A friend on Facebook asked me and 145 of her other Facebook friends to take the pledge last week.
Each day, it seems someone wants me to change my status to support veterans, cancer survivors or mothers, and each ends the generic plea with, “I know which of my friends will support me in this and which will ignore this important issue.”
I despise these sorts of things for their empty "feel-good" nature, as well as their clumsy attempts at mass guilt.
I’ve gotten used to ignoring these electronic chain letters, but I stopped and read the one asking me to "outlaw the R-word."
Using the term "mental retardation" to describe people whose mental processes are, well, retarded -- "slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress," according to Webster -- is now considered offensive. Never mind that the term "mental retardation" was once a euphemism for "idiocy," or that "idiocy" was once a euphemism for "feeble-minded." It’s time to get back onto what linguists call the "euphemism treadmill" for yet another round of feel-good actions that generally accomplish as much as changing your Facebook status for an hour to show support for veterans.
Proponents of banning the “R-word” want us to think that changing the name is going to make a real difference. Somehow, problems faced by those who had been called "mentally retarded" will cease to exist because, you know, alcohol stopped being a problem once we stopped calling people "drunks" and started calling them "alcoholics."
Family members of mine have a horse in this race, so I’ve seen what happens when the euphemism police encourage this policy of denial. Trust me -- it’s not a pretty sight. The most damaging lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
So why is changing the term such an issue – for those who want to render "mental retardation" a cuss word, as well as for me? It’s not a sacred term, after all, and it’s a euphemism in its own right, so what’s the big deal?
I believe that we are known by how we treat other people, and changing random words to confuse the general public is not doing anything constructive to help the mentally retarded.
It isn’t creating more sheltered workshops, or group homes or safe places to live for the mentally retarded citizens living in homeless encampments.
It isn’t providing job training for those able to hold down jobs, nor is it assisting the families who will be supporting these people for the rest of their natural lives.
Changing a phrase enriches no one except the sign makers and letterhead printers, but it does allow people to feel good about doing absolutely nothing for the least able in their communities. And that, at least in my book, is shameful.
Steve Swope | Mar 13, 2013 | 2:09pm
Interesting perspective, Betsy. I both agree and disagree. I always think it’s important for people to be able to define themselves (as, say, African-Americans rather than something nastier, or pro-choice rather than “pro-abortion”) rather than be defined (and therefore often limited and devalued) by others. The names we use often express how we feel about others.
But I agree that “names” are less important than relating compassionately and equably. An article in a recent issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin says that a concern with words and the emotions that generate them are worthless if nothing changes in our behavior. Renaming, the author suggests, may make everyone feel better but solves nothing.
Betsy Murphy | Mar 13, 2013 | 5:01pm
I had no idea the Harvard Divinity Bulletin had beaten me to the proverbial punch, Steve! Call me - well, call me anything but don’t call me late to dinner.
The problem with names, as I see it, is that the names themselves are neutral. They become either positive or negative by how we react to them. Even politically charged names like ‘Communist’ are positive when used in one way (to describe the family unit, which resembles Communism much more than Capitalism), yet negative when used to describe brutal regimes like North Korea’s. It’s our actions that confer meaning on these terms, and changing the names without changing the actions is pointless in the long run,
Joe Bradley | Mar 14, 2013 | 1:37pm
I might be wrong here, but I’ve always thought the big push here was to stop using the word “retarded” as an insult, as a synonym of “stupid.” I am in full support of that. I always cringe when I hear friends say, “Oh, that’s so retarded.” It’s like the campaign that was launched by athletes recently to stop using the word “gay” for the same purpose.
My dad works with people with disabilities, and so growing up, using the word “retarded” as a synonym for “stupid” in our house was about the worse thing you could say. It’s an insult to people who actually have a mental disability. I’ll be passing on the same teachings to my kids.
Betsy Murphy | Mar 14, 2013 | 4:43pm
Joe, I hear ya (and I think your dad is right on target on this), but I don’t know if saying “Oh, that’s so stupid” is much of an improvement!
Here’s a thought experiment along the lines of your dad’s philosophy: Would you say to someone who’s clumsy “Oh, you’re such a cripple?” or someone who is on the lazy side “What are you, in a coma? - get up out of that chair and get a job!”. Probably not. Using an image of a disability to describe someone’s shortcomings is in poor taste and it’s better if we can say what we mean without the exaggeration. Changing the terms we use to call real afflictions, though, does nothing to advance that worthy goal. Unfortunately, the stop the R-word campaign only advances us further down the euphemism treadmill.
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