Stand up for their rights, too

"It violates human rights." Yes, and the same can be said for any other individual or group that is victimized. Human rights must be universal.

Well said, Roger, and it is such an important topic. I am still seeing the effects of some misguided and outlet-seeking "mean" middle school boys' wrath on one of my sons. Sadly, he still has occasions where he plays those old tapes over and over, even though he is well loved and successful as a man.

Taunts have lasting effects.

When we tried to dispel the situation long ago, the teachers and administrators were dealing with such a wide-spread problem and were overwhelmed to the point where our only recourse was to give him a new start in a new school district.

I applaud your insight for bringing this upfront and center in our minds. I believe this is one factor that leads to a decline of a sense of community.

If we don't teach kids about compassion early on, what kind of society will we become?

Though I share your goal of seeing that all are treated with equal dignity, I'll offer a somewhat contrarian position.

Limits on freedom of expression do not alone make people more compassionate. People can be hurtful and hateful without using slanders and slurs, and forbidding a word doesn't remove the bias it was intended to express. Blanket prohibitions do, however, usually result in quite a bit of collateral damage when they are applied unthinkingly, as the MLA list of frequently banned books sadly demonstrates.

To me "calling someone out" seems a bit like chopping off the top of a weed and leaving the roots intact. Dig a little bit deeper to find out of there is real bias there and, if so, try to figure out a productive way to uproot it.

I have a memorable example of this. One of the first times I met my future wife I repeated a joke I'd recently heard, a Polish joke. She is Polish. Rather than scold me or act offended, she asked me if I knew anything about where Polish jokes came from (I did not) and gave me background about how Poles had been later arrivals in the US and so had suffered ridicule from other immigrant groups who were better assimilated. Had she just "called me out" then I would have blown her off as hyper-sensitive or politically correct; instead, I learned from and ultimately married her.

It is also worth mentioning that there are plenty of words and phrases that were once highly charged with sexual, religious, or racial connotations that over time lose their charge. Saying that something "sucks" is one such example from our own lifetime. Acting offended whenever encountering such a word only reenforces it's status as a supercharged word and makes it more appealing as an insult for those who want to inflict hurt. As the father of an eight-year old boy who is just learning bad words, I can testify to the gleam he gets in his eye whenever we react in such a way that he realizes he has identified a term that is particularly potent. Is it not be better to try to remove the hurtful intent and stereotypes that lead to the insult than it is to ban the use of the word?

Thanks, everyone, for your comments.

First of all, Dean, I wholeheartedly agree many other groups and individuals are victimized and in need of acknowledgement. I chose to write about those with developmental disabilities because of that particular news story and my belief that many people don't see the harm in such jokes or derogatory comments. But, again, I absolutely agree with you that human rights must be universal.

Joni, thanks for sharing that story and powerful example about your son. I think the problem is more pervasive than many of us know - and it does affect lives. Full disclosure: as I wrote this piece, I replayed a lot of the taunts and other abusive language I heard directed at my brother over the years. I thought about including those in this piece, but found I couldn't be objective about them at all, even more than two decades afterward.

And Floyd, thank you for thoughtful analysis of this. I understand and agree with much of what you are saying. One question I have, specifically about the use of a word such as "retard" - what bias would be there to motivate a person to say that word? I think it's less about bias, but more about unknowingness and habit. I don't think that most peoples' use of that or related words is necessarily callous or explicitly abusive, but it contributes to a culture that sees those who are mentally challenged as punch-lines.

When I encourage people to call others out, I think it can be a teachable moment. Again, I think that most people toss those words off casually and don't know what they're doing or saying. If you stop someone after saying one of those words, there's an opportunity to explain something. Our five-year-old son is also testing his boundaries with words he thinks are bad. We gently call him on it and tell him, "that's a word we don't use in our family." And then he asks, "Why?"

That "Why?" is an opportunity. So I'm not asking to ban any words at all; I'm simply suggesting that we take the opportunity to show that these are hurtful words that have very real consequences for a very vulnerable group of people.

The speaker doesn't "know what they're doing or saying" but you do? That has always struck me as an extremely immodest interpretation of language, one that gives too much power to the interpreter of the message to decide whether a message is acceptable or not.

Most people who use the word "retard" use it as a synonym for "dummy" or "idiot." I would rather applaud the word getting increasingly divorced from its roots as a slur on those with mental handicaps than emphasize that connection and hope to strike the word from the language. So that "unknowingness and habit" strikes me as a sign of progress, but it is progress being made through disarmament rather than censorship.

I think that any message that is insulting to a particular group or individual is unacceptable. And I'm not encouraging censorship of any kind — I'm simply advocating for education, a change of mind and a better choice of words. I do think that even the casual use of words such as "retard" still erodes compassion and, more than that, sets a precedent for those around you — including children — to use such slurs.

And I don't think that using the word "retard" as a synonym for "dummy" or "idiot" is an auspicious evolution of that term at all. It's still in the same genre. It still describes the same general group of people. And isn't it still hurtful to people in that group — and certainly to the person at whom the insult is thrown?

I think that slurs lead to marginalization, marginalization to isolation, and isolation to the potential for bullying and incidents like this. What if choosing our words more wisely could discourage singling people out for their disabilities or shortcomings? Wouldn't it be worth the effort?

I certainly did not intend to defend bullying or the flinging of insults. Yes, without question it is worth trying to discourage those sorts of behaviors and the use of words that are easy ways of inflicting hurt.

But I still disagree with your prescription that people to call other out whenever they hear a given word regardless of the context. It is a facile solution to a complicated problem, and one fraught with unintended consequences. What you regard at as "a teachable moment" the person you are calling out is likely to receive as "being talked down to," which is more corrosive to dialog that the accidental usage of an inappropriate word is. And the reality is that well-intentioned efforts to "stigmatizing hate" frequently do lead to censorship. More progress is made, IMO, by making sure that the voices and perspectives of the marginalized groups are heard than by trying to silence someone else's voice.

I've always thought that every individual has special needs meaning they have needs that are particular to their individual circumstances. Thusly instead of saying developmentally disabled, or retarded or handicapped we should just say special needs to refer to people(everyone) who need additional help in certain areas of their life.
Secondly people must be vigilant in protecting anybody that is marginalized. If one person is brave enough to speak out against abuse then they inspire everyone to so similarly.