This is something of an old chestnut now and I have no doubt that some genuinely kind-hearted people oppose use of the word. But it is once again a belief in verbal magic: The belief that if you banish the word you banish the underlying reality. That just aint so. The reality will remain and there will always be SOME word used to refer to it. And that word will always be upsetting to some.
Spend any time around school-aged students and you'll hear some of them say, "That's retarded." It's a phrase they toss around to mean something's unfair, stupid, silly.
Is using the word retarded hate speech? A new campaign says it is, and aims to rid people's vocabulary of the word.
The popular teen show "Glee" is leading the effort to explain how the word is hurtful in jokes or any part of speech.
Advocates explain on the website R-Word.org why the word is so hurtful when used in jokes or as part of everyday speech.
"What’s wrong with retarded? 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," says Joseph Stephens, a Special Olympics athlete.
Source
Sorry about that Joseph but people will always tend to pick as friends people who are like themselves. We still have the freedom to do that -- so far.
17 comments:
And to think that the govt and many of those same orgs previously promoted the use of the same word.
Can one criticize this development as "lame?"
The timing on my old truck has to be "retarded" 2 degrees from top dead center. Am I to quit referring to this and if so, what do I use instead...
Amanbe3
Also... why would anybody want to be "retarded," or "mentally challenged," or whatever we end up calling it?
Oh, but it was perfectly okay when lefty operachik Rahm Emanuel proclaimed that "only a f---ing RETARD would vote for. . ."
the word 'retarded' is a perfectly good word to use for many things.
As an old person I can remember when we in the academic world went around patting ourselves on the back because we stopped using the terms 'idiot, imbecile and moron'. We coined 'mentally retarded', then discovered 'profoundly retarded, trainably retarded and 'educabley retarded'. What wonderfully sensitive saints we were.
Several years later those terms were dropped in favor of 'cognitively delayed, developmentally delayed or cognitively disabled'. Much less harmful to people. Then we decided that the term should be, "a person with a cognitive delay, etc." That way nobody would know the person was mentally retarded. Unless, of course, they spoke to or taught them.
I met with a parent who had moved to our state from one of those backward areas that weren't up to snuff on the politically correct scene. Her child had been identified as mentally retarded there. We explained that we didn't use that awful term, preferring (at that time) cognitively disabled.
Mom was ecstatic. She said she'd known all along there was nothing wrong with her son, and thanked us for making him all better.
See? PC has it's place. Words have the power to cure mental retardation.
Now if we could just find a term that would cure the liberal PC crowd.
Note: after re-reading this post it is apparent I have reached the age where rambling on is part of life.
"Now if we could just find a term that would cure the liberal PC crowd."
The word is "rational"
So Dean, what you're telling us is that you are one of the people responsible for spreading the insidious, anti-truth, freedom killing virus known as PC. Do you yet realize how much damage it has done to our society, culture, and language?
Logic and common sense are to a liberal, what sunlight is to a vampire.
"Do you yet realize how much damage it has done to our society, culture, and language?"
ZERO, 0, nada, zilch
Amanbe3 has reminded me of my wonderful old Army BSA motorbike of the '40s -- with its manual advance/retard
It would not be safe to mention that in some circles these days
Anon 4:06 - I was pretty sure the sarcasm in my post would indicate my feelings about PC. Guess not. So, to make my opinion plain -
PC is nonsense that uses new terms in an attempt to disguise reality. It fails to do so.
I am quite certain that referring to anyone of non-european or mixed descent as "black" will soon be regarded as an insensitive generalization, and "black" will go the same way as "negro" and "colored" - but strangely "of color" seems now to be acceptable.
there's a liberal born every minute - PT Barnum
Retarded people are certianly more intellegent then those buricrats are or ever will be
It is now unacceptable to make fun of stupid people? It really does not matter what word they invent for the condition. The condition is undesirable to most citizens so whatever term is used will eventually receive a negative connotation. They could even call the condition genetically cognitive obstruction, and kids might eventually be saying, “Man, that is so GenCog”.
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