October 24: Mongolian Idiot, Rights of the Intellectually Challenged, My Sister

Billy's daughter Barbara came in later that day.  She was all doped up, had the same glassy-eyed look that poor old Edgar Derby wore just before he was shot in Dresden.  Doctors had given her pills so she could continue to function, even though her father was broken and her mother was dead.

So it goes.

She was accompanied by a doctor and a nurse.  Her brother Robert was flying home from a battlefield in Vietnam.  "Daddy--" she said tentatively.  "Daddy--?"

But Billy was ten years away, back in 1958.  He was examining the eyes of a young male Mongolian idiot in order to prescribe corrective lenses.  The idiot's mother was there, acting as an interpreter.

"How many dots do you see?" Billy Pilgrim asked him.

This passage pisses me off.  I know that the term "Mongolian idiot" was once acceptable, even common.  "Down syndrome" didn't come into use until the early 1970s.  Slaughterhouse was first published in March of 1969.  Kurt Vonnegut was a product of his time.  That's why he calls the young Down syndrome boy an "idiot."  I notice that  Vonnegut even depersonalizes the character even more by using the term "male" instead of boy.  Suddenly, instead of a living, breathing human being, Billy is treating a specimen:  the Mongolian idiot male.

As many of my disciples already know, I have a sister with Down syndrome.  So, I have been exposed to all sorts of cruelties.  My mother fought hard for my sister all her life.  Fought to get her in school.  Fought to keep her in school.  Fought for classroom funding.  Took on principals, school superintendents, and instructors who saw my sister as hopelessly unteachable.  When my sister was born, the doctor told my parents to put her in an institution and forget about her.

This all happened right around the time that Vonnegut was writing Slaughterhouse, which explains a lot about the passage.  Doctors, educators, and brilliant writers all saw people with Down syndrome as idiots, oddities, sideshow attractions.  I don't blame Vonnegut for his ignorance.  I understand it, in the social context.  Vonnegut was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-nuke movement.  Most of his books are thinly veiled social commentary.  Yet, at the time of Slaughterhouse, he wasn't aware of the incredible insensitivity of calling someone a "Mongolian idiot."

We have come a long way since the publication of Slaughterhouse.  It's now legislated that public schools must provide educations for children with mental and physical impairments (for now--the current Education Secretary, Betsy Devos, is trying to change that).  However, just like the battle for Civil Rights continues, so does the battle for the rights of the intellectually challenged.

I'm ashamed to say that I don't think of this cause every day now, despite how personal it is for me.  My sister has been out of the education system for over 30 years.  Her current issues are health and memory.  Like most older people with Down syndrome, she is developing symptoms that could be the beginning of Alzheimer's or dementia.  That is her daily struggle now.

Vonnegut is not a bad person for calling his character a "Mongolian idiot."  He is the product of his culture, as we all are.  And, sometimes, culture needs to change.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his sister, who is not an idiot.

March 21: Crippled Man, Mongolian Idiot, Power of Language

The doorchimes rang.  Billy got off the bed and looked down through a window at the front doorstep, to see if somebody important had come to call.  There was a crippled man down there, as spastic in space as Billy Pilgrim was in time.  Convulsions made the man dance flappingly all the time, made him change his expressions, too, as though he were trying to imitate various famous movie stars.

Another cripple was ringing a doorbell across the street.  He was on crutches.  He had only one leg.  He was so jammed between his crutches that his shoulders hid his ears.

Billy knew what the cripples were up to.  They were selling subscriptions to magazines that would never come.  People subscribed to them because the salesmen were so pitiful.  Billy had heard about this racket from a speaker at the Lions Club two weeks before--a man from the Better Business Bureau.  The man said that anybody who saw cripples working a neighborhood for magazine subscriptions should call the police.

Billy looked down the street, saw a new Buick Riviera parked about half a block away.  There was a man in it, and Billy assumed correctly that he was the man who had hired the cripples to do this thing.  Billy went on weeping as he contemplated the cripples and their boss.  His doorchimes clanged hellishly.

He closed his eyes and opened them again.  He was still weeping, but he was back in Luxembourg again.  He was marching with a lot of other prisoners.  It was a winter wind that was bringing tears to his eyes.

I have to admit that, when Vonnegut starts using the terms "crippled" and "cripples," it makes me cringe.  When Slaughterhouse Five first came out, however, those words were completely acceptable to use in polite conversation among people who knew nothing about living with physical challenges.  Vonnegut isn't trying to shock or demean.  He's just telling a story using the language of the time.
Of course, now, if an author described a character with a disability as a "cripple" (unironically and without attempting to capture some kind of social context), that author would most certainly be the target of justifiable criticism.  Regardless of the current trend against political correctness, words can really harm and injure.

When I was in high school, I was in a world history class.  The teacher--a nice man, full of progressive ideas--made a comment during a class discussion about a "mongolian idiot."  I'm not even sure of the context of the conversation anymore.  All I remember is being really shocked by his comment. 

My older sister has Down Syndrome, and she was a student at the school.  My mother had been fighting for my sister all my life.  She fought to get my sister into a classroom.  Fought principals and superintendents who didn't want to spend school funds to educate "retarded" children.  Fought for other children with various disabilities.  My mother was an activist for the rights of kids with mental and physical challenges.

So, when my history teacher talked about a "mongolian idiot," I took it very personally.  It made me sad.  It pissed me off.  After class, I spoke to the instructor, told him how hurtful his language had been.  He apologized to me, said that he never intended to offend.  I accepted his apology.

Words can be very harmful.  My mother taught me to speak against oppressive speech.  Taught me to lift people up with my words.

Saint Marty is thankful for his mother's language lessons.