Stop Calling Some Needs ‘Special’

A new World Down Syndrome Day video shrewdly takes on a problematic euphemism.

The actress Lauren Potter sits on a couch looking skeptically at the camera, and says that if people with Down syndrome needed to “wear a giant suit of armor, that would be special.” The video cuts to a handsome young man in full battle armor, walking casually down the freezer aisle in a grocery store. He flips a box of something from one hand into his basket. A young woman walks by, eyeing him flirtatiously, and he meets her gaze as he strides forward…either toward glorious battle or the quick checkout lane.

The message: People with Down syndrome do not have “special needs;” as Potter puts it at the end of the video, they need education, jobs, opportunities, friends, and love, just like anyone else.

Finally, a World Down Syndrome Day viral video I can get behind.