When dehumanization becomes policy: Ableist language and the quiet violence of power

When dehumanization becomes policy: Ableist language and the quiet violence of power

by George Cassidy Payne

757 words

When the most powerful person in the world uses dehumanizing language, it is never just rhetoric. It is instruction.

In late November, Donald Trump publicly referred to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as “seriously retarded” while attacking Walz’s leadership. When questioned afterward, Trump did not retract the slur. He doubled down, saying there was “something wrong with him.” This was not a stray insult or an offhand remark. It was a deliberate statement, delivered through the megaphone of presidential power, reviving a word long recognized as dehumanizing toward people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

This is not a debate about free speech. It is a lesson in who is human—and who is disposable. Words spoken from the Oval Office are never empty; they shape empathy, justify policy, and redraw the boundaries of moral concern. When a leader devalues a group of people, society follows, step by step, policy by policy.

Donald Trump is not a private citizen muttering into the void. He carries the authority of the presidency and a global microphone. Every word signals who deserves dignity, who can be mocked, and who may eventually be excluded from protection altogether.

Disability advocates recognize this pattern immediately. BJ Stasio, a peer specialist with the New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, explains that when national leaders weaponize the R-word, they reactivate real harm, especially for people who were once labeled, segregated, or deemed incapable by systems of power. Language does not merely reflect prejudice; it reopens it.

Nicole LeBlanc, a disability employment consultant and self-advocate advisor, puts it plainly: people with disabilities want respect, acceptance, and access to services that allow them to thrive—not just survive. Degrading language fuels stigma, health disparities, and abuse. Respect, she reminds us, is not optional.

This danger is not abstract. As Dr. Gary Schaffer, a disABLED professor of school psychology and mental health counselor, notes, the R-word is not neutral language. It is hate speech. When a president uses it, he signals that discrimination and segregation are permissible, not only toward people with intellectual disabilities, but toward anyone deemed “less than.” History shows where this logic leads.

In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld forced sterilization in Buck v. Bell, with Justice William Howard Taft’s infamous declaration that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Rooted in eugenics, the decision has never been formally overturned. While later rulings discredited its reasoning, the precedent remains, a chilling reminder that when empathy erodes, the unthinkable can become law.

That erosion is already visible.

Federal oversight of special education has weakened. Enforcement of disability protections has been reduced. Programs like SOAR—SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery—which help people with serious mental health challenges and disabilities secure income, health care, and housing, face cuts that push vulnerable people closer to homelessness. Accessibility measures, including ASL interpretation at White House briefings, have been removed, signaling that participation in public life is conditional.

Legal challenges to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act continue to generate uncertainty around basic civil rights protections. Even when sweeping attacks are paused or narrowed, the message remains unmistakable: disability rights are negotiable.

This is how dehumanization works. First comes rhetoric—language that dulls empathy. Then comes policy—cuts, rollbacks, and weakened enforcement. Finally comes segregation, invisibility, and institutional harm. History shows that when people are rendered invisible, they become easier to discard.

Disability advocate and Vietnam veteran Max Donatelli has warned that the public disrespect shown toward people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is unprecedented. Behavioral health coach and disability advocate Emauni Crawley is even more direct: this language is not ignorance. It is perverseness.

Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is the presence of dignity. Structural violence, policies that deny access, silence voices, and strip protections, destroys lives quietly, without bombs or battlefields. But it destroys them nonetheless.

As Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, the law may not be able to make people love one another, but it can restrain violence. When dehumanizing rhetoric is paired with hollowed-out protections, dignity becomes conditional and violence becomes structural.

This is not fragility. It is responsibility.

A president’s words teach a nation who it is permitted to abandon. When we accept language that renders some lives expendable, we set in motion a politics that eventually consumes its own moral center.

The question is no longer whether such language is permissible. The question is whether we will resist a culture that treats human dignity as optional, and whether we will do so before the quiet violence spreads any further.

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George Cassidy Payne, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Rochester-based writer whose work sits at the intersection of politics, ethics, and lived experience. A poet, philosopher, and 988 crisis counselor, he covers issues of democracy, justice, and community resilience.