Why "Retarded" IS Hate Speech

The following excerpt from NPR comes to us via The Inclusion Daily Express. It’s interesting that in the article below NPR frames its prose with an interrogatory headline (“Rethinking ‘Retarded’: Should It Leave The Lexicon?”)as though there’s any question about the matter. In turn there are lots of questions but they are matters of cultural practice and diffusion and not matters of moral and ethical intelligence. (It’s not possible for instance to drive bad words out of the lexicon, they stick like burs.)  

I was a child who was called retarded on the terrible playgrounds of yesteryear. I remember this all too well. In my case I was legally blind and unable to play sports. Banned from conventional games I just walked around and endeavored to engage in thinking. Why not? Thinking is free. It is the only proven method for overthrowing the reality principle. So I used to walk around with that big red “R” on my back. Ugly names are a dread thing. And yes, they are hate speech. Children everywhere know how to sling it.

As Carl Jung wrote: “It is part of the business of growing up to listen to the fearful discords which real life grinds out and to include them among the images of reality. Truth and reality are assuredly no music of the spheres–they are the beauty and terror of Nature herself.”

The business of growing up invariably includes the apprehension of the ugliness around us. “The world is ugly and the people are sad,” (Wallace Stevens) and as Walter Cronkite used to say, “And that’s the way it is.”

But I remember that big red “R” on my back. The memory is a part of both my conscious and my unconscious life.

Like a bent over tree beside a lake I grew despite the wind. I took the “R” into my manifold images of reality. Its down in the psyche’s vault along with the “N” word and all the ugly “C” words and the images of bloody history.

Everyone does this. But storing bad thoughts is half of the matter. The healthy adult takes additional steps in life. One may call this step individuation if you’re an adept of psychoanalysis but it can also be called “leaving a space for the new” –for emotional growth requires space for new roots to grow. Jung again: “The psychic health of the adult individual, who in childhood was a mere particle revolving in a rotary system, demands that he should himself become the center of a new system.”

If you can’t drive out the terror of Nature you can talk about it.

I doubt if its possible to drive words out of the lexicon. Terror and avarice will cling to whatever we try to put in the vault. But we can talk about hate. And our public schools can do more in this regard. And adults who want to find new tools to grow with can talk about it.

S.K.

Rethinking ‘Retarded’: Should It Leave The Lexicon?
(National Public Radio)
September 14, 2009
UNITED STATES– [Excerpt] “Retarded” used to be a garden-variety insult, but it may be the next candidate for prime-time bleeping.

E. Duff Wrobbel never gave the word much thought — until his daughter was born with Down syndrome. When she was just a baby, Wrobbel was driving with her when another car cut them off.

“And I actually said that word,” says Wrobbel, who is a professor of speech communications. “And then I stopped my car and got teary. And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just said that.'”

Now, Wrobbel has joined other activists who campaign against the word “retard.” To them, it’s not a hilarious put-down; it’s hate speech.

Entire article:
Rethinking ‘Retarded’: Should It Leave The Lexicon?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112479383&ps=cprs
Related:
The “r” Word Campaign
http://therword.org

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto