It Matters: The R Word

LOVE.

Otherwise known as the L-Bomb. Love, at least to teenagers, is something to be afraid of. I'll admit that I'm scared of the word myself. I do not particularly enjoy letting anyone play with my heart, if I even let them into it at first. Those 4 letters can be scary, especially when arranged in that particular order.

We've started exploring the idea of love recently in English. We started watching Once, one of my favorite movies EVER, and we are also reading Jane Eyre. Love is a topic that everyone in class has an opinion on, and we can barely get through a small discussion about it because everyone wants to chime in. The movie Once is an unusual love story, driven around music (FANTASTIC music). It is very interesting, and completely out of the ordinary. Both of the main characters are lonely, and enjoy the company of each other. As far as we've gotten in Jane Eyre, it is obvious that she is lonely as well. Jane is almost always locked up in the nursery with no one to care or love for her.

We also recently just finished learning about European imperialism in Africa in World History, along with reading Heart of Darkness in English. While learning about this, it seemed to me that a little love and compassion would really fix the entire situation. It seems juvenile, or maybe a bit too optimistic, but I'm serious. If you think about it, the Europeans were brutal towards the Africans, and did not care about them one bit. If that's not something humanity and kindness can't fix, than I don't know what is.

So what about it? We are constantly surrounded by love everyday, but why did I choose to pinpoint love in this blog?

It's simple. There seems to be an awfully large lack of love in the world today. Evil is everywhere, but I want to talk about something even more alarming than when something drops the L-Bomb with me. The R-Word.

It's the insult of all insults, telling someone they are retarded is a combination of saying they're stupid, annoying, empty headed, pointless, dumb, awkward, and unusual all in one.

And there is nothing more that I HATE than when someone uses the word retarded as an insult, as if it's no big deal, like it is completely normal. I cringe at the sound of it. I would prefer an number of curse words screamed very loudly than to hear the R-Word dropped carelessly.

And the use of this word is becoming more and more common. Lebron James called a reporter retarded under his breath here.  

Jennifer Aniston called herself a retard on Regis and Kelly here.

Dave Tosh, a comedian, casually used retarded in a joke here. 

I mean, is it really THAT funny?

Retarded has a meaning, and it's not a joking matter. The lack of love, compassion and understanding these people have for mentally retarded people is unbelievable to me. But just like the use of the R-Word has gone up, so has awareness that we shouldn't be using that word too. A huge movement called "The R-Word: Spread the Word to End the Word" is growing around the United States. To find out more you can visit www.r-word.org. 

LOVE. The L-Bomb. Does it make me nervous? Absolutely, but if people dropped L-Bombs as much as they dropped the R-Word, it would make this world a much better place. The world can never have enough love.