Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

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People with learning disability have been the target of eugenics in various forms. They've been subjected to sterilisation sometimes without their knowledge and sometimes against their will. They've been interned in segregated care homes. They've been murdered - either directly killed because they have LD or allowed to die by doctors refusing to provide medical care or placing DNR notices without the patient's (or their family's) knowledge and consent. They've been shot and killed by police who lack skills to work woth people with LD. People with LD were used as subjects of medical experimentation against their will and without their knowledge. They were told they were being innoculated against hepititus when they were being infected with hepititus. (This was in the 1970s, a long time after Nürnburg Code and after Helsinki agreement). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

Hundreds of thousands of learning disabled people have been killed purely because they have a learning disability. I stand by the genocide claim.

And how exactly did you manage to draw a connection between these outrageous facts and a use of an innocent derogatory language?

It's not "innocent derogatory language". "Cockroach" is just a word. Cockroach was used to dehumanise Tutsi in Rawanda. Use of that language was a small part of the genocide of Tutsi by Hutu majority.

We see similar dehumanising language in other genocidal actions: it's present in Nazi Germany when they describe Jewish people as subhuman - the same word has been used against people with LD. Not just by the Nazis with their T4 program[1] but also by British eugenics supporters.[2] these eugenic attitudes lost popularity after the war, but they were still easy enough to find.

And apart from these dehumanising effects the word is used to creat fear, alarm, and distress among the people it's used against. People are routinely attacked with that word.

If you think words can't hurt i) you've had a cushy life and ii) you spectacularly lack imagination and empathy.

Really: learn to English and come up with better insults.

[1] http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=100076...

[2] http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/12/british-eugenics...

Leanr a bit of logic. This is nowhere near a proof that a use of a certain language is a direct or indirect cause of a genocide and not just a symptom, and that censoring this language would have stopped the genocide.

Not to mention that now it seems to be a priviledge of the self-righteous SJWs to proclaim which words should be counted as offensive this week. It never comes from the minorities in question.

> Not to mention that now it seems to be a priviledge of the self-righteous SJWs to proclaim which words should be counted as offensive this week. It never comes from the minorities in question.

You're wrong. Use of the word retard has been strongly rejected by people with a learning disability in the UK. The word disability has also been rejected, which is why I use LD for learning difficulties, or I use specific diagnoses for granularity. They have rejected these terms for many years. The change in language is something they have been driving.

Any thoughts on what you'll replace "learning difficulties" with when it too gets rejected?

And you think this is because people described them as retards?

Yes, that's certainly part of it.

The word retard was used to describe these people as sub-human, as other, as not having any worth. That started in the Eugenics material from the UK and US in late 19th / early 20th century, was put into full effect in Nazi Germany (who tested their mass murder techniques on people with LD before movig onto killing Jews) and even though it slowed after WWII the attitude is still prevelant. You will still find doctors who do not treat medical problems in people with LD with the same vigour they'd treat people without LD. You find doctors placing DNR orders on patients with LD without talking to that patient or their family first.

The word retard is frequntly used during the commission of hate crime. Disability hate incidents (which aren't always crime and are not always about LD) are more common than homophobic hate incidents or religion based hate incidents.

https://www.mencap.org.uk/blog/four-things-you-probably-didn...

Disability hate crime starts with verbal abuse. It doesn't end there. http://www.theguardian.com/society/joepublic/2011/sep/13/gem...

People with learning disability live their life being bullied. A survey for UK charity MENCAP called "Living in Fear" shows how frequent this bullying is.

https://www.mencap.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2009...

> A survey by Mencap of people with a learning disability has found that nearly nine out of ten respondents have experienced bullying in the last year. Two-thirds are bullied on a regular basis and almost one-third are suffering from bullying on a daily or weekly basis. People with a learning disability face prejudice and widespread discrimination that often makes them feel like outcasts and prevents them from taking a full part in society. Public attitudes in the United Kingdom towards people with a learning disability remain discriminatory. The Mencap survey suggests that the bullying of people with a learning disability is institutionalised throughout society.

If you want to cause fear, alarm, upset, distress in people who have a learning disability then please do feel free to continue to use the word retard as an insult. It's not much of an insult if the person you're speaking to doesn't have an LD; they probably don't care. To them it's just a word, like "that's so gay" or "hey my nigga" are just words.

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