Handicapped vs. Retarded

Once upon a time, in a land that was known as the free world, there was no such thing as being "politically correct". In fact, everybody - or mostly everybody - was so insensitive about everybody elses problems that they walked around actually using words correctly. For example, in times of yore people could actually call another person "gay" without worrying about whether or not they were sleeping with another person of the same sex or not. They could also point to someone walking down the street, pounding at their chest and drooling on themselves and call them retarded.

Now why all of a sudden am I delving into this? Well, the entire thing on midget wrestling got me thinking a little. Midgets are not retarded, they are handicapped. But someone like Timmy on South Park is definitely retarded. You see the two words are not synonomous even though they are constently used that way by people today in an effort to sound less degrading to their fellow man.

My motion is to educate the public as to what the differances are and try and stop this awesome mistreatment of our language. The first step here is to establish what handicapped and retarded actually mean, and for this it would seem logical to go to the source: www.m-w.com.

Handicap*: A: a disadvantage that makes achievement unusually difficult B: sometimes offensive: a physical disability

Retardation*: A: an abnormal slowness of thought or action; also : less than normal intellectual competence usually characterized by an IQ of less than 70 B: slowness in development or progress

As you can see, the two words are definitely related but they aren't trully the same.

We all remember hierarchies from middle school science right? Hierarchies are a way of organizing many different things in a flow chart. The further you go up the chart, the more broad the categories that are listed: ie oriole,bird, animal. The further you go down the chart, the more specific: ie animal, bird, oriole. If you care to notice the chart also works nicely in my words scenario because how like an oriole is always a bird, a bird isn't always an oriole. To take this logic onto my handicapped/retarded question, a retard is always handicapped, but a handicapper isn't always retarded.

By looking back up at the definitions we see that a handicap is classified as something that hinders achievment - a physical handicap. This is a very broad term and can, indeed, be used to describe our poor friend Timmy on South Park and our Midgets that staple dollar bills to their forehead. But a more acurate discription for our poor little drooling friend Timmy is retarded. He is retarded because if we look back at the black and white, his IQ is definitly less than 70 - and even if that can't be proven past a reasonable doubt, then you must agree he has an abnormal slowness of movement and thought. Our buds the Midget's however, couldn't be classified as retarded using any definition. With a little compensation for their handicap they can do everything we can do at just about the same speed.

So why am I even bothering? If retarded people can be classified as handicaped than who cares if the pill popping, psychiatry loving, over-sensitive idiot masses want us all to call them all handicapped. Because it's offensive to the Midgets and a degragation of our vocabulary folks. Instead of teaching people the differances, people would rather choose to ignore entire words and mark them offensive. Look at it this way: this country is going soft and nobody is doing anything about it. Rather then step up and get in other peoples faced about things we shy away and apologize. Instead of apologizing, educate yourself in the proper uses of the words you choose. That way if you're walking down the street and you see someone being pushed in a chair, drooling and flailing around you can point and say to your friends, "Look, a retard!", and if your friend then tries to gently coax you into saying their handicapped, not retarded, you can say, "Nope, their not only suffering a physical disability but they definitly have a low intellect**."


*Entire Definitions can be obtained by following the links provided.

**If you actually point and laugh at a retard in public and then try and cover it up with this lame excuse, I'll buy you a cookie - after I kick you for being an idiot.