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R-Word Campaign
Special Olympics strives to gain respect and acceptance for individuals with disabilities worldwide and is taking a stand against the r-word, retard, with the R-word Campaign. The goals of the campaign are to communicate the hurtful nature of the r-word and remove it from daily use. As part of the campaign Special Olympics is also striving to educate people about what it means to have a disability and how using the r-word supports a negative stereotype. The r-word, retard, is slang for the term mental retardation. Mental retardation was what doctors, psychologists, and other professionals used to describe people with significant intellectual impairment. Today the r-word has become a common word used by society as an insult for someone or something stupid. For example, you might hear someone say, "That is so retarded" or "Don't be such a retard". When used in this way, the r-word can apply to anyone or anything, and is not specific to someone with a disability. But, even when the r-word is not said to harm someone with a disability, it is hurtful.
Learning more about the R-word
In order to learn more about youth experiences with the r-word, staff from Special Olympics, the Special Olympics Global Collaborating Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the Harris Interactive® worked together to design an online survey. In this online survey, youth across the country were asked questions about the r-word, including whether they have ever heard the word, and if so, how they reacted to hearing it. Over a thousand youth between the ages of 8 and 18 responded to the online survey.
Results at a Glance
- Almost all youth (92%) have heard a person use the r-word. Most (86%) have heard the word used by their friends or other students at school. Youth have also heard the word from others like people in the media or even from a family member (24%). Only a few youth (20%) said that they use the word themselves.
- Youth react to the r-word in different ways. Half of youth (51%) said that they felt bad or sorry for the person being picked. Some responded that they either laughed or didn’t care when they heard the r-word and many (39%) said that they did nothing. Some youth (33%) took a stand and told the person it was wrong to say the R-word.
- When youth hear someone with a disability called the r-word they react in different ways. In this situation, many youth (63%) said that they felt bad or sorry for the person being picked on, and half took a stand and told the person it was wrong to say the R-word. Fewer youth said that they laughed or didn’t care but many (24%) still said that they did nothing.
- Youth also react differently depending on who says the r-word. When a friend used the r-word, youth were more likely to laugh (28%) or not care (25%). When a non-friend used the word, more than half (58%) felt bad or sorry for the person being picked on and many (36%) told the person it was wrong to say.
- Finally, boys and girls react differently to the r-word. Compared to boys, girls were more likely to feel sorry for the person being picked on (61%) and were more likely to say it was wrong to say the r-word (40%). Also, children in elementary school were more likely to feel sorry for the person being picked on (62%) than older students in high school.
