The R Word

My favorite morning radio show used the R word today. I guess it was a semi-accurate usage because he was basically saying "people like that have a mental disability", instead of using it in the popular vernacular sense of that guy did something funny or stupid. He was referring to someone who he felt truly lacks basic cognition skills, but it still stings every time I hear it, no matter the circumstance.

And, the truth is, I am just as to blame as anyone. I have used it. I honestly was not even aware that it was part of my vocabulary until Lincoln was born and I heard it come out of my own mouth.

I thought I was more considerate than that. I regularly chastised people for using "gay" as a synonym for "bad". All through high school, I corrected people who used the R word. But somehow, I got lazy along the way, and it crept into my vocabulary. So, I guess I can't get mad when other people continue to use it, but I can't help being sad when I hear it.

I like to think people are becoming more aware about negative stereotypes. We have a black man and a woman on the presidential tickets for both parties. I like to believe kids aren't swapping racist jokes on the playground anymore and parents are thinking twice about the messages they are passing on to their children. I like to think we are improving, and then a movie like Tropic Thunder comes out and I realize that Lincoln is still primarily a punchline to most people.

Here is an excerpt from a great editorial by a young man with Down syndrome about his reaction to Tropic Thunder that addresses this issue so well:


So, what's wrong with "retard"? I can only tell you what it means to me and people like me when we hear it. It means that the rest of you are excluding us from your group. We are something that is not like you and something that none of you would ever want to be. We are something outside the "in" group. We are someone that is not your kind. I want you to know that it hurts to be left out here -- alone. Nothing scares me as much as feeling all alone in a world that moves so much faster than I do.

You don't mean to make me feel that way. In fact, like I say in some of my speeches, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," and it works out OK most of the time. Still, it hurts and scares me when I am the only person with intellectual disabilities on the bus and young people start making "retard" jokes or references. Please put yourself on that bus and fill the bus with people who are different from you. Imagine that they start making jokes using a term that describes you. It hurts and it is scary.

Last, I get the joke -- the irony -- that only dumb and shallow people are using a term that means dumb and shallow. The problem is, it is only funny if you think a "retard" is someone dumb and shallow. I am not those things, but every time the term is used it tells young people that it is OK to think of me that way and to keep me on the outside.

That is why using "retard" is a big deal to people like me.


(Full article at:
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/173614)