The Power of a Word

I recently read a piece in my investigative reporting class about the mistreatment of people with mental disabilities in group houses surrounding Washington, D.C. during the late 90’s. The reporting included in the story was amazing, and the narration through which then-Washington Post reporter Katherine Boo told the stories of each abused person was pure genius. I felt like I knew each person – each person had a voice. The language she used clearly provoked a tremendous amount of emotion in the reader because the piece won a Pulitzer Prize. There was one word in the story, though, that made me hate the entire piece: retarded.

I understood what Boo was trying to convey through the use of the word. She was trying to convey the language used by the men and women leading these group homes where so many people suffered – and even died – under their care. These group owners had no remorse for the people they allegedly “cared” for. Simply put, the people were “retarded,” and the owners didn’t deem them worth the value to watch after. But each paragraph that word appeared, I cringed. What was the overall significance of it? There obviously was one, otherwise the Pulitzer wouldn’t be plastered to the story. I counted, and in day one of her multi-day serious, she used the r-word 46 times. That is 46 times more than necessary in my opinion, but who am I to decide the style of the story? I’m just the reader.

I’m not sure what it is that makes me so prone to hating the use of that word. Maybe it is my fraternity drilling it into me, which promotes the end of the r-word. Maybe it is just the raw insignificance of the word. Maybe it is the connotation behind it – that it was morphed over time to portray a symbol of weakness or inferiority. To me, it is much like when I hear someone use the n-word, or calling someone a fag or “so gay” to convey lack of intelligence or importance.

I’m in no way a savior when it comes to using “politically incorrect” language, as many have come to call it. I, too, have fallen victim over time to using words that are so demeaning to a particular group of people as the form of an adjective in a sentence. But it’s wrong, and I was wrong for using them. I picture it this way: what if my name became a derogatory term to describe something as utter worthlessness? How would I feel if someone hated the idea of something so much, they said, “no man, that’s so matt?” It’s a simple word that can hold that kind of personal meaning to someone, as personal as one’s own name.

To one person, those words could hurt more than a fist blow to the face. To one person, those words could leave a scar far deeper than any wound.

-Matthew Kwiecinski