Take a moment and ask yourself if you've ever said, or have heard someone say, the word "retard" or "retarded." Look around you and open your ears, the word is everywhere. A BBC poll conducted in the UK concluded that "retarded" was the most offensive disability-related word ever. When the words "retard" or "retarded" are used as synonyms for "dumb" or "stupid" by people without intellectual disabilities, it only reinforces painful stereotypes.
Not many of you may know, but I am Greek; being Greek means you have a crazy amount of family and for me, a close circle of fourteen first cousins. Growing up I always noticed my one cousin, Anna, seemed slower than the rest of us. When I was old enough to understand, my parents told me she had an intellectual disability and basically would mature on the outside but not on the inside. Caring for Anna was difficult as the years went by, she had many aggressive tendencies and childish outbursts that sometimes made her hard to be around, but I loved her no different.
Around Christmas time during the year of 2013, Anna had a seizure in her bathtub and passed away. This was very difficult news for me to find out. At the time, I was a sophomore in high school and for some reason, upon Anna's death, I felt this passion in me to make a difference in honor of her spirit. I joined my school's Special Olympics team as a unified partner and later became a student aid in the E.S.E. classes. My experiences working with intellectually disabled students created a love in me that I never knew existed. I care for each and every kid as if they were my own blood and it is important for me to preach as an advocate for those mislabeled and offended by the use of the word "retarded."
Intellectual disability, formerly known as Mental Retardation is, according to the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, an individual who meets all three listed criteria: having an IQ below 70-75, having significant limitations in two or more adaptive areas, and having said condition manifest before the age of 18. SpecialOlympics.org notes that there are approximately 6.5 million people in the United States who have an Intellectual disability.
On October 5th, 2010, President Obama signed a law that would command the Federal Government to change the term "mental retardation" to "intellectual disability." This law, known as Rosa's Law, removed the word "retarded" from federal health, education, and labor policy. "Mental Retardation" was deemed as a far outdated term and offensive due to its wrongly construed definitions. Not many people are aware of Rosa's Law and still use retard as a label for those who are intellectually disabled and as an incorrect adjective to this day.
The definition of the word retard as stated in Webster's Dictionary is "to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment" with synonyms listed as brake, decelerate, hinder, slacken, impede; and shows an example sentence reading "The chemical will retard the spread of fire." Remember that question I asked you earlier? Think about the way you use or have heard the word retard used in sentences. I am sure most of you are thinking something along the lines of, "Dude you're honestly so retarded for not going out tonight it's going to be a crazy night." Let me take a second and substitute the definition of retard in place of the word in that sentence. "Dude you're honestly so slow for not going out tonight it's going to be a crazy night." Or even better, let me substitute one of Webster's synonyms in for the word. "Dude you're honestly so impeding for not going out tonight it's going to be a crazy night." Notice something weird? It's because the word retard is actually a verb but used on a daily basis as an adjective. Most people, due to stereotypes about those with intellectual disabilities, use the word retard as a replacement for "dumb" and "stupid" because, unfortunately, those are the stereotypes. I can't tell you how wrong this truly is. However, even though you might assume most people only use the word as an insult to friends, many of the kids I worked with experienced a very different reality.
When I was still in high school I decided to make an awareness video with the E.S.E kids at my school informing viewers on not using the word "retard." During the making of this video, I interviewed a lot of the intellectually disabled kids and asked them if they had ever been called a "retard" or heard someone being called a "retard." For those that could verbally speak, they said yes to both. Some even described their experiences or emphasized to me that they hate being called it just as much as they hate hearing it, whether aimed at them or not. Here is the link to the YouTube video I created.
The word "retard" is outdated, misused, and downright offensive. I challenge you to remind yourself the next time you hear that word being said by a friend or yourself, of how the real definition would most likely either completely change the meaning of the sentence or be incorrect due to Rosa's Law. I challenge you to do so because in this day and age none of us are "retarded," we're all just human.
