City Councilman David G. Greenfield will join City Council colleagues, advocacy groups, educational leaders and others on Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. on the steps of City Hall to call on New York City government to end its use of the outdated and offensive term “mentally retarded” in all official documents and instead use the term “developmentally disabled.” Following the press conference, Councilman Greenfield will introduce City Council legislation calling on the City to follow the lead of the State and Federal governments, which also recently ended use of the term “mental retardation.” This change will impact City agencies such as the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, and any others that currently use “mentally retarded” in official documents and publications.
In addition to introducing this legislation, Councilman Greenfield is a lead co-sponsor of Speaker Christine Quinn’s resolution to change the name of the City Council’s Committee on Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Disability Services to the Committee on Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Disability Services. Together, these two actions will help end the use of this offensive term here in New York City.
(YWN Desk – NYC)
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4 Responses
While we’re at it, I think that Alcoholism should be renamed to sobriety-challenged, and perhaps drug-abuse should be renamed to mentally-retarded. Just a thought.
By definition, “Develomentally disabled” is broader since it includes physical handicaps as well. Referring to someone with “mental” or “intellectual” disabilities is the current style in eupemism. The word “Develomentally…” means it developed before or soon after birth, as opposed to problems that developed later in life (for example, due to injury or disease).
An advantage of such a change is that we can then reserve the phrase “retarded” for politicians who feel that using political correct terminology will solve substantive problems. Being offensive in this situation is quite justified.
We are so lucky that our elected officials fight for such important legislation.
what a retard