After President Barack Obama's gaffe on The Tonight Show making fun of the Special Olympics, there has been a considerable buzz in the tabloid world about disabled people. A few students, led by Democracy for America, tabled in Usdan Student Center Tuesday to promote a day to Spread the Word to End the Word, a National Awareness Day to stop using the R word-retard. Students at the table signed a pledge to do so.Sometimes, activist groups may think that eliminating a word from our everyday lingo will destroy the hate behind it. Rather than staging a protest against the "R" word, the whole community should commit itself to ending the assumptions behind the word. Eliminating a word won't destroy its negative ideas. At most, it creates a lethal sense of comfort. Words have little meaning beyond the ideas we put behind them.

There is a great hero in recent history known in many quarters but rarely mentioned in any college class room. His name is Dr. Richard Pimentel. He was central to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. He works vigorously to get those who have suffered injury or are disabled in other ways to get jobs. Raised on welfare, Pimentel's classmates and teachers thought he was a lesser person and made him feel so dumb that he pretended to be mute. In his commencement speech at Portland State University, Pimentel reflected on how he'd been called retarded as a child. A teacher told him that he wasn't retarded. Pimentel said, "Yes I am." The teacher responded, "You're smarter than all the other kids in class." He responded by saying, "They're retarded." The teacher responded, "You're smarter than many of the teachers in school." He said, "That doesn't mean I'm not retarded." The teacher said, "That was irony; retarded people don't use irony." Pimenthal said, "We do; you just don't understand it."

This vignette shows a truth: "retard" is just a word. What Pimenthal's detractors were really saying was that he was inferior. Taking on the denial of the humanity of the disabled is much more difficult than standing and protesting a word. It may seem like progress, but the far more important and difficult mission is to ask yourself whether the nasty ideas behind the word "retard" have slid into your unconsciousness and shaped your approach to those who are different than you. Committing yourself to self-reform is far more difficult and important than removing a word from your lexicon.

Waging war against words is not only ineffective but also dangerous. Fighting the R word creates a sense of complacency. Instead of feeling accomplished because you've pledged against the word retard and stand by your word, all university students should take on the burden of fighting discrimination: first in their own actions and then in the actions of others. The best way to test whether or not you have taken this challenge is to monitor how you treat those who are physically different from you after the anti-R word campaign. Will you cross a room and sit down and have lunch with a disabled person if he or she is alone? Would you think of inviting a mentally disabled person to a party? If you can't honestly answer yes to those questions, you haven't really reformed yourself; your efforts contain little substance.

There have been similar moves made by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 2007, the NAACP held a mock funeral for the N word. Despite the funeral for this word, racial discrimination still exists. Chris Rock parodied the NAACP's funeral for the N word in his recent HBO special, Don't Kill the Messenger. Rock also satirizes the segregated suburb he lives in. Rock said to a fan on the HBO promotional Web site that he continues to suffer many indignities. For example, a real estate agent even refused to show him a house. His race trumped his celebrity.

The N word might be buried, but the assumptions that make it offensive still live in people's hearts and minds. Not enough people have performed the self-examination that I am advocating here in relation to the R word. It is ghastly to use the N word in public, but it's less of a faux pas to mentally single out a person for his race when he enters a store or gets on a plane. Careers can be damaged by the use of the N word, but the action of discrimination in policing and housing is less lethal at the outset. Campaigns against the R word and the N word share the danger that focusing on a hurtful word does not go far enough. To initiate real change, one must face one's own prejudices and then challenge others. The fight against the inhumanity of calling someone "retarded" doesn't start at a pledging table. It starts in the hearts and minds of all members of the University and larger community.