Why is retarded bad

I would be at the bus stop and these older kids would call me the awful R-word. It was really really hurtful. Removing these two words from your vocabulary is not asking people to walk on eggshells. Many of us have been in a conversation with someone, a friend or co-worker, when they casually use the R-word. Inspired by 9-year-old Rosa Marcellino, the law was a key milestone to promoting inclusive, people-first language.

As the world engages in an intense conversation about the importance of inclusion, Special Olympics and Best Buddies urge everyone to play an active role in promoting acceptance by ending the use of the R-word, which continues to push people with intellectual disabilities to the sidelines. Kantar reviewed nearly 50 million social posts in the U. Over two-thirds of posts about people with intellectual disabilities were negative and nearly 29 million contained slurs i. Spreading the R-word continues to hurt people with intellectual disabilities—and whether intended or not, is a form of bullying.

Using the R-word is the same as using any slur against a minority group. Eliminating this word is a step toward respect for all. When my then-four-year-old son was diagnosed with mental retardation in , I was struck by how strongly people reacted to those words.

I wrote at the time :. And twenty, thirty years later, that slur is causing just as much pain and controversy as it ever did.

Being something of a word person, I was fascinated by the reaction the words got when we told friends and family about the diagnosis. Honestly, I think I had to spend more time talking to people about the terminology than the condition it describes.

Even the Wikipedia entry begins with a long discussion of the various terms that have been used and discarded over the years—discarded after common usage coopted a clinical term for use as an insult. I confess that sounds a bit jargony to me. I am seeing that term used quite a bit online, on special-needs forums and such. Four years later, I'm hearing "cognitive disability" more often in educational contexts, and "mental retardation" is still what the medical records say, with a gradual shift toward "ID.

I don't look at my son and think a label. His brain works differently than is the norm although "the norm" is mighty hard to pin down. We are something that is not like you and something that none of you would ever want to be. We are something outside the "in" group. We are someone that is not your kind. I want you to know that it hurts to be left out here, alone.

People don't need to scoff at others to make a point.