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BGonline.org Forums
Sarah Palin and more thoughts on offensive words
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: Sarah Palin and more thoughts on offensive words (Jake Jacobs)
Date: Tuesday, 23 November 2010, at 4:12 a.m.
Jake,
Actually "Mongoloid" was not in use for centuries.
Well, "century" would have been right -- Dr. Down described the syndrome in the 1860s, and it wasn't until the 1960s that "Down Syndrome" replaced "Mongoloid" as the preferred term in medical circles, and I think it took even longer for the change to trickle down to the rest of us. According to Wikipedia, the Mongoloid Development Council, a U.S. parents group, didn't change its name to National Association for Down Syndrome until 1972. My recollection, as a 60's kid, is that I learned "Mongoloid" before I learned the newer, preferred term, and it seems to me it was more the case that I learned that "Down Syndrome" was the better term, than that "Mongoloid" was terribly insulting. You too?
About the same time, as I recall, I learned that "you're a retard" was an insult, but "he's retarded" was not totally unacceptable. I note that the Wikepedia article entitled "Intellectual disability" is in fact a discussion of "mental retardation." Retarded, handicapped, challenged, having special needs -- it's hard to keep up with changing languages and attitudes. About the Rahm/Palin flak over his calling some liberals "retarded" in a private meeting, it's interesting that, apparently, he could have instead called them cretins, idiots, imbeciles or morons, without being palinized on Facebook.
"Mongoloid he was a Mongoloid, one chromosome too many" -- from Devo's first single, "Mongoloid," in 1976.
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