Staying sensitive
Greg BRAXTON writes a story about how Bree Walker is challenging the boundaries of her disability and the perceptions of TV viewers (“Taking the Sting Out of a Disability,” July 27) and then falls into the same trap as those Walker criticizes when he writes of her son, “Aaron James Lampley, afflicted with ectrodactylism, was born in August 1991.”
Later in the piece, he describes Walker’s daughter: “16-year-old Andrea also has ectrodactylism.”
The first description is judgmental and negative, due to the use of the word “afflicted.” The second description is neutral; it gives the information without the negativity.
All of us, and newspaper writers in particular, need to be sensitive to the words we use to describe people. In this instance, Braxton got it half-right.
Lisa Horowitz
Los Angeles
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