Is the word "retarded" offensive when applied to somebody who is diagnosed as mentally retarded?

Great Debates
1

This might be more IMHO, but I’ll let the mods decide.

Sarah Palin is having a tweetwar with Bill Maher because he referred to her son Trig as “retarded”. Story.

I don’t have the slightest problem believing that Bill Maher is an insensitive jerkwad- he has been before- but the fact he used the word retarded is what seems to come most under fire. The conservative blogger who started the story on Breitbart even refers to it as “the r word”. Ignoring the obvious “When the hell have right wingers given a damn about politically correct speech when it was people they didn’t like?” hypocrisy, what’s wrong with the word “retarded”? It might sound a bit clinical, but it’s used by organizations (my first job was with McInnis School for Retarded Children, funded in part by the Association for Retarded Citizens (a national agency). You can use the term “special needs”, but that can refer to people with any number of physical and-or mental problems while ‘mentally retarded’ is far more specific (less specific than Down Syndrome, but specific enough to have an inkling what sort of deficiency is involved or care is needed).

So, what’s wrong with “retarded”? Is it because it’s used as an insult (because if so, anything you refer to a retarded person as is likely to be co-opted for that)?

2

It’s outdated and insulting, IMO. I mean, “moron” and “cretin” and “feeble-minded” used to be technical terms too, but you wouldn’t use them today as anything other than an insult.

And “retarded” is too general to cover what type of problem it is, any more than “special needs” is. If you know what the problem is, use that, otherwise there are other, less pejorative terms. “Developmental disability” and “developmental delay” both work in this case, for example.

3

Ranks right up there with “mongoloid” on the outdated and offensive scale.

4

So Developmentally Disabled.

Suddenly, I understand where Dexter’s sister got her name from…

On a serious note, I think “retarded” is like other “forbidden” words. It has been used by so many people with vicious intent for so long, that that usage is now the USA societal “norm” for the word. Outside of a scientific context (“Applying chemical Z to affliction A retarded growth of organisms by 50%”) the average person would consider it an insult.

5

Can’t we just leave Bill Maher and Sarah Palin back in 2008 where they both belong? You know, like how we’ve done with Sex in the City movies and Britney’s, ahem, “comeback” ? …

Anyway, yes, “retarded” is now fully pejorative. Use it sparingly, if ever at all, and certainly not in connection with persons with intellectual disabilities.

6

I think there can be a certain legacy exception with institutions that have been around a long time. No one has a problem with the NAACP still being the NAACP, for instance, but the word “colored” in isolation is plainly archaic and unpalatable these days.

Tangentially, the West Co. is known for its encyclopedias of US law, in which it tries to organize all court opinions according to the various topics addressed therein. When it was first organized in the late 1800s, the topic heading for legal issues as to children whose parents were not married was “Bastards.” At some point fifty years later or so, someone recognized that that was an offensive way to refer to these kids, so they changed it – to “Illegitimate Children.” :smack:

More recently, I think they’ve settled on “Children Out Of Wedlock.”

ETA even farther off topic: Googling “west legal encyclopedia topic heading bastards” brings up the Wikipedia entry for the history of West Virginia. :cool:

7

I think it could be possible to use the term in a non-offensive way, but it would be a pretty rare occurrence. Maher is a total asshole, and this wasn’t one of those times. I hope he loses advertisers and his job over this, seriously. That guy is as bad as Beck or Limbaugh and I’m sick of him being on “my side”. There shouldn’t be any place for his rhetoric anywhere. He’s a sexist piece of shit, and he mocks developmentally disabled children. How low can you go??

Anyway, yes, offensive. VERY

8

Along with words like “Negro”, “Colored”, “Oriental”, and “Mohammedan”. Granted the first two have legacy uses in UNCF and NAACP.

9

They didn’t belong then either.

10

So “retarded mulatto” isn’t en vogue?

11

The R-Word Campaign, sponsored by the Special Olympics along with numerous other organizations, is seeking to stop the use of the word retarded through societal stigma and a massive media campaign.

Back in the '80’s when I worked with the Association for Retarded Citizens, they had already abandoned the word except for their legacy name. In 1992, they officially changed their name to The Arc of the United States, dropping all reference to the r-word.

12

Yes. And anyone who says “retard” should be shot in the mouth.

13

I think you’ll find that most people don’t really give a hoot when it’s used as a pejorative, let alone when it’s used clinically.

14

My kids received services from our county’s department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities for years. It has only been since early 2010 that Ohio dropped the MR from MRDD in its various agencies. (The legislation was adopted in October, 2009). It was the polite term used by the American Association on Mental Retardation until they changed their name, in 2006, to the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

I think that such efforts are well-intentioned. I have no problem changing my vocabulary. On the other hand, I suspect that it is little more than playing whack-a-mole. As already noted, retarded, (literally “slowed”), replaced a host of “scientific” words such as moron and imbecile that were coined to avoid using words such as dummy or fool or feeble minded.
In some ways, I am disappointed. It will probably only be a few years, possibly months, before “DD” or DevDis or some similar construction will replace REE-tard on the playgrounds. With this change as an example, that newly coined insult will send the various social service agencies and mental health professionals haring off on the search for a new word. While retarded in this sense was coined in 1895, I do not know when it became the common word referring to those of impaired mental capacities. REE-tard was already a playground insult when I was a kid in the 1950s. So retarded/retardation survived as the polite word for over 50 years. I only heard the first mutterings that it was impolite some time after 2000, (which came as a surprise to me since every agency with whom I had contact was still using the term). So, we have now had a fairly rapid turnover for a very established term that did not increase in its pejorative nature for over fifty years.

Rather than holding the line and simply letting that situation continue, by jumping on the “It has become an insult” bandwagon, they have bought into the rather futile idea that we can ever come up with a name for such conditions that will not immediately become insults. We are going to chase our tails, forever, in attempting to find an non-insulting term or phrase. (When schools started identifying kids as having “special needs,” it was a matter of months, (perhaps weeks), until the taunt “you’re SPESHul” was heard across the land.

In a related matter, referring to the OP, I see no reason why Maher should have had some a priori knowledge of the change in terminology. I still hear the phrase used by professionals (who grew up in an environment when it was the polite phrase), and I do not recall any bold headlines announcing the new terminology. I only discovered that it was no longer polite when I saw the sign in front of my MRDD office changed to DD–and then had to go look up the legislation changing the name for the state of Ohio. For the most part, knowledge of the change has been passed on by people whispering “that is rude” to other people who were unaware of the change.

Of course, in a polite world, Maher, on being apprised of the change in terminology, would have issued an immediate apology and retraction, noting that he was unaware of the change. Somehow, I doubt that that is how Maher played this one.

15

nm

16

I’ve worked with kids and young adults with developmental disabilities. The term “retard” has so long been outdated they happily call each other that, in not-horrible ways. Like: “You slipped and fell? Oh you’re such a retard, haha!” Because they are kids just like everyone else, and use words like all the other kids.

Obviously it varies from place to place, but where I’ve worked “retard” was not specific to people with developmental disabilities anymore. The two were no longer considered related, even if you knew they actually were.

That in no way excuses someone using it intentionally, I’m just adding it as a data point for consideration. Also, obviously I would never use it to describe the kids I worked with. Someone using “retard” to demean a person with a developmental disability for having a developmental disability is despicable. It’s completely different from kids with developmental disabilities finding new ways to call each other poopy heads.

The term for once-medical descriptions becoming insults is the “euphemism treadmill”. Being the one hero of morality who doesn’t go along will not stop the euphemism treadmill. Once it’s reached the critical point, it’s better to go along with it so that the word becomes divorced from its original meaning faster, and can just become a general word for a poopy head.

17

A friend who works in a group home for disabled adults uses MR (mentally retarded) as one of the descriptors for her “patients” and tells me it is acceptable when used accurately.

18

In my profession - the adjudication of disability claims, mental retardation has a very specific definition. There was nothing perjorative about the term - it was simply a diagnosis.

Developmental disability/delay impress me as far more ambiguous terms, which will confuse already difficult issues. But if people feel better about using that term, then to hell with accuracy, consistency, and such silly concerns.

19

I can agree with that general sentiment, but I don’t like how all of a sudden these things are simply decided by our overlords to be per se insulting. My first cousin is “slow” and growing up in the 1980s among the family, we discussed his condition as “retarded” and suffering from “mental retardation.” And even back then on the playground, “retarded” and “RE-tard” were common insults. For some reason the two terms co-existed. I think by stigmatizing these words, the insults become more powerful.

I mean, his mother has no problem with the fucking word. Why do I have to listen to self-righteous assholes like the Diversity Director at the local university send out a mass email telling me to stop using the word?

20

There is no doubt in my mind that Maher used it just to be an asshole and he knew it would piss of Palin.

The minute I hear anyone say anything about something or someone being retarded or being a retard, I instantly think a lot less of them. Luckily, amongst my cadre of friends, this word is not a part of our lexicon.

However, the term “mental retardation” still sounds clinical and passable enough and does not mean any offense. But saying that someone is “a retard” is absolutely, unequivocally an insult and insensitive.