The R word

I know I risk inviting a juvenile retaliation here, like, "Oh, he was just being redundant," but I think this warrants notice:

Fort Wayne city councilman, Glynn Hines apologized Tuesday night for a F acebook comment he made earlier in the day.

On his Facebook account, Hines said, "...we must re-elect President Obama or settle for some.....Retard Republican!"

"From my stand point," said Hines at the meeting, "I did not have the sensitivity to realize that it was harmful to certain member of our community."

[. . .]

Hines said he spoke to a pastor about his comment, and the pastor told Hines to imagine if the comment was a racist comment.

"For some people," Hines said, "it would be like using the N word.  How would you feel if that had been used on Facebook? And then I got it."

Hines said he researched the word "retarded" online, and ended up signing an online petition to not say it again.

In the year 2011, a grown man doesn't know "retard" is offensive to some people? He had to do research online and hear from his pastor to grasp the comparison to the N word? My immediate reaction was, "I ain't buyin' it." His remarks sounded more like an "I'm sorry I got called on it" apology than an "I'm sorry I did it" apology. No real sincerity there.

But then I remembered that I've seen a lot of examples of this over the years. People often get the mechanics of group denigration but haven't really latched on to its essence. You can give them a list of specific words that are currently seen as unacceptable slurs, and they can avoid saying them all day long. But they see nothing wrong at all with using other words with exactly the same intent as the forbidden ones, other words that just don't happen to be in their personal don't-use-this database.

This newspaper actually used "hillbilly" in a headline several years ago, and I'm afraid it sent me off the deep end. After yelling at the editor for a few minutes and waving my arms like Christiane Amanpour, I tracked down the hapless headline writer to complain. But "hillbilly isn't meant to refer to all people from Appalachia," I had it patiently explained to me, "just the bad kind -- you know, the white trash." This was a well-educated, "sensitive" person who would have been absolutely repulsed to hear somebody use the old "I don't mean all black people when I use the N-word" nonsense.

It's not even the specific words that matter, but the intent behind them. You either treat people as individuals and take them as you find them, or you try to diminish them by what you see as their group identity. People who don't understand that can memorize all the forbidden words they want, but it won't make them any more tolerant. Any word can fit into the aresenal of slurs if it is deployed in the right way. How many of you cardboard boxes don't get that? Following the reasoning here, cupcake? Oh, forget it. What a bunch of retreads.