Op-ed: Don’t ban the word ‘retard’
February 14th, 2010Writing in the Washington Post, Ohio State University professor Christopher M. Fairman opposes what he describes as efforts to censor the use of the word “retard.” An excerpt:
It’s not that I’ve come to praise the word “retard”; I just don’t think we should bury it. If the history of offensive terms in America shows anything, it is that words themselves are not the culprit; the meaning we attach to them is, and such meanings change dramatically over time and across communities.
… If interest groups want to pour resources into cleaning up unintentional insults, more power to them; we surely would benefit from greater kindness to one another. But we must not let “retard” go without a requiem. If the goal is to protect intellectually disabled individuals from put-downs and prejudice, it won’t succeed. New words of insult will replace old ones.
Words are ideas, and we should be reluctant to surrender any of them. Freedom of expression has come at a dear price, and it is not worth abridging, even so we can get along a little better. That’s one F-word we really can’t do without.
Our RSS Feed
February 14th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
He’s right. And it really makes me sick to think about this. In fact, I lose sleep over this every night because I know when I leave this world, no matter what preparations I have made for my child, no one will ever see or value what I see or value in my child.
Quite honestly, I don’t think people really know how to embrace our kids. Period. We try to mainstream them and the mainstream continues to use them as an example as something “less.” In fact, they like them even less because no matter what image we try to convey about their value, people just don’t see what we see.
We cannot make them see what we see, either. That’s the sad truth. And I’ve concluded that this battle over the “R” word will never be won until people value our children as “more.”
February 14th, 2010 at 11:47 am
If Mr. Fairman is correct and words are in fact just words, then I have one word to describe his op-ed…rubbish.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Not to worry, if people finally recognize that the word r*tard is a slur that hurts real human beings, and it falls into disuse, it won’t actually “go” anywhere. It will still be in the dictionary with millions of other words that people don’t use. It will be fine.