Fake News” Discredits Helen Keller

Last week one of our resources was a braille book of stories from the Onion, a satirical publication, and we noted it could be a way for youth to learn to discriminate fake news from fact. In researching items for the bulletin this week, we discovered a story in The Guardian titled “Helen Keller: why is a TikTok conspiracy theory undermining her story?,” which explains that among other things, young people can’t accept that Helen Keller could be deaf and blind AND read and write books. Tik Tok has taken some of the videos down, but others (some extremely offensive), remain. While these memes are meant to amuse, Isabella Lahoue, a student and author who writes on medium.com, asks “Why is it then that the only people who don’t believe in Helen Keller are teenagers?” and posits, after noting that people her age don’t learn about Helen Keller in school that, “It’s gotten to the point where it isn’t even a joke anymore as it originally may have been. Generation Z literally does not believe Helen Keller existed. And frankly, I’m having a hard time accepting that she did myself.” Isn’t it time for a response from the blind community?