Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Cihan Ekmekçi
"Stupid,"
"idiot,"
"moron"
and "retarded."
Those are just a few of the most common insults we use nowadays.
But did you know
that all of them originate from medical diagnostics for Down's syndrome?
That's right.
They were originally used by doctors
when diagnosing individuals with the condition.
As soon as the general public became aware of this,
it became an insult,
only because it referred to the condition.
What does that say about how we see special needs?
And most importantly, how can we change it?
I speak on this today because out of my four siblings,
three of them have disabilities,
and the hardest part of it all isn't having to help with homework,
it's not having to schedule physiotherapy sessions.
It's the prejudice,
it's the weird looks and comments like, "What's wrong with her?"
or "I'm so sorry."
In fact, Paul Longman has stated before a quote
that I think explains this very well,
and it says, "Prejudice is a far greater problem than any impairment.
Discrimination is a greater obstacle to overcome than any disability."
And it's within our power to change this,
not only for disabled individuals,
but for all minority groups who suffer with prejudice.
So, by the end of this speech,
you'll know exactly how words impact prejudice,
and how you can stop spreading biases.
It's time we understand that our words are as powerful as our actions.
But first, let's go through prejudice.
Prejudice is a negative idea or feeling about someone,
and it's preconceived from a stereotype
about the specific group that the person belongs to.
That can be about religion, race, disability, nationality, gender, anything.
And it's a common misconception that we have
that it's spread through things like physical harm or threats
or even racist crimes,
but the truth is that it's spread through verbal communication.
It's there in every conversation that we have.
I'm not talking about mass media.
I'm talking about your morning talk with your bosses,
I'm talking about that one talk you have with your friend
in which you include a word that refers to someone who has a disability.
Truth is -
here's how it works.
When we use a word such as "retarded,"
what we're really implying
is that the person is as "unintelligent" as an individual with Down's or autism.
So, by the time that I had a sibling with Down's syndrome,
all I knew about it was that it was used as an insult.
By the time I met someone with autism,
all I knew was that people used "autistic" as an insult.
And so, I just looked up to her and I said,
"Wow, she's so smart, she's speaking so eloquently,"
when in reality,
it was all because of my prejudice.
People with disabilities have exactly the same abilities as other people.
They just need more support.
And so, we are constantly spreading prejudice in our conversations,
but we barely ever notice it.
Want to know why?
Professors Crandall and Eshleman have explained,
in a study for the universities of Kansas and Wagner,
that we tend to find justifications for our expressions of prejudice.
In other words, we make up excuses for the way we think
so that we don't feel bad for them.
The one I hear the most is,
"It's just a joke."
Let me tell you,
to people who don't know anyone with a disability,
it's just a joke,
but I'll tell you when I figured out that it wasn't actually just a joke.
In this picture right here,
that's my brother Lukas,
who I went to adopt in Ukraine with my family in December of 2016.
He was one of the 150 kids
who had disabilities and were at that orphanage.
There were 19 more orphanages like that, with that many kids,
in just that one city;
so nearly 3,000 kids who had been abandoned because of their disabilities.
It wasn't a joke to any of them.
It wasn't a joke to Lukas whose parents were still both living and home,
while he didn't even have access to his medicine to treat his pneumonia.
It wasn't a joke to him.
It wasn't a joke to the one in four people who have disabilities
who will suffer one incident of discrimination per day.
Imagine sending your child to school and knowing, nearly for sure,
that they are going to suffer discrimination at some point in the day.
It's not a joke to them.
Why should it be to any of us?
It's so absurd to me
that we would use a human condition or a characteristic as an insult.
I like to compare this sometimes to gender,
something else that we can't control.
Imagine if we use a characteristic like that
to imply that someone isn't good at something.
I mean, what if we said something like, "Oh, you do this like a girl?"
I mean, except we already do that.
Do you see the pattern?
We're constantly putting each other down
by using human characteristics, sometimes even choices,
that we can't control.
And so, this is what's most important in prejudice:
to understand that we're constantly spreading it through our conversations,
but that we have control over it.
Another excuse that I often hear is, "But it wasn't my intention."
Well, I guess it never is truly anybody's intention
to spread prejudice like that,
but I understand that it's a habit.
I understand that it's deeply rooted
and that it's been around not for decades, but for centuries.
So, here today, I'm going to teach you four steps that you can use
to stop using these words and stop spreading biases.
The first one: unconscious incompetence.
This is the point when you're doing something harmful,
either to yourself or to someone else,
but you don't truly realize it.
Well, I'm letting you know right now that it's something harmful
and that it's affecting real people every day.
So you can go straight ahead to the next step,
which is conscious incompetence.
That's the point when you're still doing something that's harmful to someone,
but you can't really quite stop.
This is usually because you don't really understand the need for change
or you're not quite passionate about it yet.
The third step:
conscious competence.
This is the step that I find most beautiful,
because this is the point when you listen to the words
as they come out of your mouth.
You don't feel the need
to use a word that's filled with hate to express yourself.
You can express your thoughts and all of your ideas
without having to use harmful words such as "retarded."
And the last step,
once you're done with that one very hard step:
it's unconscious competence,
when you can actually not think about it, it's natural to you,
and you can not say anything harmful without having to think of it.
These are four steps that I learned from a Harvard professor who told me,
"Your intention doesn't matter once the words come out of your mouth.
Once they're out, it's up to what you're saying,
the message that you're carrying and how people are going to interpret it."
So think wisely before you speak.
Think that the words that you're saying are spreading prejudice
and that you can stop that right now with these four steps.
So, what can you do?
As soon as you walk out of that door,
as soon as you start your next conversation,
go straight to conscious competence,
go straight to thinking about what you're saying
and thinking about the prejudice that you may be carrying in your words.
Real people are being affected every day, lives are changing because of this,
and you can end it right now with just those four steps
and making an effort.
There are much harder aspects of discrimination to change.
I mean, only 45 countries in the world right now
have anti disability discrimination laws,
and even those don't even cover all of the aspects of discrimination.
But you can stop discrimination right now with the words that you're using.
Stop spreading the idea that an element of diversity is something negative.
It's time we see disability not as a weakness,
but as an element of diversity, as I just mentioned.
You can make a change right now.
Stop using harmful words and just make a difference in the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)