News-Record.com

I may be wrong, but I don't think they were describing someone with 'brain disorders'. I think they were describing the terrorist in Chapel Hill that decided to run down a bunch of bystanders. Personally, I would agree that the choice of words weren't very fitting. I think it insults people who are truly mentally ill to link this person with him.

This guy seemed perfectly sane, just full of hate.

Another headline about mental illness was in today's paper. Article said that Jesse Helms' wife says he suffers from dementia. Wow, such a late diagnosis is unconscienable! He had dementia when he was a United States Senator, for goodness sakes!

I try to be sensitive when describing all people. The names which are correct change often and I am sometimes at a loss as to the PC description. In school we had so many labels that it was hard to keep up.

As in all things, I think folks should not be too sensitive to people who do not use the correct term. We should all be able to determine if the speaker is being rude or just uninformed, and also try not to take too many things as a personal affront.

Carol, you're right. It's hard to keep up. "Disabled" is now preferred over "handicapped," even though the latter seems less objectionable to me. (In the sense that if you're handicapped, you have a limitation to overcome; if you're disabled, you implicitly lack ability: a disabled car won't run.) Liberals, I think, prefer to be called "progressives"--so as to distinguish themselves from "regressives" (obviously a bad lot). Conversatives, meanwhile, wish to be called "conservatives" in order to distinguish themselves from leftist retards. (I hope I don't offend anyone by saying "leftist.")

The problem is that the never ending for the fully nonobjectable term ("differently abled") restigmatizes the thing being described by identifying it as necessitating euphemism in the first place. Hence "white" stays "white" (since no stigma is attached), while "black" cycles through endless terminologies that, I would argue, reiterate stigma.

I too think that we are fighting some history here. Carol, Your point is well taken but we need to be thinking on a much wider scale than just reading the intent of the speaker/writer etc. For some it's no big deal until it comes inside your house and then the reality really hits. How we view and name something attaches a mindset and an image. It can go from how it reflects how people on a small scale react but on a large scale where funding and programing are involved, Diagnosis, discription of an illness, how we call it etc. can have tremendous
ramifications. I sense we are on the same page;
I do see the need to keep this initiative alive.

I agree JoeJoe. What if it comes into your house? Does that mean you can call it what you'd like? Cause my mom is absolutely batty.