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Kamilah Aisha Moon reads from "She Has a Name"

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“In 1851, Dr. Samuel Cartwright called it drapetomania: it creates within the Negro an uncontrollable desire to escape. It is a disease firmly bound to freedom.”

Drapetomania

A conjectural mental illness that was hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity.

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“He’s not sick. His mind is an unmapped archipelago every idea a former slave gone free”

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“An overlooked demographic during these protests has been Black members of the autistic community.”
- Ways to Support the Black Autistic Community

“For adult black women with autism to get programs and services that address our needs, researchers first need to acknowledge that we exist."
- Autistic While Black

Throughout the reading this quote remained in the back of my mind, one I needed to see highlighted. Intersectionality with Autistic Blackness helps identify spaces or areas of neglect. The social agenda is simply to be seen, recognized, heard. Negligence is unfortunately a symptom of a larger issue. For structural change to happen, policy must change.

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Why is it important to use narrative/storytelling to share these perspectives?

How is “For Levi” using personal narrative to connect blackness and autism?

In what ways can these themes be connected to past course readings and discussions?

Where else in the texts for today do you see examples of the differences between the medical and social models of autism?

Does the context of the author’s relationships to autism change the way you view the stories, or make them more/less compelling?

Would you put the readings from this week in conversation with the readings composed in “All the Weight of Our Dreams?”

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There is value in sharing both fact and narrative/story. We wanted to identify how both can be beneficial when highlighting experiences of people with autism.

Fact
"Black children are frequently both misdiagnosed or undiagnosed as a result of stigma, income restriction and inadequate healthcare access."
- Ways to help the Black Autistic Community

Narrative/Story
Autistic While Black
"The doctor who diagnosed me told me not to tell people I have autism because no one would want

to work with me. When I did tell a psychiatrist and a few clinical therapists who are colleagues that I

recognize I have autism traits, they instinctively rejected the idea. “You’re just going through

something,” they said."
- Catina Burkett, Diagnosed at age 46

She Has a Name - Pinwheel (pg 19)
“Do we HAVE to take her with us outside this time? She made us look bad.”

For Levi
"In 1851, Dr. Samuel Cartwright called it drapetomania: It creates within the Negro an uncontrollable desire to escape."

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"I find it impossible to ‘code switch,’ or change the tone of my voice and mannerisms to fit in with different people. One white female supervisor complained that I should learn to change my demeanor with different people. I understood what she meant, but I am socially, emotionally and logically detached from that type of directive to conform" - Catina Burkett, Autistic While Black

“His mind is more like the world’s most extravagant circus/all trapeze and lion teeth/drum beat and riotous laughter/Every sentence/a staccato hymn/in the midst of a world/that has forgotten how to value silence.”
- Joshua Bennett, For Levi

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“You are. Or you are not. You’re sick. Or you’re well. One thing. Or another. But it’s never that simple like breathing should be. Between is a hard place to live.”

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“1 in 150 now, this glitch in babies poised to unlock the world...What about that drug that I took once? Vaccines? Some karmic boomerang I don’t remember throwing, its stealth return”

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Medical Model of Autism

Social Model of Autism

Neurodiversity

Narrative/Story vs. Fact

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Author Background
Written by Joshua Bennett

Poet from Yonkers, New York who has three disabled siblings.

His younger brother Levi has Autism, his older sister is deaf, and his other brother has schizophrenia.

Text Background

The poem was written in order to honor his brother and to draw attention to the plight of all those who are living with autism in our society.

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Autistic While Black

Author Background
Written by Catina Burkett

Catina Burkett is an African American late diagnosed with mild autism at the age of 46. She is an author of many books, including children’s books that highlight experiences of people with Autism.

She has worked as a licensed social worker and approved clinical supervisor in two states. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

Text background

This text was written to serve as insight to her experience being Black and having autism. Burkett unpacks bias and the need to be seen through her narrative. She talks about how because of her autism, she is not readily available to change her behavior as others would expect other black women. Code switching is overwhelming to think about as she navigates her work places and she has come to accept that it is something she simply impossible for her to do. She concludes by sharing that in order to dispel the negative stereotypes we witness, researchers “must include and track autistic black people.”

Ways to Support the Black Autistic Community
Author Background

Ian Ward is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus at the University of Connecticut. Ward also identifies as a white person with autism.

Text Background

Ways to Support the Black Autistic Community is a journalistic article written to the community of UConn to increase awareness of ways to serve those around them. Ward mentions the Color of Autism group as an organization that is educating and equipping community members while also promoting the correction of disparities in treatment of people of color with autism.

This article was written shortly after the death of George Floyd and also provides helpful resources for navigating protests with people who are a part of the autistic community. He ends with encouraging readers to amplify Black autistic voices.

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“The medical model of disability defines an illness or disability as the result of a physical condition, which is intrinsic to the individual (it is part of that individual's own body) and which may reduce the individual's quality of life and cause clear disadvantages to the individual.”

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“The social model of disability is a way of viewing the world, developed by disabled people. ... The model says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference”

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Author Background
Written by Kamilah Aisha Moon

African American poet who received a BA from Paine College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Teaches at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia

Text Background

Described as a “biomythography,” a term created by Audre Lorde to describe a narrative based on myth and history, fact and fiction.

Designed to tell the story of a young woman with autism from multiple points of view.

The speakers in these poems—sisters, mother, father, teacher—pursue answers to questions science can’t yet answer: “Autism, the one-drop rule for minds / we strain to understand, the catch-all…”

Each voice strives to understand what autism means to his or her own life.