*Meet Billy Sanders, the sign language interpreter who went viral thanks to TikTokers and celebs like Halle Berry.
The Internet has dubbed Sanders #ASLbae after signing for Mayor Muriel Bowser during the riots, per TMZ.
Here’s more from the outlet:
Billy says he’s tickled by all the attention he’s getting from Halle and a bunch of popular TikTokers … and he hopes the spotlight shining on him encourages more minorities to pursue careers as ASL interpreters.
Before his newfound fame, Billy was already pretty popular on the music scene … working concerts with go-go bands and Kirk Franklin before the pandemic. Now he’s getting hit up by hospitals, urgent care centers, non-profits, major conferences and even mental health facilities.
“I don’t have to agree with everything I hear or am a part of. But I still have to interpret it with integrity in the way that it was intended to be,” Sanders tells dcist.com.
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I can’t with y’all. ???????????? pic.twitter.com/P3RDbyEeuw
— Halle Berry (@halleberry) January 8, 2021
A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Sanders said he learned ASL as a CODA (Children of Deaf Adults). His mother is deaf.
“I want my mom, ultimately, to understand what is being said every day,” he says. “If there’s a concert, I want your favorite part of the song to be her favorite part of the song. If I’m interpreting Al Sharpton and he starts to inflect in ways to get a call-and-response out of people, then I want my mom to be there in real time and be able to say an ‘amen’ in real time.”
Sanders attended Florida A&M University to study business administration and taught sign language as a side gig, according to the report.
First off all, I need every go-go to have an interpreter THIS lit. We live at the Kennedy Center rn. #gogo101 pic.twitter.com/b5gsYoMgnD
— Dough Moe (@djxdomo) February 28, 2020
He bombed his first major event in the early 2000’s, a civil rights rally in Tallahassee.
“All these folks are on stage, and I’m freezing … freezing as in I did not know how to produce the right sign for what they were saying,” he says. “Thankfully, YouTube was not a thing back then. But I would have been the YouTube sensation for being the ‘incorrect interpreter.’”
These days, Sanders stays busy interpreting for patients at hospitals and medical offices, and working press conferences for the D.C. politicans.
“I see people who are not a part of the system using their power to empower those who are deaf and hard of hearing and people who speak other languages,” Sanders says.
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