HABO: when did "special" become a synonym for intellectual disability?

[ironymaiden]

i think this is a Gen X thing, i can't seem to come up with the right search terms to trace the origin/timing.

my memory is that there was an organized effort to replace the use of "mentally retarded" with "special", which had the unintended result of kids calling someone "special" as a pejorative where they used to use the R-slur.

i am a bad person and had a solid laugh over Trump calling the rioters "very special" yesterday.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Merriam Webster cites 1921 as the first use.

I suspect that Jean Kennedy Shriver's advocacy for the Special Olympics brought the term into the mainstream.

Here's a deep dive into how the New York Times' editorials deployed the phrase in the last quarter of the 20th century.

[ironymaiden]

after reading more: I wonder if it really hit here after 1975, when "special education" was mandated for public schools in the US.

[flexagon]

Late Gen X here, and this matches my memory of the 80s. That it came from "special ed" and maybe also "special needs". Certainly it was a thing we used to say when I was 12 or 13, around 1989-1990.

I would have laughed too.

[melita66]

I'm pretty sure by the early 80s, AKA Oh, there's a "special" bus, possibly into the late 70s. I wouldn't have noticed much before that. I'm sorry that I can't be more precise. (born 1966)

[nostalgia]

Def by the time I was at school in the 80s, where it was "ha ha you're special/special needs" all the time.

Every time they change the accepted term to something new the new one quickly becomes a playground insult :( So it's not so much the word people use as the deep ableism of society :(

[ironymaiden]

this. reminds me that "moron" was coined for medical use. and later when people were trying to stop using "that's gay" as an insult people switched to "that's lame" instead. aaaaaaaargh

[nostalgia]

Haha, I had a friend trained me out of "that's gay" years ago but then I tried to get him away from "that's lame" and he was like "but lame isn't like gay???"

[sistawendy]

Yeah, I do remember the "special bus", "special ed", etc. I didn't think of Trump's use of it that way, though. Remember, he's among the oldest boomers, so it wouldn't occur to him not to be horrible about how he talks, even if sarcastically.

[jesse_the_k]

During his 2016 campaign he made fun of disabled journalist Serge Kovaleski, mocking his atypical body and speech.

(I'm not linking to the video because who needs the agitation?)