Sunday, August 28, 2016

Information On The R Word Pledge

By Lisa Brooks


The R pledge is basically an ongoing campaign that seeks to raise the awareness and consciousness of people in the society about the hurtful and very dehumanizing impacts of using the R letter retarded. It also aims at encouraging citizens of United States to shun using the word retard or any of its forms. The R word pledge is also primarily intended to engage different school organizations as well as communities to pledge their divine support in aiding to build a community of inclusivity and acceptance for everybody.

This advocacy forum hence is dedicated to ensuring that all and sundry respect all the members of community, their intellectual, personal or developmental problems notwithstanding. The advocates behind this movement also hold very strong opinions that mentally impaired persons should not be sidelined or overlooked under whatever circumstances, since it is not by their fault that they are the way they are, but is a natural force or fate.

Therefore, mocking them and using very offensive terms to refer to them, is very erroneous and should not be acceptable in the current day and era. They should thus be respected for what and how they are, since mocking or ridiculing makes they feel less appreciated or unwanted in society. This lowers their self-esteem and makes them detest themselves.

The sole motivation for the inception of the campaign was largely fueled by a common and united passion to foster or promote the ideal positive contributions made by persons having intellectual disabilities. The advocacy against the usage of the r term retard was also meant to symbolize the positive change in attitude, and also make the current world more accommodative for all people, regardless of their intellectual capacities.

There has however been controversy that elicits from the fact that people are not sure of the intentions of the movement, and whether it seeks to ban the term retard completely, or if the term can be applied under certain contexts. The effort and intention of the advocacy is usually aimed at drawing the attention to the reality that large numbers of people living with intellectual impairments are normally hurt and feel offended when they are called retards. The main goal is to raise as much awareness as possible on the adverse impacts of this demeaning term.

To clear on this, the pledge has time and again made it clear that it only intends to discourage as many people as possible from including the offensive terms such as retards in their speeches, whether formal or informal. This is because such terms demean them hence making them feel inferior and unwanted. It is very wrong to ridicule people because of their various conditions, not matter what.

The merchandise that is used in this movement for instance t shirts, bracelets, baseball caps and many others can also be purchased from this official R-word store. Residents are advised to buy these materials as much as possible, to help in spreading the word against retard term.

Regardless of the fact that we all have our rights and freedoms of free speech, we also are entitled to petition choice of the language we use very carefully, so that we do not end up demeaning certain characters in the society in our utterances or even actions. Every person is very special in their own way, and therefore a person ought to come first at all times irrespective of their abnormalities and other conditions.




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