R-r-resurgence of the R word?
What?
Writing in the venerable New York Times, Dan Barry and Sonia A. Rao provided a well-researched and reported feature article about the return of “the R-Word.” Yep, they documented instances of the use of “retard” and derivatives of it as a derogatory reference to people and behavior.
In “The ‘R-Word’ Returns, Dismaying Those Who Fought to Oust It: The term, long considered a slur for those with intellectual disabilities, is seeing a resurgence on social media and across the political right,” Mr. Barry and Ms. Rao recounted how people in politically powerful positions and other people writing on social media have used the R Word recently. They also explain why many of us consider its use inappropriate, consulting with individuals who have intellectual disabilities and who advocate for those individuals. Mr. Barry and Ms. Rao even did enough homework to be able to ex=plain how terms use to refer to intellectual disability have changed in the last century.
I applaud efforts to retire the use of “the R Word.” I suspect, however, that there will never be an end to using it. It seems likely that even as people stop saying “retard” as a derogation, it will never completely disappear. People will continue to latch onto some word for impugning others, and those words are likely to be words that refer to minority groups that are different from the mainstream group, refer to atypical individuals, especially those whom the speakers can see as inferior to themselves. I doubt that those who use such words have little to no clue that they are demonstrating their relative cognitive and linguistic inadequacies—let alone their low levels of human compassion—and that it will do little good to argue with them about that.
As regular Dear Readers know, there are previous posts on SET about the R Word. See posts 29 November 2025 and 4 February 2025 for examples.
It may pay off with other people on Earth to champion compassionate choices of words. Some will recognize the wisdom of avoiding demeaning language. But we probably ought recognize that some folks are…well…I’m searching for a suitable synonym for “incapable of learning.”