via American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD)
Dear Entertainment Industry,
As people with disabilities, their friends, families, and supporters, we affirm the value, equality, and dignity of every member of the cross-disability community, including those of us, our family members, and peers with intellectual disabilities.
We, like all Americans, connect with the humanity of TV and film characters to add levity to our lives. We talk about what they do with our friends and co-workers. We laugh with the characters, cry with the characters, imitate their fashions, their haircuts, and their words. While we enjoy sharing joys and bearing pains with them, we are stunned when they insult, disrespect, and misrepresent us.
What constitutes hate speech can only be defined by the community it seeks to reference, and as a community of people with disabilities, we adamantly declare the "R-word" and its prolific use in the film "Tropic Thunder" a prime example of such hate speech...
...Read the rest and sign the petition.
