Sticks and Stones

I know that this spring/summer there was a great deal of debate over the terminology used to refer to individuals with cognitive disabilities or delays due to the movie Tropic Thunder. I stayed out of that debate because I felt that based upon the quality of the movie, those who would pay attention to the debate would never have attended the movie to begin with and vice versa. However, I have noticed since that time that the word "retarded" has become a standard slang phrase amongst not just teenagers in middle and high school but far too many adults as well to refer to anything that they may find senseless, odd, or to their disliking. This horrifies me because this is a word with power. All words have power, but words that have been used to identify people, to segregate and isolate and dehumanize people are especially powerful. The word "retarded" has a long, dark history that includes institutionalizations, forced sterilizations, and eugenics. It is a heavy, weighted, sharp and cutting word and among probably the top powerful and historically weighted words in the English language. So why is it suddenly considered acceptable to take this word and throw it in the face of those for whom mental retardation is a medical reality? To mock it, to ridicule it, to turn it into an insult? Words have the ability to dehumanize, to disrespect, to rip apart people and to take a label that someone already has to bear and turn it into an insult, to ridicule it and make it a joke is beyond dehumanizing. It not only dehumanizes individuals with mental retardation but it dehumanizes those callous enough to believe it is appropriate to utilize the words in this manner. It reveales a depth of ignorance and supposed superiority that is astonishing. It reveals just how far we have not come since the days of eugenics and institutions.
Another powerful word is the word wheelchair. It sounds simple, until it is used in place of any other identifying feature and the person using the wheelchair is referred to as "a wheelchair" or "the wheelchair". This is dehumanizing and demeaning and disrespectful. Just because someone relies upon an alternate mode of ambulation does not mean that their mode of ambulation defines them; they are not "a wheelchair" anymore than someone who walks for ambulation is "sneakers". It turns a human being with thoughts, feelings, emotions, worth and value into nothing more than an object that is worth less and too often worthless. To define an entire life by its limitations instead of its humanity, its successes, its uniqueness is ignorant, is painful, is injustice by definition, and is unethical/immoral. No one wants to be defined by the areas in whic they struggle or by the differences that the world has not yet learned to value; everyone wants to be defined as a unique individual. To have words that may already be a burden become callous jokes or inappropriate summaries of your existence is unacceptable. Sticks and stones may break just bones, but words destroy the soul.