Sticks and Stones

Words are nothing, these tiny units of sound. Except, they are everything. They reflect and create our realities. They include and exclude people.

Some have said that disability rights is the last great civil rights battle to be waged. Over the decades we've seen women and people of color and people of a variety of sexual orientations make progress in the civil rights arena. Those gains have been reflected in the language our culture deems acceptable. In a staff meeting, it would not be acceptable to call a female colleague a bitch, or refer to an African American colleague with the n-word, or to call a gay colleague a fag. Yes, such horrible language can still be heard behind closed doors--a sign that these groups are still marginalized and that we need to continue to work for equality--but in our public personas, we know such language is not okay and so we don't use it.

I wish that we had such critical awareness of the language we use to address people with disabilities. Because I have been in staff meetings where colleagues used the word 'retards,' and no one seems to cringe the way they would have if someone had used a racialized term or a gendered term.

My sons have autism, something you certainly know if you've read this blog even once. They are not typical, and yet I do not see them as disabled. They are both incredibly abled, each in his own way. Nick is a gifted builder and mathematician. Noah is a gifted linguist and scientist. They are incredibly abled.

And yet they are different. The icon of the autism community has been the puzzle piece, as if people with autism are a bunch of puzzle pieces that need to be put back together (or fixed) in order for them to make sense. My sons aren't puzzles; they are complete and full human beings . . . the rest of the world just, far too often, fails to stop a moment to look at them and see who they truly are.

So often others focus so much on how different my sons are that they fail to see how similar they are to the rest of us--they are human beings with emotions, desires, and hurts.

Perhaps it's that difficulty of seeing the similarities between "us" and "them" that makes it okay in our culture to use disparaging language to describe people who are differently abled. I mean, "we" don't see "them" as like "us," as human, so we can't fathom that "they" would have emotions and desires and hurts. Sticks and stones can't hurt them.

It's not just college staff meetings where that language pops up. It pops up in elementary schools, too. There's a girl at Noah's school who has picked up on his differences and calls him "freak."

Think about that word. Does it shock you? Unnerve you? Maybe a little?

But not as much as if someone had called him the n-word, huh.

We still have a cultural tolerance for disparaging labels applied to people who are differently abled.

Here's the thing, though. The words hurt. Even if they are culturally acceptable, they still make my son cry. They reflect and create our realities, making a world that makes it okay to categorize others. They include and exclude people, cementing the categories of "us" and "them." They focus on what makes someone different rather than the so many things we all have in common.

We need to be conscious of our language. Disparaging language is not okay. And I'll fight to make sure that someday words like 'retard' and 'freak' will someday become as unacceptable as racial slurs.