Time to Retire the R-Word, Urges Down Syndrome Non-Profit

Can't we 'Just Evolve' already?

Timed to World Down syndrome Day on March 21, CoorDown launched “Just Evolve,” its latest campaign to educate the world on the harm done when the R-word is used.

Created by Small, Indiana Production and director Martin Holzman, a 2-minute ad begins with friends at dinner with one man calling another the R-word. In steps 19-year-old Noah M. Matofsky, a British actor with Down syndrome, who explains why such hateful language belongs in the past. He references some barmy things that people used to do until they evolved. These include washing laundry in urine, husbands selling wives, taking cough syrup laced with heroin, wearing meat masks to prevent wrinkles and fighting duels.

Play

“We are aware that 90 percent of the time people use these words it is not to directly offend people with disabilities. But their use contributes to creating a cultural context that associates disability with inability, failure and marginality,” says Martina Fuga, president of CoorDown.

“The words we choose shape reality—both that of others and our perception of it—they can include or exclude and clarify or confuse. We want to ask every person who still pronounces these harmful expressions today to stop. Not because “you can’t say anything anymore”. But because they belong to the past.”

The campaignis running on YouTube and social media channels of CoorDown and its partners.