltimore politician knows his message will get across.

Scott is an effective, direct speaker who can code-switch and throw in an occasional clapback — all with an undeniable West Baltimore accent. And Sanders has been there to capture every phrase since 2019.

Sanders is among the 6% of Black interpreters nationwide in an industry dominated by white women, according to the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. Add Black vernacular and Baltimore’s distinct accent into the mix, and the divide between interpreter and audience can lead to issues accurately interpreting for and from the Black deaf community.

“Baltimore has a unique identity — from our people, to our slang, to our music, and so much more," Scott’s press secretary, Silas Woods III, wrote in an email. “It’s important to the Mayor that we have interpreters who represent that for all of our residents.”

“You’re looking for cultural relevance,” said Sanders, who is based in Washington, D.C. In addition to press conferences and hearings, he regularly interprets at entertainment events such as Disney concert tours and pop singer Tate McRae’s arena show last month.

“I don’t want to go to a concert and I don’t know if the artist is rapping, singing or speaking,” Sanders said. “The nuance is lost.”

A racial divide

ASL is different from English in that it uses the object-subject-verb sentence structure. “I’m going to work” in English would be signed as “WORK I GO.”

There are variations in location, movement, hand shape and palm orientation. Facial movements and body language can completely alter meaning. For instance, asking a question with your eyebrows raised is for yes/no questions, while open-ended questions require a lower, more furrowed brow.

The difference between the way Black and white deaf people sign can be stark.

Black people tend to sign with both hands, farther from their bodies and with more expression. White people use more one-handed signs, closer to their bodies with a more reserved delivery.

Think of how Black Baltimoreans use phrases such as “lor,” meaning little, “rey,” as in ready, and “ard” in place of “all right.”

“It’s a different dialect,” said Kimberly Veney, an ASL interpreter and owner of Words in Sight LLC, in Washington. “You can hear it, and you can see it in a Baltimore facial expression. I can hear it and see it. As an interpreter, I have to embody that Baltimore. If I am not able to embody that, I recuse myself.“

Amplifying Black ASL

Nakia Smith is a deaf performer with more than 400,000 followers on TikTok who raises awareness of Black ASL, teaches deaf history and explains the vitality of deaf representation.

Most recently, she provided the first Black sign language translation of a movie: “Sinners” on HBO Max.

“I felt like I was bringing my whole self to the screen,” the Texas resident wrote in an email. “BASL don’t get that kind of spotlight often, so every sign I did felt like making history.”

Black ASL is not a cultural phenomenon, though. It exists for the same reason hearing people have different accents and vernacular in Baltimore: segregation. The state’s Black and white deaf populations were taught separately until the Maryland School for the Deaf was integrated in 1956.

Smith is the fourth deaf generation in her family. The way her grandfather, also a deaf Texas native, signs is distinct even from his granddaughter.

It’s part of a generational divide within the Black deaf community since older generations of Black signers began with BASL in segregated schools. After integration, they were sometimes forced to adapt to white signers.

Even today, Smith has experienced people trying to change her signs to make them “standard.”

“That taught me quick. You gotta protect your language, ’cause if you let people erase it, they erase part of you,” Smith said.

Black sign language can also differ by region. “Usually D.C. and Baltimore don’t mix,” Veney explained.

And, just because an interpreter is Black and the deaf person is Black, that doesn’t immediately result in a good match.

Veney recalled a 2019 event where a cover band performed and her Black co-interpreter could not do the job.

“He didn’t grow up listening to Frankie Beverly and Maze,” she said. “He couldn’t interpret the music because it was not in his wheelhouse.”

But regional and cultural gaps are far less common than ones based on race, Veney said.

“A white woman will not have — unless she is only white on the outside — she is not going to have the vernacular I do or the body movements that I do or the lived experience I do,” she explained.

Having a properly paired interpreter can be magic. Justina Miles, Rihanna’s interpreter during her 2023 Super Bowl halftime performance, wowed audiences, rocketing the Bowie State student to viral fame for her energetic, scene-stealing movements.

Need for representation

In 2023, there were over 900,000 Black Americans with hearing disabilities, according to the Northeast ADA Center at Cornell University. By comparison, there were 167,000 individuals with hearing disabilities in Maryland, 19% of whom were Black and 66% white.

Joi Bannister’s passion for sign language interpreting began in high school at Eleanor Roosevelt in Prince George’s County, where deaf students attended classes with hearing students but were provided interpreters.

After years of education, Bannister began Joyful Signing, a Black-owned interpretation service. But she says she brings more than race to the job.

Bannister has tons of knowledge about pageants and often offers her own services if a deaf contestant is competing.

Scott’s office began using ASL services consistently during the COVID era for city briefings and media conferences to make the information accessible, Woods wrote. Interpreters have since been prioritized for events such as Scott’s State of the City Address, Artscape, AFRAM and ribbon-cuttings for recreation centers and pools. They plan to expand and strengthen ASL coordination and closed-captioning capabilities to “ensure accessibility is never an afterthought,” Woods added.

Scott knows the importance of conveying “the full, authentic thing” to hearing and deaf audiences. “There is a need for dynamically trained, culturally endowed interpreters who are well versed in different vernaculars … who can interpret in real time and on beat,” the mayor said.

Sanders hopes he can inspire a new wave of Black interpreters. He said he and Scott have had conversations about making each other feel represented in the public eye.

“It works both ways,” Sanders said. “Everyone feels seen. It’s not just because I’m Black. It’s because I bring the cultural capital to my expertise. I blend it in a way so that people feel represented in the best light.”