N.C. Autistic Boy, Mom Kicked Off American Eagle Plane
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,371601,00.html
A 2 1/2-year-old autistic North Carolina boy and his mother were kicked off an American Eagle flight taxiing to a Raleigh-Durham Airport Monday after the crew deemed the child “uncontrollable,” WTVD reported.
“If they just would have been a little more understanding I think that none of this would have been a problem,” the boy’s mother, Janice Farrell, told the station, adding that the flight attendant made things worse.
“She kept coming over and tugging his seatbelt to make it tighter, ‘This has to stay tight.’ And then he was wiggling around and trying to get out of his seatbelt. And she kept coming over and reprimanding him and yelling at him.”
Farrell said she was doing everything to keep her son calm, but after one of the pilots came back to the cabin and gave her and her son, Jarrett, a stern warning, the situation got worst.
“The pilot made an announcement that there was a woman and her child on the plane and the child is uncontrollable,” as he was turning the plane around, Farrell said.
A representative for American Airlines, the parent company of American Eagle, apologized to Farrell when she called, but a spokesman for the company told WTVD a different story.
He said Farrell was not “complying with FAA regulations” and “this was the right decision,” explaining she wouldn’t put her bag in the overhead compartment.
I love that commercial on TV where the cavemen are offended because we (society) have stereotyped them as stupid, dumb, slow – whatever you want to call it. I laugh every time I see one of the different scenarios they have come up with, especially the one where the caveman is walking on the moving sidewalk at the airport and sees the ad on the wall, turns around to look at it again and just makes a resigned face.
For years (since the 1980s?), we’ve been bombarded with the “PC” way of saying things, and I, like most others, have tried to abide by the ever-changing rules that different groups have come up with for addressing them. For example, as I was growing up, someone of the dark-skinned race was called “colored,” then they wanted to be called Negro, then “black,” even though I’ve never seen any person whose skin was truly black – they’re really many shades of brown.
Now they are called African-Americans, although I doubt that even 1 percent of them have ever been to Africa. I recently found out that my original ancestors are from South Africa, but I have light skin from a set of white (pink?) parents. Should I now call myself an African-American or a pink woman?
I have a beautiful young niece from Korea who was adopted by my sister and her husband when she was just a toddler. She is now 24, and has been taught by her parents to ignore the stares and hateful comments they received when she was smaller because she was a child of Asian descent with very pink parents.
As my niece grew out of the toddler stage, her parents realized that she had some learning disabilities, and it turns out that my beautiful niece is, to use the most common term, mentally retarded. As a young adult, she knows she’s “special” and has limitations in her life that restrict her from doing what other girls her age do – like getting married, driving a car or living alone. She excels at what she can do, and for several years has been very involved in Special Olympics and has a room full of medals and ribbons.
(If you’ve never attended a Special Olympics event, you’ve missed out on the thrill of a lifetime. The participants overcome some of the most insurmountable obstacles to compete, and the pure joy on their faces when they receive their medal or ribbon can’t be touched by anything else I’ve ever seen.)
What breaks my heart, though, is how people use words like “retards” and variations of this word in rude, thoughtless phrases in their daily conversations. I have heard college graduates – not that that makes them any more intelligent, just a little more educated – using the phrase “you’re retarded!” to friends, just as a comeback. I recently heard a friend who was exasperated at a driver in traffic refer to him as a “retard.”
Folks, this kind of language is unacceptable. Whether you do it as a habit or without thinking, it is painful and offensive to … actually, everyone, but especially to a person with learning disabilities.
In the early days of my niece’s “illness,” we referred to it as “M.R.” if it had to be talked about. I’ve heard many terms over the years that different people used to describe someone with mental disabilities, and the one I like best is “intellectual disability.”
My sister works with adults with intellectual disabilities of varying degrees, and I’ve gone to some of their parties and outings. Some were born that way, others had strokes or accidents that incapacitated them. All are humans with feelings, and who express pain, joy, sadness and love.
If you will change just one thing in your speech patterns, I would ask that you never, ever, refer to anyone, under any circumstances, as a “retard” or as “retarded.” That is as offensive as using the “N” word or any other vulgar, politically incorrect word. I thank you for being compassionate enough to do that.
Elouise Plain of Plano works as software support staff and is a Community Voices volunteer columnist. Her e-mail address is .
Alex and Trish Freid, of Lysander, have a message for the world: Stop using the “r”-word – retarded.
And they’re using the Internet to send this message. The couple set up a MySpace page for their 14-month-old son, Nathan, who has Down syndrome. They’re using his page to educate people about how hurtful the r-word can be even when it’s not used as a taunt. And if people agree to stop using it, they can sign up to be one of Nathan’s MySpace “friends.”
So far, 95 people have signed up.
“Nathan, you are the cutest baby ever and my family and I want to abolish the R word too!” wrote Kelseyy, one of Nathan’s new friends.
The Freids, who also have two daughters, acknowledge they used the r-word casually to mean stupid or goofy before they understood firsthand how hurtful it can be. They launched their effort on the social networking site MySpace, figuring they’d have the most influence on younger people.
“Kind of what we’re trying to do is put a face to it,” Trish Freid says.
Alex Freid says he’ll say something if a friend or acquaintance repeatedly uses the word. And he e-mailed Dane Cook, star of “Good Luck Chuck,” after he heard the word used in the movie.
“Morally and ethically, I would hope that you would see how this word could be very hurtful to a group of people who definitely don’t deserve the ridicule,” Freid wrote in the e-mail.
Shari Bottego, president of the 180-member Down Syndrome Association of Central New York, says the problem is the word’s negative connotation.
“The word itself means slow, but it’s always used in a derogatory sense,” she says. “Why go negative?”
Arc of Onondaga started as the Association for Retarded Children when it opened in 1951, but the agency later changed its name to Association for Retarded Citizens and then dropped the acronym altogether about 10 years ago, says Mike Kieloch, marketing and communications specialist.
Kieloch says the agency is committed to using language that puts the person first, before the disability (see box).
“We support language that recognizes them as a person,” he says.