Yesterday was National Spread the Word to End the Word day. Apparently, “the word” is actually the “r-word,” which is the word “retard(ed).” I’ll translate that from politically correct gobbledygook into plain English: Organizers of the Special Olympics founded www.r-word.org to eliminate the derogatory use of the words “retard” and “retarded.” Instead, they argue, we should adopt the phrase “intellectually disabled.” Doing so will somehow improve the lives of “people with ID and their families and friends.” I’d argue that yesterday should have been called Missing the Point Day.
People with mental disabilities — and words to describe them — have presumably existed since the advent of man. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “feeble-minded” has been in use since at least 1534, when an early Bible translation of First Thessalonians encouraged readers to “comforte the feble mynded.” The word “moron” originates from the first IQ test charts and was used to describe those scoring between 50 and 70. “Idiot” was first used as a scientific term around 1400. “Retardation,” which the OED defines as “the fact or condition of being slowed down or delayed,” has been in use since at least 1437 and was first used by psychologists around 1892. All of those words have been used — first as objective descriptors, later as pejorative insults — to describe the same group of people. All of those words have fallen prey to the same modern-day euphemism: intellectually disabled.
Seventeen years ago, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in The New York Times about the so-called euphemism treadmill: “People invent new ‘polite’ words to refer to emotionally laden or distasteful things, but the euphemism becomes tainted by association and the new one that must be found acquires its own negative connotations. … Give a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored by the concept.”
Comedian George Carlin famously lamented the euphemism treadmill of the word cripple (crippled -> handicapped -> disabled -> physically challenged), asserting that handicapped people “will say, ‘We’re not handicapped, we’re handi-capable!’ These poor suckers have been bullshitted by the system into believing that if you change the name of the condition, somehow you’ll change the condition.”
The r-word movement is another example of the euphemism treadmill. Today, www.r-word.org claims that the word “retarded” is hate speech; only 20 years ago, this country’s largest organization advocating for retarded people was called the Association for Retarded Citizens of the United States. Then in 1992, it magically decided to change its name to The Arc. Keep in mind that Arc doesn’t stand for anything anymore. It’s not an acronym, and that “r” certainly doesn’t stand for “retarded” because that would be hate speech. Since 1992.
I fear the r-word movement discourages serious debate on the topic of mental disabilities. How many people avoid the discussion because they don’t know the “proper” terminology or fear retribution from r-word apologists? There’s even a widget on www.r-word.org that enables users to “count the R-word on any site” to see whether a particular website is free of such “hate speech.” After publication of this column, the tool should uncover — by my count — no fewer than 11 instances of the r-word on The Diamondback’s website. I’m actually going out of my way to write the words “retard” and “retarded” over and over again because I want those people on www.r-word.org to hear me loud and clear: If you want mentally retarded people to have a better life, stop bullshitting them.
Christopher Haxel is a junior English major. He can be reached at haxel at umdbk dot com.
