So often, we get seduced into imagining that the moral life centers on big, dramatic life-or-death decisions. Of course, when we are faced with them, those are crucial and important. But so much of the moral life passes us by in the little decisions, so little that they don’t even seem like decisions, like the words we happen to say as we go throughout our days.
Speech patterns get engrained in us, and it is easy to say things that we would never say if we thought about it, simply because we haven’t thought about it, and we hear certain patterns all the time. I remember a time, not too long after I turned 21, when a friend and I were contemplating a rather spontaneous little trip. My way of expressing that I had decided we should go forward with it was a phrase I had grown up hearing: “We’re free, white and 21. Let’s do it.” Just as the words escaped my lips, I felt my heart drop into the pit of my stomach. Luckily, my Chinese-American friend was quite gracious about it. Neither of us ever discussed it, but I never used that phrase again.
The word to eliminated today is “retarded.” This post by Amy Julia Becker reminded me that today, March 7th, is the annual “day of activation” for the “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign over at r-word.org. Becker tells some rather powerful stories of what it has been like for her, as the mother of a daughter who has Down syndrome, to hear other people comment “I’m so retarded” when they drop something or forget to put out the recycling, or to call others “retarded” as a casual insult.
I hope some of our readers will make the pledge to eliminate hateful usage of the r-word. But I also hope that we’ll use this occasion to reflect on all kinds of little speech patterns that are hurtful and harmful. It’s strange. If you call people on this sort of use of “retarded,” they usually insist that they mean no disrespect to people with mental disabilities, they just meant, you know, that their friend (or their own action) was … “retarded.” But that habit of thought–so deeply dismissing persons with intellectual disabilities that it doesn’t even occur to us that the word we are using has a relationship to them–is perhaps the most hurtful part of all.
Lent seems like a particularly appropriate time to examine our habits of speech and eliminate what is hurtful and unfitting. We may find, too, that efforts to change our speech make us more aware of certain habits of thought that also need to change. And, by attending to these little “non-decisions” of the moral life, we may find that when we get to the big moral decisions in life, our course has been made much clearer by our time attending to patterns of thought and speech that show respect to all.
Yes and no.
Retarded has become an ugly word somehow, and I don’t mind letting it go.
There was a time, though, when feeble-minded meant the same as mentally retarded, and idiot, imbecile, and moron sub-classifications. It’s certainly not polite do call people any of those names, but I doubt that anyone would mind a person saying, “I’m such an idiot!” I doubt that people who are truly schizophrenic, or paranoid, phobic, or psychotic are offended by the informal uses of the word. I am old enough so that if I am forgetful, I may make a joking reference to Alzheimer’s. It would be very insensitive to make such a remark around someone who actually had Alzheimer’s, but to the best of my knowledge, my grandfather had (quite some time ago) what now would certainly be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s, and I don’t feel I am insulting his memory.
So I think to a large extent, retarded has just become an ugly word that ought not to be used to describe anyone, including in a medical setting where the word theoretically should have no sting.
David, thanks for your comment. I decided to keep the original post about the “r-word,” but in light of your comment, I will add that “schizophrenic” and “psychotic” were words that I thought about including as well. I have family members and friends to whom these words apply (in their clinical, DSM senses). It grates on me every time I hear someone use the word “schizophrenic” to describe some ambivalence in a decision they are facing or use “psychotic” to talk about someone getting a little upset. I think it’s interesting that you acknowledge that it would be insensitive to make the Alzheimer’s joke in front of someone who actually had Alzheimer’s. If that’s true, than isn’t that joke one that we should train ourselves out of regardless? In the story I told above (“free, white, and 21”), I could have made a mental note to only say that around other white people, but I think that it’s important not to say it at all. Should we save our insensitive remarks for our friends and family, when we are sure that there are no–well, the list is nearly endless, right?: persons of color, gays, lesbians, women, schizophrenics, persons with Down syndrome (plus all of their friends and family members)–around to be offended? I’m not trying to encourage people to be politically correct here. I’m trying to invite them to take an honest look at their unexamined word choices and ask if it really reflects the messages that they want to be sending.
I agree with the need for us to take care with our language. A couple of thoughts, however:
• We’re dealing with metaphor and hyperbole, which are among the most effective, satisfying, and potentially humorous uses of language for people, both in their everyday speech and in more serious writing and speaking.
• The most readily-available metaphors and hyperboles for talking about human experiences and relationships are often going to come from fields like medicine and especially mental health.
The thing about metaphor and hyperbole is that they are often effective precisely because of their concreteness. Calling something “crazy” is no longer interesting, because the word has become dilluted in our usage. But calling something or someone “psychotic” can be effective precisely because of its concrete use in the real world. Same with “Don’t have a heart attack!” or “How could you be so blind?”
I’m trying to think whether discipleship to Christ calls us more to eliminate as many potentially offensive expressions as possible, or whether it calls us to seek a balance. People sometimes getting their feelings hurt seems to be a necessary trade-off for vibrant, forceful, and humorous use of language. Which times are we to let go of the latter for the sake of the former?
I’m open to either possibility, but I lean more toward a balance. Some terms we decide are too potentially hurtful, and we choose never to say them. The R-word may well be one of these. Other terms we recognize could hurt someone’s feelings in a given situation, and we try to take care when to use them. But we do still use them because they communicate well.
This would be in recognition that we are called to care for people’s feelings, but we are also created to delight in the use of language.
Dana, I am sympathetic to what you are saying, but I think it is really rather complicated. I think, for example, when people my age make joking references attributing our own mental lapses to Alzheimer’s, it’s not really a derogatory remark about people with Alzheimer’s, but a bit of dark humor, made in the knowledge that we actually may experience Alzheimer’s some day.
I think there is some area in between insensitivity and political correctness. Perhaps we should go there with caution, but ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, elderly people, people with psychological disorders, and so on, all go there themselves. For example, I work with a woman who is a very devout Jehovah’s Witness, but she jokingly threatens to show up at our homes proselytizing and giving us copies of the Watchtower.
I think you can venture into the area between insensitivity and political correctness if you know your audience and their sensitivities. An awful lot of excellent humor comes from that area. Woody Allen has spent a great deal of time there, for example.
Thanks for this post, Dana. For what it’s worth, my perspective on this has been shaped by the fact that one of my sisters has Down’s syndrome. It is difficult for me to separate that personal experience with how I view this issue. I have always cringed when people used the word “retarded” to describe something they clearly think is bad or stupid. I have often spoken up about this: introducing people to the fact that I have a sister with Down’s and that she is retarded, which is different than being bad or stupid. In other words her being retarded does not make her stupid, per se. I’ve tried to express to them how I feel like it demeans her dignity to use the word retarded in this way. Most of the time, people have seemed surprised but “enlightened” by my resistance to their using the word in that way – kind of like what you described in terms of you experience using the phrase “white, free, and 21” with your Chinese-American friend. Putting yourself in a position where that phrase was not accurate or welcome seems to have made you think differently about it. I think using the world “retarded” in the presence of people who love (or who are) people who are actually mentally retarded can change our perception of the goodness/badness or rightness/wrongness of using the “r-word” in ways that might demean retarded people. So, I made the pledge a long time ago! But I join you in asking others to make it!
Scott and David, you are really pushing me on this. I had honestly not ever thought about how blind people might respond to the very common metaphorical use of blindness. I don’t know quite what to say about that.
I do think that there is room for humor in some of this. I think that there may be some category differences here. The example of someone who is getting older (which we all are, right?) joking about Alzheimer’s in part out of fear (literally a possibility for all of us) is different than joking about intellectual disabilities (which, other than very rare accidents/exceptions, you are simply born with or not). I don’t have any problem with David’s JW friend joking about showing up at his house (hopefully her JW friends don’t either). But I wonder if even this works a little better with religion than, say, race, because the former is more “chosen.” Even so, I’ll admit that I have learned more about how to think well about race from stand-up comics of color than I care to admit (I mean this in a very good way). I think humor can be used in very creative ways to expose our prejudices and therefore to help us overcome them. My original post isn’t meant to attack that at all. It is meant to attack our unthinking, unnoticed uses of the “r-word.” *All* such uses are hurtful, unnecessary, and not at all funny or delightful. I completely stand by that. I think your statement (David) about the places you might venture if you know your audience is right. But that indicates a person who is reflective about his language and his listeners. That’s what I’m trying to push people toward.
To give one other example (which I, thankfully, haven’t heard much lately), there was a time when I heard the phrase “that’s so gay” all the time. The people using the phrase were basically using it as “that’s so weird/strange.” If called on this (like folks in Anna’s story above), they had no idea that this good be construed as an insult to gay people; they just meant to insult a sweater, or a comment, or whatever was “so gay.” Now, if someone wants to put together some clever humor involving homosexuality, that might work (especially if that person self-identifies as gay). If we want to have a serious argument about the morality of homosexuality (persons, acts, orientations, whatever), fine. But if someone wants to defend people who unthinkingly use the word “gay” as a synonym for weird/strange? No. Actually, hell no.
I don’t want to be the language police (at all). But I do want to push people to reflect on their own language and, if necessary, police it themselves. There is just no excuse for this sort of unthinking hurtfulness in speech.