I thought disability slurs were history. They're not
By Louise Kinross
I was reading the new book Joyful, Anyway by bestselling Canadian author Kate Bowler when she writes: “Will I ever feel valued? … Less like a moron…?”
Up to that point I was enjoying her take on how we can find joy in the midst of suffering. But when she described herself as a “moron,” I put the book down.
Bowler is an associate professor at Duke Divinity School. She studies the history of Christianity in North America. She critiques our culture’s toxic positivity, our obsession with self-improvement and progress and our denial of fragility, which would certainly include disability, and death.
She wants to create a “gentler world,” she says on her website, where we can acknowledge life is hard and stop pretending we’re perfect.
What is “gentle” about drawing on a word used to demean a marginalized population? The word moron is a gut punch to a parent whose child has an intellectual disability.
Moron was once a medical diagnosis used by doctors and academics who supported eugenics. For example, Into the Light, an exhibit at the Guelph Civic Museum in 2019, uncovered the role of Guelph, Ont. universities in teaching eugenics up until 1948. In an essay titled Improvement of the Human Race, one student wrote about “Preventing the Marriage of Morons.”
Today the word is used commonly to mean “stupid.” But it’s the historic meaning that gives it its zing.
It’s hard to believe that Bowler, who has written a handful of books, couldn’t come up with a more imaginative and neutral word to poke fun at herself.
And it’s hard to believe that no editor saw the incongruence of using that word, given her book’s message.
“A profoundly wise, hilarious, large-hearted and down-to-earth meditation on the fundamental unsolvability of being human,” writes author Oliver Burkeman on the back of the book.
Disability is an unsolvable problem, if we use the word solve to mean cure. By using the word moron, Bowler didn’t extend her large-heartedness to people with disabilities like my son.
Last month a video called Just Evolve was released for World Down Syndrome Day. The video is about how the word “retard” keeps popping up in casual conversation.
Back in 2009, there was a Special Olympics campaign called the R-word: Spread the word to end the word. At the time, the r-word was considered "the most common phrase used to demean, insult, and discriminate against people with disabilities.”
In 2012, the American Psychiatric Association announced that “Mental retardation is no longer used internationally [as a medical term] or in U.S. federal legislation.
It was that year that I had a back-and-forth conversation with Philip Corbett, the New York Times' then associate managing editor of Standards, to criticize the paper's use of the words "retarded" and "imbecile" in headlines. It was odd given its own style guide suggested neutral language and respect for "preferred group descriptors."
It seemed that in the ensuing years we made some progress in moving away from disability-based insults, but now the pendulum has swung back.
Which brings me to the release of the novel Upward Bound by Woody Brown, a nonspeaking autistic man in Los Angeles who graduated with an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Brown writes by pointing at letters on a letter board. His mother, who went to college and university with him, transcribes.
Upward Bound is the name of an adult day program for people with disabilities. The characters in Brown's book describe it as an infantilizing prison where they do “pretend” activities.
Each chapter is written from the perspective of a different character, including an autistic college grad who can’t communicate because no one is trained to read his letter board; a man with cerebral palsy who hopes someone recognizes his blinks for yes and no; and an able-bodied university student who is there to work as a lifeguard.
There’s also Carlos, the 20-year-old who was in trouble with the law before accepting a position as an assistant. He’s genuinely curious about the participants and tries to get to know them as people.
That’s why when I got to this reflection of his, I cringed: “Some clients obviously needed to be there. They were in a wheelchair or their bodies were super spastic. Some were straight-up retarded.”
Ugh. He’s comparing these participants to others he believes could do something “productive” elsewhere.
Remember, Upward Bound's author Brown is a university grad. An autistic character called Walter in the book appears to be modelled on him. Walter has a “warrior mother” who refused to believe her son was “ineducable.” She didn’t want him in the “dummy special ed class.”
For an author who fought so hard to be seen as a child with value (read this gifted New York Times story about Brown), it surprised me that this kind of ableism drips from every character, disabled or not. At the top of one page, I wrote simply: “Everyone is prejudiced.”
Perhaps that is Brown's point?
I wonder how Brown would view my son, who was not able to achieve a conventional education, despite our attempts with a letter board? And despite the fact that I at one time, naively, viewed myself as a warrior mama?
In Upward Bound, success is an academic education and the day program is "a dead-end way station." Is there no grey area?
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