The following is an excerpt from The Boston Globes’ article, “‘I’m really terrified’: Disability rights advocates concerned about return of r-word” on the resurgence of the r-word:
This is how far they’d come: After years of campaigning against the “r-word,” advocates with the Special Olympics decided they should avoid educating elementary school children about the slur because so many students had never heard it in the first place.
“Teachers told us we would have been introducing a word they don’t already use,” said Andrea Cahn, who leads Special Olympics school programming in the United States. “So we said, ‘OK, let’s not even go there.’”
That was about a decade ago, a period of landmark progress. Special Olympics says it has been flooded with requests to call out people who are using the r-word online and is increasingly posting responses to social media accounts that misuse the word. It has also resumed greater emphasis in public messaging to discourage use of the word, including in school programs that educate young children on that point. The word has made recent appearances in many corners of the culture.
