Janet Iles wrote:
>
>Whilst his mother agreed that what her son had said was unacceptable,
>she was very upset that the other boy was not taken to task about being
>abusive to her son!
>It does seem to me that the law does need to change here, as racial
>discrimination is unacceptable (legally) whilst issues of disability are
>not necessarily on the same plane.
It was me who raised this. I don't think the law does give protection on
the issue of racist language, which is precisely why the recent Lawrence
report has called for racist language to become an offence 'even in the
private sphere' and for efforts to be made to examine the school curriculum
in this area (well some of us said this ten years ago when we were
responding to National Curriculum consultation documents and no-one
listened). The point perhaps is that disability, in legal terms (in the
UK), is not seen in the same light as gender and race, for example, and so,
unless we are very vigilant, disability will be exempted from overarching
human rights legislation which might ensure that ANY kind of discriminatory
language, if felt to be offensive by the person whom it is directed at, is
offensive. Then of course we have educational legislation which has a lot
of ridiculous things in it about language and 'special needs'
>
Hope this helps
Best wishes
Mairian
*********
"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
*********
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Postal Address:
111 Balfour Road
Highbury
London N5 2HE
U.K.
Minicom/TTY +44 [0]171 359 8085
Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|