Tales in Etymology

[jackshoegazer]

I was reading an article about how U2's Bono recently called Elvis a "white nigger" which is pretty fucking racist no matter how he meant it.  In the article, it mentions that in the poem that Bono read, there are offensive words like "nigger" (obviously) and "spastic".

HUH?  Spastic is an offensive word?  So I looked it up.  I had no idea that the word had its origins with cerebral palsy, the main symptom of which is spasticity.  Growing up, I knew that words like nerd, geek, spaz, dweeb, et cetera... all had original and quite specific meanings, but they sort of homogenized into rather bland slang insults meaning roughly the same thing.

Now my vocabulary is better and more specific and now I will only use spastic in proper context.  (Though, I never ever called anyone a spaz.)  However, I still have a hard time not saying "retarded" as a pejorative.
 

Comments

[balamuthia.livejournal.com]

You know, I actually never thought twice about retard or retarded, and even used to laugh at my uncle for doing poor imitations of "retarded" people.

When my son was born and we discovered that he had autism along with a pretty severe speech and language delay, we encountered a caustic and bitter pediatrician that gave us a diatribe on how "pc" language was the reason he didn't dare call our son retarded. Hearing it related to Juniper was horrible and suffice it to say I wasn't laughing anymore.

I was guilty (as lots of people are) of the insensitivity that goes along with never having had to directly face a loved one's battles with mental/physical disability.

Ah, Bono. He's got a lot of money and at least he's putting a great deal of it to good use. I really want to read fully what he said, not that I would defend his use of the word he used, but just to see what messed up context he meant it in.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Here's the article so you can get context: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6279490.ece

Yeah, how dare pc language make us actually and accurately diagnose a kid rather than write them off as 'retarded'. WOW.

[balamuthia.livejournal.com]

Since it's a poem and uses a lot of historical context, he could have been referencing what people called Elvis during his time. Plenty of news outlets and individuals are on record as calling him a jungle bunny, and yeah- a white nigger. So I don't think Bono was owning it as in he himself would call Elvis that, but that these are things he's been known as/for-- but that's just how I viewed it. Poetry is tricky that way.

Yeah, and that was actually the doctor's direct attitude. He didn't want to do the work of referring us to speech therapists and filing insurance paperwork, so he would have been happier if we wrote our son off as slow and moved on. We left the office and never went back, I still don't understand why I didn't go off on the man- I guess I was just too shocked!