Personal tools
You are here: Home → Discussions → Blog: Speaking of Inclusion... → BLOG ARCHIVE → Tropic Blunder
 

Tropic Blunder

Posted by Pam Winton at Aug 19, 2008 |
Filed under:

The spirit may have been comic but the outcome for many people is a painful revival of old stereotypes.


Pam Winton

by
Pam Winton

Inclusion is about promoting a sense of belonging and full citizenship in all aspects of community life for individuals with disabilities and their families. The movie Tropic Thunder takes us a giant step backwards by promoting a sense of exclusion of individuals with disabilities by its insensitive use of the term "retard."  The spirit may have been comic but the outcome for many people is a painful revival of old stereotypes.

Colleen Tomko from Kids Together in Pennsylvania has suggested that teaching tolerance rather than simply condemning hate is a way to make a real lasting difference and promote acceptance. Colleen suggests writing letters to the editor, posting in blogs, commenting on websites, discussing issues at social meetings, writing to the media and businesses, talking to children, educating others about people with disabilities - all ways to keep the discussion and education going.  She also provides some other excellent resources in a newsletter on this topic at:  http://www.freelists.org/webpage/ktnewsletter

Have you had a personal experience dealing with biases and stereotypes in your work with people with disabilities and how did you handle it? If you are a parent, how are you preparing your children to react to words such as "retard"? If you are a faculty member, administrator or other kind of professional development provider, are you preparing teacher and others to deal with such biases if they should arise?

Related Items:

Document Actions

Specifics on the Kids Together Newsletter issue

Posted by Camille Catlett at Aug 19, 2008
The issue to look for is August 2008. A specific URL for getting to the text is http://www.freelists.org/[…]/msg00000.html. Camille Catlett

Modeling Child First Language

Posted by Cindy Croft at Aug 29, 2008
In my early childhood courses, I include a handout from the PACER Center www.pacer.org that shows how to rephrase language so it is person-first, and we talk about seeing a child in the context of the 'whole' child and not defining by their disability. Often, students will use words like 'she suffers from...' and we talk about the subtle message of a word like 'suffer' as opposed to saying a child 'has' this disorder. If it is approached from the positive standpoint that teachers are modeling for their students and children and can impact the future, I find they are so receptive to this sometimes new way of thinking.

Child First Language

Posted by Jonathan Green at Oct 01, 2008
I think ccroft may be referring to the People First Language handout. It is available at http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/peoplefirstlanguage.htm

Media matters

Posted by PaydayLoanAdvocate at Oct 10, 2008
The media’s rendering of society that doesn't fit the pattern of the status quo are not advantageous to our progressive culture. Over the past few generations, communities such as Gays and African Americans have battled for the equal treatment that the rest of us take for granted, only to see their hard work let down by stereotype-promoting dramas and situation comedies. Thanks to wildly-popular shows such as Good Times, Sanford and Son, and Will and Grace, most of us would find it difficult to encounter an average person on the street who does not consider at least most of the qualities of Fred Sanford or Jack McFarland to be true of all African Americans or gays, correspondingly. Surely, while our society has made great strides in its tolerance of people from all walks of life, our media still has some progress to be made. Case and point: the writers of a new CW television program, “Easy Money” have their next target in view; payday loan companies. If the show, which premiered on Sunday, October 5, gains popularity as Sanford and Son and Will and Grace did, the possibility is very real for society to obtain a erroneous depiction of a legitimate business model. Our society could get an fictitious idea about the people who run payday loan stores, called “loan sharks” in Easy Money’s trailers. This, in turn, could lead to unreasonable actions such as Ohio’s HB 545, which would cast payday lenders out of the state and bring about disturbing consequences. This just provides additional evidence that we can’t turn to the media to learn about the world around us.

Post Courtesy of Personal Money Store
Professional Blogging Team
Feed Back: 1-866-641-3406
Home: http://personalmoneystore.com/NoFaxPaydayLoans.html
Blog: http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/
Online Module Preview Now Available
CONNECT Modules Preview

CONNECT – The Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge is developing modules to build practitioners’ abilities to make evidence-based practice decisions. Come learn more about CONNECT’s evidence-based practice approach to professional development and preview Module 1 on Embedded Intervention. View Preview

 
logo for the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of north Carolina Chapel Hill

This site is an initiative of the
National Professional Development Center on Inclusion,
CONNECT: The Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge
and the FPG Child Development Institute
Project funding is provided by the Office of Special Education Programs.

logo for the Office of Special Education Programs IDEA

This site conforms to the US Government Section 508 and W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and is Powered by Plone.

web policy and terms of use