Which Is Worse Gay Or Retarded? An Open Letter To Troy Ave

I’ve been seeing this story around about a rapper who seems to be obsessed with trying to find the thing he’d rather his child not be instead of gay.  One post said, “Wats MoreEmbarrasing having a 14yr. Old Visibly Gay Son Or a 14yr. Old mentally Retarded son” You could say that I’m being overly sensitive here.  After all he’s just a rapper and he’s just trying to get attention from people.  So before I go any further I’d like to try this out.  A KKK member is talking with some of his buddies and one says, “You’re looking to adopt and there’s only two children to choose from, which would you pick, a black son, or a mentally retarded son?”  Not so funny now is it? 

At first I saw this and I thought I wish they’d ask my parents that.  I’d love to hear them tell them off.  The thing is I don’t want them to have to see such hatred.  I know, this isn’t specifically intended for me, but I am exactly what he seems to see as his worst nightmare.  So this is my open letter to Troy Ave.

Dear Troy, 

I’ve seen your tweets asking which would be worse, a gay boy or a mentally retarded boy.  Well, I’ll take a little liberty here and include lesbians and say my parents got both in one package.  I was diagnosed as dyslexic and borderline ADD when I was a kid.  This was over 20 years ago and the standard for measuring retardation included me as mildly mentally retarded.  In fact my childhood LD classroom was right next door to the class for the developmentally disabled.  We combined classes from time to time for parties and special events.

There are so many levels of this issue I’d like to go into right now, but I’d like to try and stay on the topic of the issues your audience would care about. I could tell you how my family has always been on my side no matter what my issues brought to them, and that they had the capacity to love me in spite of the issues I bring into their lives.  Well, I just did, and I doubt you really consider that to be important. 

You could say that being a white girl from Indiana this issue doesn’t really have anything to do with me specifically, and maybe in a way you are right.  I was lucky enough to be tested and diagnosed at the age of 7.  On average children from the inner city never get tested and diagnosed.  I did a paper a while ago on attendance in higher education for the learning disabled and one source was a paper on testing, diagnoses, and assistance for the learning disabled among the African American community.  The results are just what one would expect.  It is less frequent and resources are less available for those who are diagnosed.

Here’s the part that does make this my issue.  Testing comes at the behest of the parents.  It’s only with strong parental advocacy that anything about these issues is ever done.  If parents hear your words and agree with them than they won’t get their children tested.  If children with these issues ever hear your words they learn that an idle of their sees them as someone to be ashamed of and will mask their issues not allowing people to know why they are struggling.  This will do nothing but perpetuate the stereotype of the delinquent slow witted kid.  You can fill in the blanks there, I’m sure you know better than I do what happens when children don’t get the education they need.  Just so you know, this isn’t racially motivated; I was put in the same category once because I didn’t pay attention in class.  The fact that I couldn’t read the text books was irrelevant to the teacher. 

The other side of this issue; being gay and what happens to those kids when they are found out by their parents…  They wind up on the streets.  At this time something like 40% of homeless youth are LGBT and the majority of them in many states are black.  I had a friend on Facebook who had been through reparative therapy for being gay over 10 times.  That was how many times he had tried to kill himself because it didn’t work.  I haven’t seen him on FB in a while and he lives in another state, so I’m not sure if he’s still alive. 

Right now, in parts of the gay community, black people are just assumed to be homophobic.  I know this isn’t really the case, but it’s hard to counter that idea while people like you are tweeting things like this.  And again, these are black people so someone like you may ask what this has to do with me.  Well, they’re gay.  That’s what it has to do with me.  I don’t care what race, religion, or nationality they are.  I care that they are LGBT.  Because you know what’s worse than having a gay kid, a retarded kid, or a gay retarded kid?  Having one of them raised by someone like you.  How about you ask this; which is worse a gay kid or a dead kid.  Sadly, I think too many men like you would say gay. 

As for the really developmentally disabled kids, (that’s the actual term now.)  As I said before, I grew up next to the class for the developmentally disabled.  I played with them.  A young lady who’s almost exactly one year younger than me with Downs Syndrome lives just down the road from my mom and dad.  There was a young man who worked at a store I did doing cleaning because that was the most he could do.  I’ve had the privilege of knowing these people, really knowing who they are and how hard they try and the world would be a grimmer sadder place without them. 

Many of them may struggle with something as simple as telling time, but they know something a man like you can never know.  They know that underneath our skin, sexuality, religion, and cognitive level, who we are is what we do with what we can do.  Our value isn’t in how we walk, or the gender of the person we kiss.  It isn’t defined by a speech impediment, or a deformity, but by the way we care about others.  I hope one day you reach their level of social competence. 

Erica Cook