I didn’t have a chance to read this thread yet – just the op. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if it would have occurred to me until a few years ago that it’s offensive to use the word this way.
But I have a friend whose daughter is retarded, and she told me once that one of her kids was really upset because of something that happened in school. I don’t remember the details but I think it had to do with one kid calling another kid retarded (except that it was in Israel so he used the hebrew word), and my friend’s kid (and my friend too) both thought it was very offensive.
I did point out to my friend that you can’t really blame the kid since it wouldn’t occur to a kid who doesn’t have a retarded sibling (and isn’t aware that his classmate does) that there was anything offensive about it. She agreed with me, but still found it upsetting.
I realized as I am writing this that I might have the situation wrong. It is possible that what happened was that he told his friend that he belongs in _____School and he named the school that my friend’s daughter is in (not knowing about my friend’s daughter).
In any case, I could hear why someone would not think it’s a problem to use the R word, but I could also hear why someone would. I want to ask my friend what she thinks.