There’s no good way to use the R-word.
That’s the message of this year’s campaign to end the use of derogatory language that directly or indirectly targets people with intellectual disabilities.
Community Living Huntsville held a Spread the Word to End the Word open house at its office on West Road yesterday, where community members gathered to pledge to use respectful, people-first language, always. (If you weren’t at the open house, you can make your own pledge at r-word.org.)
“This is an international campaign to promote the use of respectful language and to eliminate the use of the R-word. For those who don’t know what that is, that’s ‘retarded’,” said Michelle Ainsworth, who organized the event for Community Living Huntsville. “That’s because it hurts other people. Even if people say it in a way that’s not necessarily intended to hurt someone — let’s say someone says ‘oh, that party was retarded’ — those words still hurt and they hurt a lot of people.”
Ainsworth asked Zack Fitzsimmons to write a song for the event. He and his dad worked on it for a few weeks to perfect it before he performed his original song “Labels” for an appreciative crowd at the open house.
He hopes the song will “bring awareness and maybe an understanding of autism or learning disabilities… It’s not about labels, it’s about being a human being. I’m autistic but I don’t define myself as autism I just happen to have autism. That’s the way I think we should look at it.” (See his debut performance of the song in the video below.)
So how can you help stop use of the R-word?
Community Living Huntsville has business cards available that community members can share. “It can be awkward to go up to someone and say ‘I heard you say the word retard’, so what do you do?” said Ainsworth. “You can nonchalantly pass them the card and it asks them to please choose other words.”
Community Living Huntsville will also post a list of alternate words on their Facebook page.
“I hope that people will realize and understand that words matter and words have impact, that words hurt others,” said Ainsworth. “Words can have so much power — they can hurt others or they can lift people up. We want to make sure that we are promoting people to feel good about themselves and to celebrate and recognize our gifts and talents and abilities.”
Community members watch a video on respectful language at the Community Living Huntsville open house
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What a great message for all to hear. Need to get the word out to the schools. I would not hesitate to invite Zack to come and share his song “Labels” if I was still working as a Principal. It would be a powerful way to spread the message. Something we still need to work on but there has been improvements I believe.