On Retards and Bullies: Why Words Matter
For years I’ve worked in the profession of perception — public relations, marketing, advertising and now social media — where we spend hours on company “positioning” and corporate talking points. Meetings are scheduled to choose the perfect phrase that captures a founder’s vision, a firm’s mission. Analyst Q&A documents run as long as a novella, in hopes of covering everything that might be asked on the quarterly earnings call, to make sure we have all the answers. We choose our words very carefully.
This weekend I read a very moving op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, and it has stuck with me: A Word Gone Wrong.
Columnist Lawrence Downes explains that today, March 6, is the fifth annual “day of awareness” in a national campaign to stop using the word “retard.”
It seems like a small thing, but it’s not. Growing up in the 80s “retarded” was a fairly common slur, aimed in anger and scorn, right up there with “faggot”…a term that’s now completely unacceptable and that I hesitate even while writing. So why is “retard” still ok to say?
Because words can hurt. Every day there’s a news story about another bullied kid, another child’s suicide. When I was young there was the playground, the backyard and the home phone (usually in the kitchen)…public spaces with some degree of adult supervision. Now it’s a lot easier to amplify and escalate a campaign against that not-so-cool kid when you’ve got Facebook, Twitter, GroupMe and Google Chat.
The NYT column quotes John Franklin Stephens, who writes beautifully:
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.
Someone that is not your kind.
Unfortunately “The R Word” site seems to be down — hopefully a result of too much traffic! — but the organization’s Facebook page Spread the Word to End the Word is going strong. [The site is back up.]
That’s where I saw this story, A Word Can Be a Matter of Life and Death about three-year-old Amelia who was initially denied a life-saving kidney transplant because she is mentally retarded. It’s an excellent piece by Matthew Holder, Global Medical Advisor to the Special Olympics, about what defines, and who decides, “quality of life.”
Years ago in Boston I spent many summer Saturdays volunteering with an organization that ran trips for folks with disabilities — or rather, disABILITIES as their slogan proudly stated. We went kayaking and camping and I was often paired up with a young man who was blind and mentally “challenged.” But he could kayak forever…I would steer from the back, and he would power us down the river, tirelessly. And man, did he love to swim, with a look of pure joy on his face.
None of us is perfect. Some disabilities and personal challenges are just more visible, more obvious to others…and less socially acceptable. (Mis)perceptions are powerful. Words matter.
