Mothers with Attitude

I wrote recently on Parenting Isn’t Pretty about inclusion’s Chris Traeger problem – that is, people who are so pleasant and seem so positive that it takes you an embarrassingly long time to realize they’re saying no, guarding the gate, keeping your kid out, and telling you to piss off. After unwisely scanning comments on a number of R-word-related stories this week, I’m again having that uncomfortable feeling that the folks who say to your face “I think your defective kid is a joke” are in some way preferable – at least in our ability to identify them as a threat – to those folks who claim to be of good will but react to an emotional plea for humanity for our children with “Well, you know, ‘retard’ is a word used in this mechanical process, or in this musical context, or in this diagnosis from the past, and so obviously it’s okay.” Since I’m not seeing the same full-throated support of other slurs that have perfectly benign meanings that nobody uses anymore because people will look at them funny, I have to assume that this is not about words being words, man, but about a lack of concern for the people being slurred. And that? Is a problem for which you are clearly not part of the solution.