Needed: a vocabulary that is more sensitive to disabled

Needed: a vocabulary that
is more sensitive to disabled

EDITOR:

At a time in history when “we the people” are supposedly the most socially-conscious, we remain captive to an 18th century vocabulary that denigrates those whom it encompasses — persons with disabilities.

At a time when we have legislated against the use of certain words that label and are demeaning to particular segments of the general population, we continue to look the other way when it comes time to reinventing a vocabulary that mediates the hatred of the old and offers emotional refuge to members of another supposedly protected class — people with disabilities.

Why?

As an educated and physically-disabled person, I’d like to know why those of us — including our families, friends, and colleagues — must be subjected to an archaic, denigrating, and discriminatory language that compromises our human dignity and reduces us to the status of “abnormality.” Why aren’t Ohio legislators sensitive to this issue and acting to resolve it?

Let me remind you: Disability affects members of all social classes. Therefore, we the people, in our entirety, should be working together to express our dissatisfaction to our legislators immediately.

Let’s rename the Ohio School for the Blind and call it the Ohio School for the Visually-Impaired, or some variation thereof.

Let’s rename the Ohio School for the Deaf and call it the Ohio School for the Hearing-Impaired. In our prisons, why don’t we make prisoners wear badges that say hearing-impaired, visually-impaired, and/or speech-impaired, instead of the ones currently used that read deaf, hard-of-hearing, and the like?

Why not?

We need to reinvent a vocabulary that reflects our 21st century understanding of disability and one that is not loaded with the socially destructive connotations that our current vocabulary carries.

It’s moral justice, that’s all.

ALLAN S. HLEBOVY

Boardman

Cops too quick to shoot dogs

EDITOR:

I am writing in response to the Dec. 8 article about the two Girard policemen who shot and killed a dog. Ninety percent of your animal abuse cases are by the police shooting innocent dogs. This upsets and sickens me.

I contacted the party to which this dog belonged to and told them not to let them get away with this. Their poor dog was shot twice with a shotgun. There was another incident in Niles where the police shot and killed a six-month- old puppy. This innocent pup got loose while under the care of a young girl while the owner was on vacation. What harm could this puppy have possibly done by going into the neighbor’s yard? The neighbor called the police about this dog running loose in their yard and when the police responded they shot and wounded the dog. As he lay there hurting, a second officer responded to the call and shot the dog again and killed him. It upsets me to think that the local authorities treat these dogs as if they are nothing.

While reading a Cleveland newspaper some time ago I read about two police officers who rescued a dog after it was hit by a car. They took this dog to a local vet and paid the vet bill for this dog. When the animal lovers heard about this, they sent money to help with the medical care that he received.

LOUISE FORRESSCA

Brookfield