I was once guilty of throwing around the “R” word (retard) to my friends... until my brother was diagnosed with Autism, or perhaps it was when I started helping in the Excellent Student Education (ESE) classrooms. It wasn’t until I was interacting with people with mental disabilities, that I began to realize how harmful the word is.
I believe that’s how most people eliminate the word from their vocabulary.
But you shouldn’t have to interact with someone with special needs to cease using the term. You can only tell a person to not use that word so many times… but it isn’t until they know who they are directly affecting that they then take the time to change that habit.
I could go on for days about the harmful effects of the word, but I think it is more effective to hear it from the people who it directly affects every day. So here are some responses from people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) when asked how they felt about people using the “R” word in a negative context.
“I feel like it is wrong, and it's not good to say to anybody because people [are] not retards we are human beings.” – Charles
“It makes me feel sad.” – Matt
“It mostly annoys me. People say it too often. It annoys me in a way of how you call someone retarded, but really, you’re saying how they have a disorder that can destroy lives. Like how saying, 'Dude, are you autistic or something?'... It just gets on my nerves.” — Aidan
“How it makes me feel when somebody uses the r-word. It makes me feel like I am worthless in a very small way, even though I know I am really not. It also makes me feel very down about myself. It also makes me feel bad for the person who can find no better language to use because I know that there are so many other words that the people could be using. And it also makes me feel absolutely terrible. Because I feel like the people that do use the word are putting up the big disability (or ability as I like to call it) middle finger right up in our faces when there's nothing really that the disabled people can really do or say about like we have no voice. And also I feel like the people when we do respond shut us out and don't even listen to our response.” –Oliver
When you use the word “retard” in a negative context, you are putting down someone’s child, brother, sister, friend, etc; but more importantly, you are putting down people undeserving of degradement. I truly hope that the voices of our peers can help convince people to stop using the word, and choose to spread the message that it is not okay to use.
I urge you to pledge to end the use of the “R” word.
