‘When did people with disabilities cease to matter in the battle against bigotry?’

Writing in the [UK] Independent, columnist Ian Birrell says society widely prohibits the use of “crude stereotyping” and “hateful words” when directed against other minority groups, yet accepts the same behavior when directed against those with disabilities.

This duality, he argues, reinforces the exclusion of people with disabilities from the rest of society, and gives tacit permission for acts of violence. The father of a girl with multiple disabilities, Birrell sees a link between the widespread use of disability-related insults like “retard” by celebrities and politicians, and acts of violence against people with disabilities. An excerpt:

Hate crime is the most extreme articulation of the prejudice that disabled people endure on a daily basis. Its roots lie in contempt, fertilized by misguided feelings of superiority. So will anything really change while retard is an acceptable term of abuse, and autism is used to denigrate political rivals?

… We are retreating in the fight to offer respect and inclusion to more than one million of our fellow citizens … And as the struggle for inclusion in society gets harder, the stares get more pronounced, the insults more widely heard, the harassment worse – and more and more people with disabilities will abandon their personal battles and withdraw to their ghettos.

Is this really what we want? Or should we at the very least start to mind our language?

See also: Robert Redford calls Utah leaders ‘retarded’ — Denver Post

And an earlier column: How a disabled child changed my politics — and those of David Cameron; by Ian Birrell, [UK] Independent

UPDATE: [UK] Independent readers respond to Birrell’s column.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 2:14 am and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, autism, intellectual/developmental disabilities, public attitudes, violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post