It hardly comes as a surprise when Ann Coulter makes an offensive comment. The conservative commentator seems to make a career of spewing language that denigrates a different party practically each week. This week's off-color moment came when she tweeted about a cable news appearance by Christopher Barron of a Republican gay rights group called GOProud.
Wrote Coulter: "Great video: head of GOProud interviewed by retarded person on MSNBC."
She is hardly the first public figure to cause offense with the R-word. Earlier this year, Rahm Emanuel, the president's former chief of staff, called conservative Democrats "F----in' retarded." Rush Limbaugh piled on, calling Emanuel's subsequent make-up meeting with mental health professionals a "retard summit."
It's not just celebrities, though. As a high school student, I hear the R-word thrown around in offensive ways daily.
I'm in my trig classroom staring at a whiteboard that's crammed with brackets, exponents, and an array of colorful digits. I'm trying to understand the problem on the board, but I feel like I'm reading a foreign language. My classmates are just as puzzled. One, realizing the problem's complexity, sighs and lets out two words: "That's retarded."
Retarded. It's ubiquitous. I can't escape it. But I have never gotten used to hearing it. In fact, each time I hear "retarded" misused, I feel as though someone has stabbed a piercing blade into my neck. But as much as "retarded" pains me, something holds me back from confronting my classmate. The word renders me helpless and impotent. I can't challenge him because he's not out of the ordinary; everyone says it.
And not just kids. I'm standing at the checkout counter of my high school's student store, Rice Krispies in hand. As the register stubbornly refuses to dispense a receipt, a mom volunteering behind the counter becomes more and more flustered. Irritated, she expresses her frustration: "This thing is retarded."
Apathy has a major influence on the way my contemporaries use language. "Retarded" has become one of the go-to negative adjectives the Internet generation (alongside words like "gay" and "lame"). And while "retarded" is not usually spoken from a place of deliberate insult, it carries an insulting connotation: "Retarded" is used at the expense of a vulnerable group.
I'm at cross-country practice looking out at a long, rigorous course the coach has just ordered us to tackle. I turn hesitantly toward my teammate, whose exhaustion has clearly been exacerbated. At a loss, he resorts to the only adjective he can attach to his disappointment: "This is retarded."
The R-word is a blade in my neck. My body stiffens and my fists clench at the mere mention of the word. But hearing it is unavoidable. So I've developed a sort of sympathy toward the ignorant, an assumption that people don't know how their words hurt; that they're simply in the dark.
But it isn't sympathy alone that holds me back from the treacherous brink of confrontation. There's another layer--something simpler that moves me to evade saying "please don't," or "that hurts": 16-year-olds don't have much of a platform to stand on in the arena of language use. And, furthermore, I run the risk of seeming almost sanctimonious; lecturing my friends and family on their choices of words when I'm still trying to discover my own voice.
Nonetheless, I've had no such luxury of darkness. Down the hall from my bedroom, my autistic brother struggles to carry on a conversation, getting stuck repeating the same phrases over and over again. (Granted, there are differences between autism and the other sorts of developmental delays that once fell under the umbrella of "retardation.") Most of my peers have not witnessed the deeply rooted frustrations of missing out on a typical childhood. Few of them hear pleas like my brother's to "go to school with the other kids."
Sometimes I do leap abruptly at the opportunity to wag a finger. "Do you have a brother with a neurological disorder?" I'll ask, my tone dripping with disdain. "Tell me, what is it about that math problem that's mentally delayed?" But my discomfort with a generation's forceful linguistic trend has changed the way I've chosen to express my displeasure. Public scolding, I've learned, rings hollow and elicits little more than an awkward blank stare. It's not that I'm afraid or timid; but sometimes--even when I feel like my "retarded" bubble is about to burst -- I just have to ask myself, "Is it worth it?"
Like it or not, it is.
I wish my generation (and their moms, where necessary) would realize something: words can be both powerful and toxic. Some serve a variety of purposes; but some are meant to be attached to one exclusive definition. Those words aren't fit to be taken out of context and attached to scenario after scenario, ad nauseam. The movie you saw last night isn't retarded, the Christmas sweater your Great Aunt Gertrude knit you isn't gay, and your Monday afternoon SAT class isn't lame. The more often we hastily slap one of those labels onto something, the more often we denigrate, disparage, belittle, and inevitably rule out a magnificent portion of our population.
The math problem was challenging, sure. The cash register wasn't working and the cross-country course was disheartening. That MSNBC host may have asked some questions that Coulter didn't like . But do any of those scenarios entail any sort of neurological delay? Most certainly not.
To preserve the sanctity of language and defend the integrity of another population of otherwise easy-targets, thought should always precede action and compassion should inform language. The next time you want to express how awful, offensive or frustrating something is, try coming up with another word. My suggestion: Coulterish.
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I wanted to contribute to a valuable critique that Mr. Kendall brings up. He says that, while moralizing the issue -- presenting the use of the R-word as morally reprehensible -- is a viable strategy, it is perhaps the only strategy. I disagree. I believe there to be an argument against this word from outside of a moral framework.
People with developmental disabilities (DD) have known a history of discrimination and exclusion as old as civilization. This history of stigma includes infanticide, physical and sexual abuse, institutionalization, etc. These conditions have been and are perpetuated by a perception of people with DD as undesirable, subhuman, even worthless. Anything that contributes to this trend is, obviously, morally reprehensible but also societally pernicious. This perception of people with DD prevents their opportunity to contribute to society. Because they are (wrongly) assumed incapable, people with DD are often not given the opportunity to fulfill their potential to contribute as students, peers, or employees. Many (many) people with DD are capable of contributing to and improving society but are denied the opportunity. This is to the detriment of both people with DD and society.
The R-word perpetuates this misconception of incapability by conflating a contemporary synonym for "undesirable" with a defunct diagnostic term for many with DD.
Morality aside, there are arguments against the R-word.
It is not a word that I have ever been on the receiving end of, probably because my disabilities came a bit later in life, but that word affects all people with disabilities, and the people who love them.
I was out at my favourite Hip Hop Club one night & was having a dance when 'that' song came on. I felt so exposed, I just froze - standing there with my crutches. I haven't been back since.
Sure I know they tried to make amends and brought out a new version of the song and everything - but that song has not disappeared, it is still out there, and even when the 'new' version plays - the old words go round in my head.
Where are we when a supposedly progressive band even thinks to make such a song, and a record company thinks it is a good idea and presses it? This type of thing just shows how far we still have to go.
Oh and another thing - if I hear "it's political correctness gone mad" one more time, I'm gonna scream!
The moralizing comes from the ethical issue. It hurts someone when the word retard is used, so because it causes harm, it should not be used.
But most of the time when people use the R-word, they are not intending to hurt. So they do not feel the ethical issue at all. Moralizing against them is useless. What they should and shouldn't do won't be told to them. They are good people (in their opinions).
With that problem in mind, is there a non-moralizing strategy? If there is, I propose that it happens in imaginative literature. Books like Flowers for Algernon help spread the word more than Web sites. Something happens when we are in private, reading to ourselves, getting to know characters' minds. Too much of the world is judged objectively.
Find, read, and share fiction about people with disabilities. It's good for us all.
Bones Kendall
(Here is a link to my own blog where I wrote about people-first language: http://photomatt7.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/on-injurious-double-standards/)
The casual slinging of the R word demoralizes those with developmental delays and misinforms those who hear it.
In fact, many students at his school actually pooled their own personal money to buy bracelets, the profits of which went to the special olympics, condemning use of the R-word. Where is the appreciation for the work that has been done? Also, there should be a distinction made between autism and "mental retardation" that Ami fails to acknowledge giving the impression that he personally deals with this issue.
hamburgers!
You write: "there should be a distinctioÂn made between autism and 'mental retardatioÂn' that Ami fails to acknowledgÂe"
The post says: "Granted, there are differences between autism and the other sorts of developmental delays that once fell under the umbrella of 'retardation.' "
And are you saying the author of an opinion piece is obligated to mention everybody else who share the same opinion? Like Thomas Friedman should always credit the Democratic party or George Will should acknowledge "the efforts of" the GOP? I think not.
The gift of language, is just that, a gift. People that have been given that gift, should choose to use
their word's, to lift people up, not tear them down.
Power and toxicity are both contagious, an intellectual disability, however is not.
When we choose to belittle the very people we should be fighting for, we, as a society have failed.
Be grateful you have the ability to choose your words, all gift's are subject to be taken away without
any notice.
Thank you for this. Your brother is fortunate to have you. Keep writing. Keep taking each little step to confront ignorance and dismissive attitudes. You will go far and you will bring some of us along with you.
http://mean-marie.tumblr.com/post/2632078937/about-bj-the-r-word
Thank you for your article. If enough people talk about this, surely we can bring about change.
She is not offended by the term at all. She is an opportunist.
People have much more of a tendency to do something if told it's normal, than if they're told it's right. So rather than a sanctimonious response, perhaps when we hear the R-word we should say "You thought that was retarded? I thought it was just grooovy. I mean, 'retarded'? Come on. That makes you sound like a refugee from the 1990s."
I'll try to stop using "lame". I think of it as primarily meaning you've got a bad blister or such-like, as happens to everyone from time to time, rather than referring to a permanent physical handicap and thus to a category of people.