Analysis: Yes, Calling Someone Mentally Disabled Causes Real Harm

In a rally on Sept. 29, 2024, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Trump told supporters that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.” He made similar comments at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, over the same weekend.

Disability rights advocates were quick to point out that Trump's language is what is called “ableist,” meaning that it assumes people with disabilities are somehow less valuable than those without.

In an attempt to fire back, “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update host Colin Jost quipped “I cannot

Special education classrooms are disproportionately filled with students of colour, most often diagnosed with behavioral disabilities. These students often end up in the school-to-prison pipeline. These classrooms show how something as “simple” as an IQ test – something as innocuous as a label – can end up sentencing the country's children to lives of segregation and social oppression.

Not just Trump's words

Temperatures are running high during this presidential election. Yet Trump's words about Harris, while extraordinarily coarse and ugly for a presidential candidate, are often found among disparaging descriptions used by both sides. These phrases are part of a culture that uses measures of intelligence as a way to measure the worth of a human being.

Words are powerful: They can either, like the literature I teach, broaden perspectives of the world, or they can serve to reinforce limiting ideologies that perpetuate oppression.

Terms such as “low IQ,” “idiot” and “mentally impaired” have a traumatic history, one that many cognitively disabled, lower-class and minority people continue to live with today. I believe politicians and their constituents should understand the destructive history of these terms – and think twice before using words like these as an easy means to attack one another.

Kathleen Béres Rogers, Professor of English and Director, Program in Medical Humanities, College of Charleston

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