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Nakia Smith who is 22-years-old who is a popular TikToker that went viral on social media for teaching users BASL (Black American Sign Language).
Smith is a self proclaimed independent deaf Black American that is the fourth deaf generation of five generations. She utilizes her own experience to educate people in the deaf community and sign language where she has gained almost 400,000 followers on TikTok in the process.
Smith originally went viral when her and her grandfather shared the difference between old school and new school sign language.
Now she is using her platform to preserve Black ASL in the Deaf community and encourage people to learn sign. Many of her videos feature her great-grandparents, grandparents and siblings, who are all deaf as well.
Smith’s videos have led to an interesting topic in society that many individuals do not talk about mainly in the Black community; Black American Sign Language.
Smith was featured in Netflix’s Strong Lead, explaining that Black ASL is a dialect of sign language Black individuals created during the 1800s because of the segregation of the Black and white deaf communities. Integration between deaf schools didn’t occur until the 1950s.
“The biggest difference between BASL and ASL is that BASL got seasoning. I felt like a lot of people didn’t know about BASL until my video went viral. They were really curious and wanted to learn more about BASL and history. I told my grandfather that the video went viral, and he said, ‘Keep it going,” says Nakia Smith.
Black individuals infuse their signing with style, typically placing their culture into signing. Some may say that signing Black ASL is louder and expressive basically like telling a story through different uses of hand motions. Black ASL contains unique signs for everyday use and alternate hand placements such as at the forehead versus under the chin.
Smith continues to make a movement and bring awareness to the BASL and ASL communities through Instagram and TikTok.
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