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Email: tre@treventour.com

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Tré Ventour Ed | Twitter, Instagram, Facebook | Linktree

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View treventoured's Linktree. Listen to their music on YouTube, Spotify here.

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Black Autistics Matter: On Race, Representation, and History

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'Black Autistics Matter' (Lecture + Q&A)

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'Black Autistics Matter' (Lecture + Q&A)

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'On Autistic Self-Diagnosis' - Courtney A.M (2022)

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'On Autistic Self-Diagnosis' - Courtney A.M (2022)

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Individual in black hoodie and glasses, sitting down thinking deeply.

Can I diagnose* myself with autism? Well. Let's break that down.

Can I diagnose myself with difficulty interpreting what people are saying or feeling?

Can I diagnose myself with not intuiting unspoken social rules? Or avoiding superficial conversations?

Can I diagnose myself as being "in my own world"?

Can I diagnose myself as engaging in repetitive behaviors or routines?

Can I diagnose myself with only eating a limited group of foods?

Can I diagnose myself with a meltdown?

Can I diagnose myself with a strong or unusual special interest?

Can I diagnose myself with headaches or migraines?

Can I diagnose my sensitivity to rejection?

Can I diagnose myself as preferring not to make eye contact when I speak?

Can I diagnose myself with bumping into my walls or tripping over my feet?

Can I diagnose myself with handwriting that hurts?

Can I diagnose myself with not understanding a figure of speech?

Can I diagnose myself with making up special words or phrases or signs?

Can I diagnose myself with rocking back and forth or pacing to soothe myself?

Can I diagnose myself with being mistaken for an answering machine when someone calls me?

Can I diagnose myself with being expected to overreact?

Can I diagnose myself with being called robotic, neurotic, or obsessed?

Can I diagnose myself with compulsive shopping or collecting?

Can I diagnose myself as buying the same garment in as many colors as I can find?

Can I diagnose myself with needing my items arranged in a specific or symmetrical fashion?

Can I diagnose myself with making involuntary noises?

Can I diagnose myself with rage or disgust when my food order is wrong?

Can I diagnose my difficulty regulating emotions at all?

Can I diagnose myself with unintentionally changing my demeanor or personality to fit in?

Can I diagnose myself with trouble keeping up in a conversation? Or speaking for longer than I meant to?

Can I diagnose myself with picking at my skin until it hurts or I bleed?

Can I diagnose myself with miscommunications or misunderstandings with others?

Can I diagnose myself as hating bright lights or loud noises or strong smells?

Can I diagnose myself with never wanting to be surprised?

Can I diagnose myself with wanting others to speak on my behalf when I feel like I can't?

Can I diagnose my forgetting to eat or not noticing when I'm tired or when I have to pee?

Can I diagnose myself with compulsive shopping or collecting things?

Can I diagnose myself as a deep or "over" thinker?

Can I diagnose myself with seeing both sides of a thing?

Can I diagnose myself with taking things literally? What about my honesty or "oversharing"? Can I know that I'm always very different from my peers?

Can I diagnose myself with gullibility?

Can I diagnose myself with putting my needs last or not thinking about them at all?

Can I diagnose my anxiety?

Can I diagnose myself as noticing patterns others do not?

Can I diagnose that I did not get a joke?

Can I diagnose myself with devastation when people doubt me?

Can I diagnose myself with fascination or overwhelm at my own thoughts?

Can I diagnose myself with being called "rigid" or "controlling'" or "demanding"?

Can I diagnose my exhaustion?

Can I diagnose myself with frequent stomach problems?

Can I diagnose my social anxiety?

Can I diagnose my self-doubt? My fluctuating self-esteem?

Can I diagnose myself with only talking to dogs or babies at social gatherings?

Can I diagnose myself with accidentally interrupting people in conversations?

Can I diagnose my confusion or overwhelm or angst?

Can I diagnose myself as feeling like an alien?

Can I diagnose that I'm often taken advantage of?

Can I diagnose myself with sweating and shutting down and being afraid?

Can I diagnose my moments of inexplicable gratitude and joy?

Can I diagnose my story telling and "wild imagination"?

Can I diagnose my obsessions or compulsions around a thing?

Can I diagnose falling in love with new friends right away?

Can I diagnose my love of words and alliteration and rhymes?

Can I diagnose my love for numbers and signs?

Can I diagnose counting all the time?

Or seeing smells and hearing colors and tasting sounds?

Can I diagnose remembering every embarrassing thing in a way that still makes me sick?

Can I diagnose not remembering anything at all?

Can I diagnose myself with losing the same things every day?

Can I diagnose myself with feeling lazy because I can't do the things most important to me?

Can I diagnose myself with constantly feeling misjudged?

Can I diagnose myself as rubbing my feet together when I sit or lie down, even when I want it to stop?

Can I diagnose myself with scripting a "simple" conversation or phone call?

Can I diagnose myself with thinking a loved one hates me for no reason?

Can I diagnose myself as reclusive?

Can I diagnose myself as nonspeaking?

Can I diagnose myself as burnt out and in need of a break?

Can I diagnose myself as trying to help people who didn't even ask?

Can I diagnose my codependency?

Can I diagnose myself with feeling younger than I am?

Can I diagnose myself with feeling like I'm bursting with thoughts to share?

Can I diagnose myself with dread or paranoia or feeling the whole world's sadness at once?

Can I self-diagnose my powerful nervousness, insecurity, excitement, wonder, intrigue, disgust, enthusiasm, pride, joy, rage, amusement, delight, attention, or guilt?

If not, then who can? Which specialist can tell me all these things about myself? Which one knows how long it takes me to speak up when I'm hurt? Who knows how badly I want to open my mail and handle things, but can't prioritize my own affairs? Who knows that I have the money but will end up in collections anyway? Who could know I just panicked when my phone rang because I imagine the worst? Who knows that visions of catastrophe flash before my eyes when I am fighting to rest?

Which doctor knows that I secretly hate hugs? But that I don't reject them because I am desperate to be loved and accepted? What is their title? Who knows that I did all the reading and still prayed my professor would not ask me to speak? Where do they work? The person who can tell me that I think I'm being watched so even alone I am on edge. The person who can say how much of me I'm hiding just to belong? Who are they? If they're not me?

*Autism is not a disease.

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Can I diagnose* myself with autism? Well. Let's break that down. Can I diagnose myself with difficulty interpreting what people are saying or feeling? Can I diagnose myself with not intuiting unspoken social rules? Or avoiding superficial conversations? Can I diagnose myself as being "in my own world"?

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Ingredients for slowing down to the relational speed of life and cooking up de-powered social operating models. Many Autists realise that the best we can ever hope for in this hypernormative civilisation is acceptance of our existence in bare survival mode, performing the function of a mindless busy cog and consumer in the sensory hell of the industrial machine.

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Content about autism by autistic and neurodivergent people. A resource for autistic adults, parents of autistic children, educators, and physicians.

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Autistic Vlogger, Strategist
and Founder of Black and Neurodivergent (BAND).

Tyla's experiences as a late-diagnosed autistic woman unable to access support led her to share her experiences transitioning to adulthood on Instagram and later Youtube in the hopes of finding community.

In 2 years her neurodivergent corner of the internet grew to over 30,000 people and in June 2020 they helped Tyla to raise £10,000 in 10 days to form BAND - a non-profit that makes space for Black youth to explore neurodiversity.

Tyla's Field Notes

A monthly newsletter full of observations of the neurotypical world, ideas for adulting and insights about autism.

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Autistic Vlogger, Strategist and Founder of Black and Neurodivergent (BAND). Tyla's experiences as a late-diagnosed autistic woman unable to access support led her to share her experiences transitioning to adulthood on Instagram and later Youtube in the hopes of finding community.

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TED: 'Women and Autism. Towards a Better Understanding' - Sarai Pahla (2007)

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TED: 'Women and Autism. Towards a Better Understanding' - Sarai Pahla (2007)

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Women and Autism. Towards a Better Understanding | Sarai Pahla | TEDxMünster

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TED: 'Young, Gifted & Black With Autism' - LaChan Hannon (2016)

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TED: 'Young, Gifted & Black With Autism' - LaChan Hannon (2016)

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Young, Gifted & Black With Autism | LaChan Hannon | TEDxCooperRiverWomen

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TED: 'Invisible Diversity: A Story Of Undiagnosed Autism' - Carrie Beckwith-Fellows (2017)

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TED: 'Invisible Diversity: A Story Of Undiagnosed Autism' - Carrie Beckwith-Fellows (2017)

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Invisible Diversity: A Story Of Undiagnosed Autism | Carrie Beckwith-Fellows | TEDxVilnius

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TED: 'Why Everything You Know About Autism is Wrong' - Jac den Houting (2019)

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TED: 'Why Everything You Know About Autism is Wrong' - Jac den Houting (2019)

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Why everything you know about autism is wrong | Jac den Houting | TEDxMacquarieUniversity

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TED: 'What We Can Learn From People With Autism' with Chanel Matil Lodik (2022)

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TED: 'What We Can Learn From People With Autism' with Chanel Matil Lodik (2022)

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What we can learn from people with autism | Chanel Matil Lodik | TEDxAmsterdamWomen

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'Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray: the toll of police violence on disabled Americans' (The Guardian, 2020)

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'Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray: the toll of police violence on disabled Americans' (The Guardian, 2020)

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Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray: the toll of police violence on disabled Americans

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More than a third of Americans killed by police have a disability. It’s time to listen to black and disabled activists

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Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins coined the concept matrix of domination in her book Black Feminist Thought to describe four interrelated domains that organize power relations in society. This approach to an analysis of power informs us about how structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power shape human action.

According to Collins, these four interrelated domains of power serve different purposes in relation to maintaining the status quo. In this blog post, I summarize these four domains of power based on the chapter in Black Feminist Thought titled "Toward a Politics of Empowerment."

The Structural Domain of Power

The structural domain of power in the matrix of domination organizes oppression in society. Collins argues that the organization of interlocking, large-scale social institutions reproduce the subordination of Black women. For example, residential segregation prevents most Black women in the United States from having access from certain educational and job opportunities. I myself had to travel about an hour each way from my predominately Black suburban neighborhood to a predominately white Magnet program in suburban Atlanta from the time I was eight years old until I graduated high school.

Collins suggests that the way to empower Black women through the structural domain of power involves transforming social institutions. One way to go about this involves dispensing with colorblind or gender-neutral rhetoric and instead of acknowledging how social systems impart different outcomes depending on one's social status.

The Disciplinary Domain of Power

The disciplinary domain of power manages oppression. The organizational practices of social institutions manage power relations and control certain subpopulations. Collins notes that social policies and rulings determined by government bureaucracies and surveillance technologies shape the modern social organization. For example, Black women academics who embrace Black feminist thought might find themselves relegated to the academy and subject to monitoring of their radical potential.

To empower Black women within this domain, resistance to such practices must come from within the organization itself.

The Hegemonic Domain of Power

Hegemony refers to the system of ideas developed by a dominant group that justifies their practices. Collins writes that in this domain of power old ideas that uphold the system get refashioned as society changes over time. Through ideology, culture, and consciousness, the beliefs of the dominant group get normalized as common sense ideas that support their position. Additionally, many members of subordinated groups might endorse these ideas as well.

Social institutions that perpetuate these ideologies include schools, churches, community organizations, families, and mass media. These social institutions shape consciousness through the manipulation of ideas, symbols, and images of various social groups. After the Civil War, for example, the characterization of Black men as hypersexual brutes seeking to rape white women justified the lynching of countless Black men.

Empowerment within the hegemonic domain of power comes through choosing self-definition over societal definitions about one's personhood. For Black women, this means generating ideas that inspire disbelief in racist and sexist ideologies about Black womanhood. Furthermore, they have to develop a dynamic, critical consciousness that unpacks hegemonic ideologies and constructs new knowledge about what Black womanhood means.

The Interpersonal Domain of Power

The interpersonal domain of power in the matrix of domination affects all of us in everyday life. This domain of power refers to how our individual consciousness perpetuates the subordination of others. Collins states that through routinized daily practices of interaction at the microlevel of social organization, individuals uphold the subordination of others.

Empowerment in this domain looks like taking conscious actions to change everyday relationships. According to Collins, this looks like adopting a point of view that embraces a sociological imagination that empowers individuals rather than using one's knowledge to exploit, commodify, or objectify members of marginalized groups.

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The Matrix of Domination and the Four Domains of Power

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Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins coined the concept matrix of domination in her book Black Feminist Thought to describe four interrelated domains that organize power relations in society. This approach to an analysis of power informs us about how structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power shape human action.

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'Disability Critical Race Theory: Exploring the Intersectional Lineage, Emergence, and Potential Futures of DisCrit in Education' (Subini Ancy Annamma and Colleagues, 2018)

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'Disability Critical Race Theory: Exploring the Intersectional Lineage, Emergence, and Potential Futures of DisCrit in Education' (Subini Ancy Annamma and Colleagues, 2018)

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Disability Critical Race Theory: Exploring the Intersectional Lineage, Emergence, and Potential Futures of DisCrit in Education | Annamma, Subini Ancy; Ferri, Beth A.; Connor, David J. | download

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Disability Critical Race Theory: Exploring the Intersectional Lineage, Emergence, and Potential Futures of DisCrit in Education | Annamma, Subini Ancy; Ferri, Beth A.; Connor, David J. | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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For a start, there isn't even agreement about terminology. Different people use 'Kanner's Autism', 'Asperger syndrome', 'Autism Spectrum Disorder', 'Aspie', and 'Autist'. The autistic community has indicated a preference for the term autistic people - so this is what this article uses. Similarly, some people use the term 'BAME' to refer to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.

As the recent controversial report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities indicates, this term is widely contested with some suggesting it is reductive and misleading as it implies that all people who are 'not White' can be categorised into one group. For the sake of this article, then, we will use the term Black in a political sense to recognise all groups who are through ethnicity, culture and heritage othered by dominant hegemonies and have chosen to form a common bond of identity.
So how do these two identities - being Black and being autistic - intersect? Well, that's complicated too.
Autism exists across all ethnicities, identities, backgrounds and cultures. According to the diagnostic criteria it refers to people who have 'difficulties in social communication and interaction' and 'restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities', a sadly negative description. The British Medical Association suggests that over 700,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed as autistic. However, incidence of autism may be far higher due to both failure of identification and to the fact that some autistic people are increasingly viewing autism as an identity rather than a disorder that needs 'diagnosis'.

The true prevalence of autism therefore is unknown although it is estimated at the minimum to represent 1% of the global population. Until recently identification of autistic people within Black communities was lower than in White communities. The the exact reason for this was unclear although suggestions included lack of cultural responsivity, stigma, limited access to healthcare services, and/or poverty. The National Autistic Society's Make school Make Sense project in 2007 found inconsistent evidence about the prevalence of autism and that children with autism from Black communities experienced discrimination in relation to disability and ethnicity. It identified that services were not meeting people's cultural needs and that there was a lack of awareness of rights and relevant services in some communities.

More recent research suggests that there may now be less difference in the identified prevalence of autism between Black and White children although it also suggests that children from Black communities may be being identified as autistic later than their White counterparts.

Parents who took part in the National Autistic Society's project investigating the experience of autism within the Black community suggested that they felt that they 'face a raw deal as their needs are not understood in their cultural and religious context' and that they 'face more challenges than other communities when trying to access services and gain information'.

The first Autism Voice UK symposium in 2020 sought to investigate some of these issues and - importantly - to give people who are members of both the autistic and Black communities a greater voice. This symposium recognised that cultural, ethnic and religious sensitivities are important, and may be overlooked or not understood by professionals who are not part of the same community. Organisers identified a pressing need for more investigation, favouring research carried out by researchers with insider perspective. However, they also identified that few autistic academics are Black. Current research is having to lean - as with this article - on co-operation and intersectionality between members of the Black and the autistic research communities.

So, what can be done, practically and immediately, to improve the lives of Black autistic people and to support greater understanding across communities? Education, clearly, has an important role, and the need for improved support and understanding at school was a key finding in the NAS Perspectives report. Parents reported that their child's autistic behaviour was sometimes perceived as aggression or non-compliance, a finding that is distressingly echoed in statistics from the world beyond education. In their chapter Autism and operational policing, Chown and Beardon suggest that for Black people who are also autistic 'there is a risk of "double discrimination" when interacting with police officers' (p. 44). Clearly, although education of Black autistic children is hugely important, so is the education of the wider community about how autism may present in both children and adults who are Black.

Perhaps one of the most important ways to do this is for autistic Black people to have greater voice and greater visibility across cultures. The artwork for this article has been supplied by the artist Iqra Barbar, who identifies as an autistic Muslim woman of colour. Black actor Talia Grant, most famous for their role as the autistic character Brooke Hathaway in Hollyoaks, was the first openly autistic actor in a mainstream TV soap. Perhaps the most famous autistic artist of all, Stephen Wiltshire, is Black.

We all of us need to be aware that Black history intersects with autistic history, and that the autistic community is also the Black community. Greater appreciation of these simple facts can only be of benefit to us all.

Footnote:
We - the writers of this article - are aware that we are only scratching the surface of this complex subject. We have yet to fully consider the complex relationship that some Black communities have with disability issues, nor have we addressed the perceived readiness felt by some for medicine to pathologise Black communities for cultural behaviours. Specifically, we have yet to address the presentation of autism in Black girls.

We are hoping to recruit participants who identify as belonging to both the Black and the autistic communities for further research investigating some of these issues. If you are interested in taking part in this, please contact the writers using the contact details given. We hope to follow up this article with details of our findings and further considerations of this issue in the future.

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For a start, there isn't even agreement about terminology. Different people use 'Kanner's Autism', 'Asperger syndrome', 'Autism Spectrum Disorder', 'Aspie', and 'Autist'. The autistic community has indicated a preference for the term autistic people - so this is what this article uses. Similarly, some people use the term 'BAME' to refer to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.

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'Scientists find Black pupils have highest rate of autism in UK' (Open Access Government, 2021)

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'Scientists find Black pupils have highest rate of autism in UK' (Open Access Government, 2021)

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In an investigation of over seven million pupils, researchers found that Black pupils have the highest rate of autism in the UK - they further noticed that there is "little research" on the existence of autism in ethnic minorities

In the first study of its kind, the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at Cambridge University focused on analysing the existence of autism across over seven million pupils in England.

Autism is more common than researchers initially thought.

They found that one in 57 children are on the autistic spectrum, which is 1.76% of the country. Researchers believe this increase is due to better awareness and diagnosis.

Dr Andres Roman-Urrestarazu, lead researcher from the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at the University of Cambridge, said: "We can now see that autism is much more common than previously thought. We also found significant variations in autism diagnosis in different ethnic minorities, though the reason why this should be the case isn't clear and warrants further research."

This new data found that Chinese pupils are 38% more likely to have autism than white pupils, with Black pupils 26% more likely.

The team found that existing cases were "strikingly high" for Black children specifically.

A fragmented understanding of autism and race?

When it comes to the intersection of race and autism, the team noted that there was "little research" on the existence of autism in ethnic minorities. However, the reality of prevalence in these communities is high.

This can create a distinct knowledge gap - leading to children growing up without a diagnosis, further at risk of meltdowns and being met with disciplinary action. When it comes to autism, the stereotypical image is of a brilliant, young, white man. He is almost always offputtingly intelligent, and unable to understand why others do not share in a highly specific, mathematical obsession.

A US primary care clinician said: "The primary candidate for an autism diagnosis and services is a seven-year-old White boy. Even a seven-year-old White girl won't get the same level of diagnosis or intervention."

This depiction may be true for some people. For the overwhelming majority, this kind of race and gender based expectation influences how educational authorities and health professionals treat them. For ethnic minority pupils with autism, problems at school are not often translated into a diagnosis.

When Suzy Rowland's son was diagnosed with autism, she wrote about this gap between expectation and reality for Black parents. She explained that she had to fight to get her son's autism and ADHD diagnosed, while punitive measures were given by schools as a response to his behavioural problems.

She said: "It points to a failure of medical best practice to observe that children of Black Caribbean origin in the UK and African American children in the US are routinely diagnosed with autism at an older age or misdiagnosed with depression or social, emotional and behaviour issues, which have different treatment protocols."

Why are Black pupils so likely to have autism?

Out of seven million pupils, the team found that 119,821 had a diagnosis of autism. Boys are still significantly more likely than girls to be diagnosed, which the team believe highlights flaws in gender-based diagnosis.

The data further revealed that prevalence was highest in pupils of Black ethnicity at 2.1%, while at the other end of the spectrum they were lowest in the Roma community at 0.85%. This work connects socioeconomic background to autism.

So pupils are 60% more likely to be socially disadvantaged, if they also have a record of autism.

Researchers wrote that they: "found that ethnic differences in autism were mediated through socio-economic disadvantage."

The researchers highlight this relationship as a vicious circle.

Because when it comes to socio-economic disadvantage, children from these families are at higher risk of autism - but having a child with autism can also increase the risk of poverty.

The team suggest that health authorities examine the link between public policy, autism, and immigrant or ethnic minority populations - to better understand why some autism diagnoses come to Black pupils so late, and what help they get after this point.

This study does not account for pupils who remain undiagnosed.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the ARC, said: "We can now see a snapshot of how many autistic children there are, and can drill down into local and ethnic variation, and reveal links with vulnerability. It is important that we safeguard the rights of children to access diagnostic services and education, tailored to their needs."
The full study is available here.

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Scientists find Black pupils have highest rate of autism in UK

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In the first study of its kind, the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at Cambridge University focused on analysing the existence of autism across over seven million pupils in England. Autism is more common than researchers initially thought. They found that one in 57 children are on the autistic spectrum, which is 1.76% of the country.

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Two powerful reflections on Black Disabled Lives Matter by Katouche Goll and Paul Ntulila

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'Disability should be part of Black history conversations – I’ve gone my whole life seeing people like me erased' (The Independent, 2020)

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'Disability should be part of Black history conversations – I’ve gone my whole life seeing people like me erased' (The Independent, 2020)

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Growing up black in Great Britain was very challenging for me in the 1990s, when representation felt perhaps as limited as it is today. Being a disabled boy too, I had double the challenge of being and felt my voice wasn't important enough - which, looking back, made me too hard to be recognised.

Living with a tracheostomy meant that my voice was very shallow and speaking for me was often difficult, making my presence vocally limited. Eager for acceptance, I'd often walk around with my tracheostomy tube visible to the naked eye; which often made people inquisitive and intrigued to know what it was.

It usually led to the sort of conversations that gave me a platform to express myself, talking about how I was born premature and what it meant to have a narrow airway. I've come far since then. In adulthood, I've gained the moniker "Mr Unique Voice", a man with a trachea tube which enables me to breathe and speak my truth of equality.

Growing up, it felt odd not being able to see many people who were black and disabled. I remember thinking society was ashamed of people who looked and sounded different. People like me. Was I being punished due to my narrow airway? Was I not good enough? And what were other black disabled people going through if I as a child at the time believed I wasn't worthy?

I never really saw people like myself on TV and frequently asked my mother why black people weren't equally represented as white people; from a young age of six, I felt we all needed to be given the same opportunities.

Talkative and full of questions, I wanted to know why I hardly saw people like me; or whether black people had been "naughty", seeing as we weren't, as I interpreted it, "allowed" to be on small or large screens across the nation. It was that curiosity that spurred my father on to educate me about my cultural heritage at the tender age of seven.

After having a harsh eye-opening lecture from him about our culture and what being black in Great Britain truly meant, my hunger to understand why and how black people came to this journey intensified. Though prominent figures such as BBC presenter Andi Peters and ITN's Trevor McDonald gave me a small glimpse of hope, by the time I became a teenager, I realised I felt miles apart from my peers and the wider black community due to being disabled.

Black disabled representation in the UK is still shockingly rare. But there are plenty of figures I wish we did a better job of celebrating. One of which is television presenter and wheelchair basketball player, Ade Adepitan. Coming from Nigeria, where disability as a whole can in some arenas be seen as witchcraft, or evidence of the past sins of parents being punished by God, I've always seen Adepitan as uniquely inspirational.

He contracted polio as a baby, which caused complications to his mobility, losing sensation and movement in his left leg, making it difficult to walk. After moving to the United Kingdom, Adepitan did not allow his disability or his skin colour deem what he could and couldn't do. He would have been, as so many black disabled people are, fully aware that he had two separate barriers to contend with, but went on to accomplish great recognition in the 2004 summer Paralympics as well as the 2005 Paralympic world cup. Through the contributions of people like him, it was again proven to me that being black and disabled shouldn't be seen as the barrier it is often treated as.

Marsha de Cordova, shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, is another source of inspiration. Elected as the first black MP with a disability within the house of parliament in 2014 (Cordova was born with nystagmus and is registered blind), she works to fight for inclusion while working tirelessly to represent people within Battersea, her constituency. Watching this lady's achievements taught me an insightful lesson that no matter her impairment and struggles as a black woman, she didn't allow her impaired vision to hold her back.

I like to think I have the same approach to my life. It was difficult growing up feeling like the duality of my identity was a massive taboo (even among people of the same ethnicity) due to society's lack of understanding about disability and the far-reaching impacts of ableism. But it opened my eyes to the importance of doing what I do today. Not only is there a fight to be noticed as a black person but battling two barriers makes it double the challenge.

I see this while doing my advocacy work in the UK too. I am invited to speak on issues affecting black disabled communities on a regular basis, and through it, I've learned that there is an incredible lack of understanding from workplace policy, law enforcement, local authorities and more - all of which still have yet to figure out how to fairly work with and represent black disabled people.

Take the case of Osime Brown, a severely autistic 21-year-old man who is currently facing deportation to Jamaica, a country he hasn't been back to since he was 4 years-old, for example. Despite desperate pleas for compassion over his case, at each opportunity where he could have been supported, he seems, as far as I can see, to have been let down by the local authorities, the police and the educational system alike.

These failings may well have led him into being convicted for a crime he maintains he is innocent of. It's not a stretch in my view, given quotes from his mother, that he may not have even been fully aware of what was happening at the time because of his disability. Even his behaviour since being incarcerated points to his vulnerability. He has been said to ring his mother to ask her if he needs to wash his hair, among other devastating examples. Still, this young man is facing deportation, with no demonstrable concern from the state and about his wellbeing.

Institutionally, the justice system has never been fair to black people. To be a disabled person in addition is a double punishment.

It's why I'm so thankful for voices like Olajumoke Abdullahi and Kym Oliver, campaigners who go by the name "The Triple Cripples", and seek to expose the fact that: "Disabled people are practically non-existent in mainstream media."

As they observe, if disabled people are largely absent from mainstraim spaces like these, "imagine how underrepresented Black and non-Black, women, femmes or non-binary people with disabilities are."

To have three reasons why you feel your voice and existence is not worthy and having to fight for equal and fair share of society's opportunities in 2020 shows you racism, sexism and ableism have long legacies that need to be rewritten.

There has been a massive awakening about the importance of giving marginalised groups a seat at the table this year but there's more work to be done. For disabled black brits in particular, that workload is mountainous. If Black Lives Matter, disabled black lives should too. The sooner society wakes up to that, the more freedom we'll all be able to enjoy.

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Opinion: I've gone my whole life seeing disabled people like me erased from Black history

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Growing up black in Great Britain was very challenging for me in the 1990s, when representation felt perhaps as limited as it is today. Being a disabled boy too, I had double the challenge of being and felt my voice wasn't important enough - which, looking back, made me too hard to be recognised.

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Surviving the Holocaust to Saving Refugee Children: The Incredible Story of Lord Dubs (Double Down News, 2017)

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Surviving the Holocaust to Saving Refugee Children: The Incredible Story of Lord Dubs (Double Down News, 2017)

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Surviving the Holocaust to saving refugee children: The incredible story of Lord Dubs

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'Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn't Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi' (Double Down News, 2020)

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'Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn't Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi' (Double Down News, 2020)

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Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn't Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

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I Lost 39 Members of My Family in the Holocaust, Jeremy Corbyn is No Antisemite | Andrew Feinstein (Double Down News, 2020)

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I Lost 39 Members of My Family in the Holocaust, Jeremy Corbyn is No Antisemite | Andrew Feinstein (Double Down News, 2020)

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I Lost 39 Members of My Family in the Holocaust, Jeremy Corbyn is No Antisemite | Andrew Feinstein

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'The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber' (Double Down News, 2020)

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'The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber' (Double Down News, 2020)

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The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber

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The archive for this journal includes volumes 1-60. Please note that volumes 60 (1) and 60(2) are not included as they comprise reprints. The journal has ceased publication.

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'In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity' (Daniel Kevles, 1985)

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'In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity' (Daniel Kevles, 1985)

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Daniel Kevles traces the study and practice of eugenics--the science of "improving" the human species by exploiting theories of heredity--from its inception in the late nineteenth century to its most recent manifestation within the field of genetic engineering. It is rich in narrative, anecdote, attention to human detail, and stories of competition among scientists who have dominated the field.

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In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity

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Daniel Kevles traces the study and practice of eugenics--the science of "improving" the human species by exploiting theories of heredity--from its inception in the late nineteenth century to its most recent manifestation within the field of genetic engineering. It is rich in narrative, anecdote, attention to human detail, and stories of competition among scientists who have dominated the field.

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'Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, Its Sources and Its Critics in Britain (Pauline Mazumdar, 2011)

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'Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, Its Sources and Its Critics in Britain (Pauline Mazumdar, 2011)

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This outstanding history examines the eugenics movement from its origin to its heyday as the source of a science of human genetics. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings makes a major contribution to the study of the British eugenics movement and its applications to current scientific work.

Previous treatments have been flawed in not viewing eugenics as a science whose methods required serious consideration. By avoiding this narrow approach, Pauline Mazumdar provides a scholarly and provocative analysis, utilizing important archival material newly available to researchers. The conclusions she draws from this material give the reader important insight into the inner workings of the British eugenics that published sources alone could not provide. The study also provides a historical introduction to the current problems connected with the huge international projects for the mapping of the human genome.

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Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, its sources and its critics in Britain

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This outstanding history examines the eugenics movement from its origin to its heyday as the source of a science of human genetics. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings makes a major contribution to the study of the British eugenics movement and its applications to current scientific work.

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Paul Weidling Author Page (Oxford Brookes)

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Paul Weidling Author Page (Oxford Brookes)

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Professor Paul Weindling - Oxford Brookes University

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'Conceptualising Eugenics and Racial Hygiene as Public Health Theory and Practice' (Paul Weindling, 2018: 18-33)

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'Conceptualising Eugenics and Racial Hygiene as Public Health Theory and Practice' (Paul Weindling, 2018: 18-33)

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In Germanic and Nordic languages, the term for 'public health' literally translates to 'people's health', for example Volksgesundheit in German, folkhälsa in Swedish and kansanterveys in Finnish. Covering a period stretching from the late nineteenth century to the present day, this book discusses how understandings and meanings of public health have developed in their political and social context, identifying ruptures and redefinitions in its conceptualisation. It analyses the multifaceted and interactive rhetorical play through which key concepts have been used as political tools, on the one hand, and shaped the understanding and operating environment of public health, on the other.

Focusing on the blurred boundaries between the social and the medico-scientific realms, from social hygiene to population policy, Conceptualising Public Health explores the sometimes contradictory and paradoxical normative aims associated with the promotion of public health. Providing examples from Northern Europe and the Nordic countries, whilst situating them in a larger European and international context, it addresses questions such as:

How have public health concepts been used in government and associated administrative practices from the early twentieth century up to the present?

How has health citizenship been constructed over time?

How has the collective entity of 'the people' been associated with and reflected in public health concepts?

Drawn from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the authors collected here each examine a particular way of understanding public health and assess how key actors or phenomena have challenged, altered or confirmed past and present meanings of the concept. Conceptualising Public Health is of interest to students and scholars of health and welfare state development from diverse backgrounds, including public health, sociology of health and illness, and social policy as well as medical, conceptual and intellectual history.

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Conceptualising Public Health: Historical and Contemporary Struggles over Key Concepts

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In Germanic and Nordic languages, the term for 'public health' literally translates to 'people's health', for example Volksgesundheit in German, folkhälsa in Swedish and kansanterveys in Finnish. Covering a period stretching from the late nineteenth century to the present day, this book discusses how understandings and meanings of public health have developed in their political and social context, identifying ruptures and redefinitions in its conceptualisation.

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'Julian Huxley and the Continuity of Eugenics in Twentieth-century Britain' (Paul Weindling, 2012)

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'Julian Huxley and the Continuity of Eugenics in Twentieth-century Britain' (Paul Weindling, 2012)

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Julian Huxley and the Continuity of Eugenics in Twentieth-century Britain | Weindling, Paul | download

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Julian Huxley and the Continuity of Eugenics in Twentieth-century Britain | Weindling, Paul | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain' (Dan Stone, 2002)

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'Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain' (Dan Stone, 2002)

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Before the First World War there existed an intellectual turmoil in Britain as great as any in Germany, France or Russia, as the debates over Nietzsche and eugenics in the context of early modernism reveal. With the rise of fascism after 1918, these debates became more ideologically driven, with science and vitalist philosophy being hailed in some quarters as saviors from bourgeois decadence, vituperated in others as heralding the onset of barbarism. Breeding Superman looks at several of the leading Nietzscheans and eugenicists, and challenges the long-cherished belief that British intellectuals were fundamentally uninterested in race. The result is a study of radical ideas which are conventionally written out of histories of the politics and culture of the period.

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Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain (Liverpool University Press - Studies in European Regional Cultures)

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Before the First World War there existed an intellectual turmoil in Britain as great as any in Germany, France or Russia, as the debates over Nietzsche and eugenics in the context of early modernism reveal.

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'Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: "Murder of the Unfit' (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

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'Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: "Murder of the Unfit' (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

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The Nazi persecution of persons with disabilities in Germany was one component of radical public health policies aimed at excluding hereditarily "unfit" Germans from the national community. These strategies began with forced sterilization and escalated toward mass murder. The most extreme measure, the Euthanasia Program, was in itself a rehearsal for Nazi Germany's broader genocidal policies.

The ideological justification conceived by medical perpetrators for the destruction of the "unfit" was also applied to other categories of "biological enemies," most notably to Jews and Roma (Gypsies). Compulsory sterilization and "euthanasia," like the "Final Solution," were components of a biomedical vision which imagined a racially and genetically pure and productive society, and embraced unthinkable strategies to eliminate those who did not fit within that vision.

Throughout this Special Focus page and its related links, you will see translations of terms used during the Nazi regime; please note that although many of these terms are unacceptable or offensive today, they are included here as examples of Nazi terminology and the propaganda campaign used to justify mass murder.

Listen to Museum historian

From a 2002 interview with subject matter expert Patricia Heberer:

"...political and medical authorities began to divide their community between its 'fit' and 'unfit' members." Play audio

"...an idea that human heredity was fixed and immutable." Play audio

"...the program would be a secret one and at first would target infants and toddlers." Play audio

"...within hours of her arrival she had perished, in the Hadamar gas chamber, in May 1941." Play audio

"...the medical community closed rank." Play audio

AN OPEN SECRET

On July 14, 1933, the German government instituted the "Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases." This law called for the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. With the law's passage the Third Reich also stepped up its propaganda against the disabled, regularly labeling them "life unworthy of life" or "useless eaters" and highlighting their burden upon society.

The term "euthanasia" (literally, "good death") usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual. In Nazi usage, however, "euthanasia" referred to the systematic killing of the institutionalized mentally and physically disabled. The secret operation was code-named T4, in reference to the street address (Tiergartenstrasse 4) of the program's coordinating office in Berlin.

Ashes from cremated victims were taken from a common pile and placed in urns without regard for accurate labeling. One urn was sent to each victim's family, along with a death certificate listing a fictive cause and date of death. The sudden death of thousands of institutionalized people, whose death certificates listed strangely similar causes and places of death, raised suspicions. Eventually, the Euthanasia Program became an open secret.

On August 18, 1939, the Reich Ministry of the Interior circulated a decree compelling all physicians, nurses, and midwives to report newborn infants and children under the age of three who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability. At first only infants and toddlers were incorporated in the effort, but eventually juveniles up to 17 years of age were also killed. Conservative estimates suggest that at least 5,000 physically and mentally disabled children were murdered through starvation or lethal overdose of medication.

Personal History

Eyewitness testimony- Robert Wagemann
Historical film footage- US Soldiers Inspect Hadamar
ID Card- Helene Melanie Lebel

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Online Exhibition - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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The Nazi persecution of persons with disabilities in Germany was one component of radical public health policies aimed at excluding hereditarily "unfit" Germans from the national community. These strategies began with forced sterilization and escalated toward mass murder. The most extreme measure, the Euthanasia Program, was in itself a rehearsal for Nazi Germany's broader genocidal policies.

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Afro-Germans before 1933

After World War I, the Allies stripped Germany of its African colonies. The German military stationed in Africa, known as the Schutztruppen, as well as missionaries, colonial bureaucrats, and settlers, returned to Germany with racist attitudes. Separation of white people and Black people was mandated by the Reichstag (German parliament), which enacted a law against mixed marriages in the African colonies.

Following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the victorious Allies occupied the Rhineland in western Germany. The use of French colonial troops, some of whom were Black, in these occupation forces heightened anti-Black racism in Germany. Racist propaganda against Black soldiers depicted them as rapists of German women and carriers of venereal and other diseases. The children of Black soldiers and German women were called "Rhineland Bastards."

Nazi Perceptions of People of African Descent

The Nazis, at the time a small political movement, viewed the "Rhineland Bastards" as a threat to the purity of the Germanic race. In his autobiography, (My Struggle), Hitler charged that "the Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily-resulting bastardization."

African German mulatto (a person of mixed white and Black ancestry) children were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military. With the Nazi rise to power they became a target of racial and population policy. By 1937, the Gestapo had secretly rounded up and forcibly sterilized many of them. Some were subjected to medical experiments; others mysteriously "disappeared."

Influence of Black Artists in Culture

Both before and after World War I, many Africans came to Germany as students, artisans, entertainers, former soldiers, or low-level colonial officials, such as tax collectors, who had worked for the imperial colonial government. Hilarius (Lari) Gilges, a dancer by profession, was murdered by the SS in 1933, probably because he was Black. Gilges' German wife later received restitution from a postwar German government for his murder by the Nazis.

Some African Americans, caught in German-occupied Europe during World War II, also became victims of the Nazi regime. Many, like female jazz artist Valaida Snow, were imprisoned in Axis internment camps for alien nationals.

In the early 1920s, African American jazz artists could not break through the racial divide in the US, so they took to Europe where they could perform with ever-growing popularity. The cultural movement of this music threatened the expansion of Nazi ideology, which held this music to be immoral. By the mid-1930s Nazi authorities banned all foreign, non-Aryan music in Germany, but the campaign to rid the country of jazz did not stop American artists from going abroad to share their art. The portrait artist Josef Nassy, living in Belgium, was arrested as an enemy alien and held for seven months in the Beverloo transit camp in German-occupied Belgium. He was later transferred to Germany, where he spent the rest of the war in the Laufen internment camp and its subcamp, Tittmoning, both in Upper Bavaria.

Black Prisoners of War

Black Europeans and Americans were also interned in the Nazi concentration camp system. Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nichols, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.

After battling for freedoms and defending democracy worldwide, African American soldiers returned home in 1945 only to find themselves faced with the existing prejudice and "Jim Crow" laws. Despite segregation in the military at the time, more than one million African Americans were fighting for the US Armed Forces on the homefront, in Europe, and in the Pacific by 1945. Some African American members of the US armed forces were liberators and witnesses to Nazi atrocities. The 761st Tank Battalion (an all-African American tank unit), attached to the 71st Infantry Division, US Third Army, under the command of General George Patton, participated in the liberation of Gunskirchen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, in May 1945.

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After World War I, the Allies stripped Germany of its African colonies. The German military stationed in Africa, known as the Schutztruppen, as well as missionaries, colonial bureaucrats, and settlers, returned to Germany with racist attitudes. Separation of white people and Black people was mandated by the Reichstag (German parliament), which enacted a law against mixed marriages in the African colonies.

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People Shot to Death by US Police In Terms of Race (2017-2022)

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People Shot to Death by US Police In Terms of Race (2017-2022)

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Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 639 civilians having been shot, 85 of whom were Black, as of August 28, 2023. In 2022, there were 1,097 fatal police shootings. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 5.8 fatal shootings per million of the population per year between 2015 and May 2023.

Police brutality in the U.S.

In recent years, particularly since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, police brutality has become a hot button issue in the United States. The number of homicides committed by police in the United States is often compared to those in countries such as England, where the number is significantly lower.

Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter Movement, formed in 2013, has been a vocal part of the movement against police brutality in the U.S. by organizing "die-ins", marches, and demonstrations in response to the killings of black men and women by police.

While Black Lives Matter has become a controversial movement within the U.S., it has brought more attention to the number and frequency of police shootings of civilians.

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People shot to death by U.S. police, by race 2023 | Statista

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The trend of fatal police shootings seems to only be increasing in the U.S., with a total 639 civilians shot to death by police as of August 28, 2023.

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'African American men as “criminal and dangerous”: Implications of media portrayals of crime on the “criminalization” of African American men' (Mary Beth Oliver, 2003)

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'African American men as “criminal and dangerous”: Implications of media portrayals of crime on the “criminalization” of African American men' (Mary Beth Oliver, 2003)

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African American men as "criminal and dangerous": Implications of media portrayals of crime on the "criminalization" of African American men

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African American men as "criminal and dangerous": Implications of media portrayals of crime on the "criminalization" of African American men | Mary Beth Oliver Ph.D. | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Nonblack POC, Stop Acting Like Black Women Are Invincible And Don't Feel Pain' (Lecia Michelle, 2018)

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'Nonblack POC, Stop Acting Like Black Women Are Invincible And Don't Feel Pain' (Lecia Michelle, 2018)

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Photo by Leighann Renee on Unsplash

We don't need you to perpetuate this white myth, too.

Black women are seen as mythical super humans. We can walk through fire. We have the strength of 10 men. We are invincible.
We don't feel pain.

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Nonblack POC, stop acting like Black women are invincible and don't feel pain

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We don't need you to perpetuate this white myth, too. Black women are seen as mythical super humans. We can walk through fire. We have the strength of 10 men. We are invincible. We don't feel pain.

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'The Eugenics Podcast #6: #BlackLivesMatter' (Marius Turda)

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'The Eugenics Podcast #6: #BlackLivesMatter' (Marius Turda)

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The Eugenics Podcast #6: #BlackLivesMatter

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'Please Stop Whitewashing Autism' (Psychology Today, 2015)

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'Please Stop Whitewashing Autism' (Psychology Today, 2015)

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Few things are more surreal to the parent of a severely autistic child than the neurodiversity rhetoric that recently culminated in Steve Silberman's book NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. To call the disorder that has left our children with profound impairments in cognition, communication and behavior a "strange gift," as Silberman does, is truly mind-boggling.

No one is contesting the achievements of the "scruffy geniuses" Silberman profiles in his book, or denying that they should be celebrated. The question is whether a comprehensive, 480-page account of "The Legacy of Autism" should have devoted more space to those with low-functioning autism than the nine pages listed under this topic in the index.

Here's what we know about the autistic population in the United States: According to the CDC, 40 percent are also intellectually disabled. Autism Speaks reports that 30 percent are nonverbal, and a 2013 study published in the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders found that over half of autistic children suffer from aggressive and/or self-injurious behavior.

So this is not a small fraction, although readers might be forgiven for assuming as much after finishing NeuroTribes. As Jennifer Senior noted in her review for The New York Times, "We don't see autism in some of its more devastating forms." But it's exactly those forms that need to be confronted before concluding "that much of the suffering associated with autism is the result of the ways that autistic people and their families are habitually denied the services they need," as Silberman does, rather than the result of brutal neurological symptoms that often necessitate a lifetime of care.

Silberman didn't interview any parents like me for his book. If he had, he might have heard some accounts like those below, which are excerpted from a secret Facebook group for parents of severely autistic children. These were not written for public consumption: they are raw, unfiltered thoughts and feelings intended for a safe, empathetic audience. Many thanks to the parents who allowed me to publish their posts and, as one mom explained, "show this side of autism." I am not including their names, to preserve their privacy, but I will say that no two posts were written by the same author, and that I could have included a thousand others just like these:

9/11/15: "Got a call this afternoon that [my son] attacked his bus driver-ripped her shirt, broke her necklace, and I know scared the sh*t out of her. He is strapped in the bus for obvious safety reasons, but because he was slapping his head REALLY hard, the bus driver stopped and went back to help the parapro see if they could calm him down. I'm not sure if they unstrapped him or he just got a hold of the driver because she got too close. My son shouldn't be hurting other people or himself. I'm just hoping he doesn't come down from his room until my hubby gets home..."

9/8/15: "My heart is breaking because my beautiful daughter does so well for awhile and then she explodes and hurts everyone around her, including herself, and destroys the house with her head. I had to come home from a council meeting tonight because she was out of control. She's asleep now, but who knows for how long. She's 17, strong beyond belief, she loves us, we love her, but she is destroying us."

9/4/15: "I am physically and mentally exhausted. He is 21 and has been a poor sleeper for most of his life. Since about age 17, it has been up and down, but by then I was already the lightest sleeper in the world. His OCD is so bad at the moment that he literally sleeps for an hour at a time and then gets up looking for things to 'tidy' or throw down the stairs. When he can't find anything he strips himself and his bed. I have had an ongoing migraine for almost a week and feel like I want to scream!!! People wonder why I haven't found a residential placement for him but it would be too cruel. For him and me. I can't bear the thought of him being upset or mistreated as he has no way of letting us know. He loves nothing more than being with us, especially his dad. If my husband goes to put his shoes on then B. is up and putting his on too in a second. When he goes out without him he will stand at the window and cry and hit himself. He gets into our bed every night before he goes to his own room. We try every night to get him to go straight to his own bed but he just shakes his head and if we insist he will punch himself in the head, bite himself, or attack us. When do we get a break?"

8/27/15: "I had to go get E. early again today. They had to have three teachers keep her controlled as she was spitting and sometimes ate paper and spit it at people, pinching/hitting/smacking other kids, running off, and slapped one teacher...I only cried a little this time. Guess it gets easier to take each year..."

8/25/15: "You know I love my little girl more anything but I hate autism so much. I hate that nothing comes natural; it all has to be taught. I hate the meltdowns and lashing out. I hate the self injury behaviors even more! I hate that even with meds, we still have nights where we are up all night. I hate the isolation and not having a normal life-just simple things we can't do. I hate that she can't speak or even understand me! I hate that she won't eat and lives off Pediasure! What I really want for her more than anything is happiness -to be able to take her places without all the screaming; even if she is in a damn stroller happy flapping away, I don't care-as long as she is happy! Let them stare all they want! I will always hate autism but I swear if she could just be happy or happy a good bit of the time maybe all the other sh*t won't make me so damn sad! Sorry for the vent Just in a funk right now!"

8/14/15: "OMG!!! My daughter is driving me crazy!! She will not sit still, has been trying to break into the kitchen-I've had to replace the mayo three times this week. She's pooped and smeared; she's hardly sleeping... Uuugh, three more days... Almost forgot-she won't let me turn any lights on so we are sitting in the dark."

8/6/15: "Our day has been spent shredding books we love. Tomorrow will probably be spent asking for these books."

7/26/15: "The OCD is seriously killing me. Today he wanted up on the dresser. Down off the dresser. Up on the dresser, then me sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet crossed. Who can live this way forever? And even when he's not angry, he's hitting me when he's excited or maybe wants a reaction. I get tired of trying to 'redirect to something more appropriate' and I'm just taking it now. I just go to my happy place and just take it. What I hate the most is not enjoying a single minute with my son."

7/27/15: "Wonder if your body can go into shock from being bitten and scratched so much... or is it just mental exhaustion... or both. My arms are swollen. With missing skin... in pain right now."

7/27/15: "This is how I feel. I'm not allowed to look sad or express any negative feelings especially when it comes to dealing with E's Autism. Society doesn't tolerate the brutally honest truth so I have to hide it deep inside. Except here. I fear it will be the end of me eventually."

7/23/15: "Summer is so hard. So depressed. So tired of seeing pictures of happy families on FB enjoying their days while I'm drugging my kid into a coma just to stop getting beat up for a few hours."

7/17/15: "We are on day 13 of what feels like one continuous meltdown. I can't handle this much longer. My husband just pulled him off me and now I am locked in the bathroom while he has a colossal meltdown... Dear God I don't know how much longer I can do this."

7/3/15: "My son is 10, nonverbal, still in diapers, doesn't have a single friend, suffers seizures. I can sure bet that if he had the choice he wouldn't want this 'gift.' My younger son has had to watch his older brother destroy the house, attack Mom, kill his unborn little brother (kicked me during a diaper change). I know for some on the spectrum autism is a gift, for my son, it is anything but. I wish people could respect that."

6/9/15: "Well this is autism at our house last night-was at the hospital for hours till they were able to stitch A. up... I dropped the ball, I let this happen, I could have-should have-stopped it. I've been doing so well-controlling every single thing, avoiding his self-injurious behavior... all that could trigger him. I avoid this, I avoid that, and yesterday I slipped and this is what happens when I didn't make his world perfect."

5/28/15: "Things are so dark..I can't see the light anymore. 5-6 hour rages. He breaks my hubby's iPhone, dishes, our skin, and our hearts most of the time on a daily basis. [My husband] wouldn't go to the doctor yesterday even though his hand is swollen three times its size. He said he doesn't think it's broken even though he felt a pop. D. came through the door from school melting down over a pair of gloves he left in the classroom. I managed to lock myself in the bathroom when he came after me but I accidentally left my keys on the counter. D. got out and down our street and I went chasing after him and my HUGE cat print Capri jammy pants with my Tony the Tiger jammy shirt. My new neighbors across the street-otherwise known as Mr. and Mrs. 'Perfect F*cking Lives'-were outside and I screamed at them hysterically to please help me as I ran down the street in a panic."

4/26/15: "I don't know why it feels like forever when they attack us physically. I guess maybe it's the sadness to see them so out of control and suffering such immense rage. Fear and regret I caused it somehow, physical pain, and humiliation because we are just so close to nothing in society... We are just the people who struggle... The people who live in the margin... I really feel we became invisible somehow... We can be like ghosts."

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Few things are more surreal to the parent of a severely autistic child than the neurodiversity rhetoric that recently culminated in Steve Silberman's book NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. To call the disorder that has left our children with profound impairments in cognition, communication and behavior a "strange gift," as Silberman does, is truly mind-boggling.

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'Black Mixed-Race Men's Perceptions and Experiences of the Police' (Lisa and Long and Remi Joseph-Salisbury, 2018)

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'Black Mixed-Race Men's Perceptions and Experiences of the Police' (Lisa and Long and Remi Joseph-Salisbury, 2018)

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Long, Lisa, Joseph-Salisbury, Remi

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Ethnic and Racial Studies

10.1080/01419870.2017.1417618

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It's long been suspected that black girls are perceived as more adult-like and less innocent than white girls in school and other environments, and a new report offers further confirmation that this is the case.

Researchers with the Initiative on Gender Justice and Opportunity at Georgetown Law's Center on Poverty and Inequality spoke directly toblack girls and women across the country about how they are forced to deal with harmful perceptions - like that black girls are more mature and less in need of protection than other students - from a young age.

This phenomenon, which the researchers refer to as "adultification bias," was examined in a 2017 report from the same team. The latest report builds on those findings by including the lived experiences of black women and girls. It's also worth noting that manyof the women cited in the report recalled dealing with the same sorts of issues in their childhoods, showing that this is far from a new problem.

According to participants in the Georgetown study, which was released on Wednesday, "when Black girls express strong or contrary views, adults view them as challenging authority or, more fundamentally, simply assume a girl's character is just plain 'bad.'"

This bias also likely plays a role in the increasing use of discipline against black girls in the classroom, by law enforcement, and in interactions with authority figures, even though they are no more likely to misbehave than white girls.

"It's really striking that in the context of childhood, which is the epitome of innocence, black girls are not getting the benefits of being viewed as innocent," Rebecca Epstein, the executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, told Vox.

Black girls say they are often given less support than their peers - and that authority figures often react to them more harshly

In their first report on this issue in 2017, the Georgetown Law researchers found that black girls as young as 5 years old are already seen as less innocent, and needing less support, than white girls of the same age. This presumption led teachers and other authority figures to treat black girls as older than they actually are and more harshly than white female students, with the disparity being particularly wide for 10- to 14-year-olds.

For the new study, researchers held several focus groups with black women and girls, which were broken up by age - girls as young as 12 and women as old as 60 participated. They asked them to respond to many of the findings of the 2017 Georgetown Law report, and particularly asked them if the findings about adultification bias aligned with their own life experiences.

Their overwhelming response was yes. By and large, the women and girls in the focus groups said that they had a "well, of course" reaction to the 2017 report, confirming that they were often treated more harshly than their white peers and were often accused of having "attitudes" and being "aggressive" when they attempted to defend themselves or explain their points of view to authority figures.

"Black women and girls really attributed the source of this to the historical roots of slavery and the intersectionality of being black and a woman," says Jamilia Blake, a Texas A&M professor and a co-author of the report. "These issues didn't come out of the blue."

Women in the focus groups also added other suggestions for what could be behind this discriminatory treatment. They pointed to a number of factors, including "negative stereotypes of Black women, as well as racism, sexism, and poverty." They also shared a belief thateducators may be punishing black girls for failing to conform to "feminine" or "ladylike behavior" and forcing black girls to meet different standards.

The result is that across the country, when a black girl misbehaves, her behavior is often treated as a deliberate, calculated infraction, rather than as a child making a mistake. Comments from women and girls in the focus groups provide further insight into the ways black girls have experienced this in their daily lives.

One 15-year-old girl described a traffic stop where a police officer criticized her for not carrying identification, telling the girl that she was lying about her age, assuming that she was older. When the girl maintained that she was, in fact, 15, she was handcuffed and fingerprinted, and the officer told the girl that her actions put her in that situation. "He was like: 'Well, child, you know, don't lie to us. And if you tell us the real - your real age and real name, we wouldn't have to be going through none of this,'" the girl recalled in the report.

Women and girls also recalled being told that they were disrespecting authority for asking questions in schools. Black girls were often punished for vague things like "having an attitude" or "defiance."

"Most times when you try to, like, defend yourself, they see how you're talking back," a participant in a 17- to 23-year-old focus group said. "And then they'll be like, 'There's consequences,'" which could mean detention or suspension. "They always feel like you're talking back, but you're really not. You're just trying to defend, like, get your side across," she added.

Many of the women and girls who spoke to researchers also described having to deal with people's expectations that they were angry or aggressive. Starting in childhood, black girls are seen as "sassy," or accused of having attitude problems, perceptions often rooted in stereotypes of the "angry black woman."

In other cases, black girls are subjected to sexualization, with people accusing them of being "fast" or of trying to attract male attention with their clothes. The latter, which seems to align with the ways black women have historically been oversexualized and subjected to the "Jezebel" stereotype (a belief dating back to slavery that frames black women as hypersexual predators looking to corrupt men) has been linked to issues with school dress codes.

The National Women's Law Center noted in a 2018 report that black girls are more likely to be penalized for wearing the same things as other girls, and their bodies are often sexualized by teachers and school authority figures, who then punish them for minuscule or nonexistent clothing infractions.

Taken together, these presumptions lead to black girls being held to a different standard, and facing punishments for not fitting a specific definition of quiet, reserved femininity. In so many ways, a woman in one of the focus groups observed, "we're told to be smaller, quieter, lighter, prettier."

It's likely that these biases fuel a number of growing disparities that black girls face when interacting with law enforcement, schools, and the justice system, and this may have a heavy impact on their future.

A number of systems are failing black girls, and it's fueling inequality

The Georgetown Law report is just the latest in a growing body of research looking at the systemic ways black girls are penalized and discriminated against from a young age. And as a new report on the criminalization of black girls in USA Today notes, a large part of the problem is that institutional systems are simply not prepared to help them.

A 2012 report from the African American Policy Forum, for example, noted that when it comes to school discipline, black girls are often punished more severely in school because they are seen as more aggressive and less feminine than white girls.

And this institutional failure to address this problem means that more and more black girls are being pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline.

Federal civil rights data has found that black girls are five to six times more likely to be suspended from their schools than white girls. Black girls are a relatively small percentage of the national student population but accounted for more than 40 percent of girls with multiple out-of-school suspensions in the 2011-'12 school year, according to the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights. In every state in the country, black girls are more likely to be suspended or referred to the juvenile justice system than their white peers.

It's also likely that the perception of black girls as older and less needing of protection plays a role in high-profile incidents involving police use of force against black girls, like when a teenage girl was thrown in the classroom by a school resource officer in South Carolina in 2015, or more recent incidents, like an 11-year old girl being tasered by a police officer for allegedly shoplifting, a 14-year old black girl being struck and violently arrested by police in Coral Springs, Florida, or an incident this past January where four 12-year-old black and Latina girls were suspected of drug use and allegedly strip-searched in their New York school because they appeared "hyper and giddy."

And in some areas, like Washington, DC, the number of girls being pushed into the juvenile justice system is actually increasing even as efforts to help black boys leads to declines in their arrests.

While school discipline and interactions with law enforcement are among the most serious ways that misperceptions of black girls can negatively affect them, there are other ways that this bias can have an impact. For example, there's a possibility that black girls being seen as older can affect their access to mentorship and leadership opportunities in the future, since they're seen as less in need.

"Across all systems, this can have a negative impact," Blake says. "The individuals who are making these decisions are making high-stakes decisions, if they're operating under this bias and they're in decision-making positions, that can have significant impact on black girls and, eventually, black women."

Of course, while awareness of these issues has increased in recent years, researchers also say it's necessary to examine the issue further, particularly when it comes to understanding the lasting effects this adultification bias has for black women.

The report does offer some solutions beyond raising awareness of the issue, adding that educators and authority figures must also take action by improving their cultural competence and learning how to communicate with black girls effectively. Researchers are also encouraging black women and girls to share their stories and talk about how this bias has affected them on an online platform that was launched alongside the new report.

Black women and girls involved in the focus groups agreed that these solutions are a helpful step in understanding the ways bias and racism affect them. But they also expressed skepticism that more data about the problem would be enough to change these biases. As one focus group participant explained, "[W]hat this will do is help me win the argument ... [but that] is different than getting them to do something about the problem."

As efforts to increase knowledge and force change continues, researchers say the most important thing is for people interacting with black girls to remember that they are just that: girls.

"Those in [positions of] authority over black girls lives need to treat girls based on their developmental age, not their race," Epstein said.

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A new report shows how racism and bias deny black girls their childhoods

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It's long been suspected that black girls are perceived as more adult-like and less innocent than white girls in school and other environments, and a new report offers further confirmation that this is the case.

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'Theorizing the Connections Among Systems of Subordination' (Nancy Levit, 2002)

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'Theorizing the Connections Among Systems of Subordination' (Nancy Levit, 2002)

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'Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites' (Kelly Hoffman and Colleagues, 2016)

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'Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites' (Kelly Hoffman and Colleagues, 2016)

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'Intersectionality, Race-Gender Subordination, and Education' (Angela Harris and Zeus Leonardo, 2018)

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'Intersectionality, Race-Gender Subordination, and Education' (Angela Harris and Zeus Leonardo, 2018)

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Harris, Angela, Leonardo, Zeus

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Review of Research in Education

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Harris, Angela, Leonardo, Zeus How much do you like this book? What's the quality of the file? Download the book for quality assessment What's the quality of the downloaded files? Review of Research in Education

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''It’s like we're seen as animals': black men on their vulnerability and resilience' (The Guardian, 2016)

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''It’s like we're seen as animals': black men on their vulnerability and resilience' (The Guardian, 2016)

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n the fall of 2013, very shortly after moving to Detroit, I covered the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renisha McBride. It was a disturbingly grim story. McBride, a 19-year-old black woman from Detroit, had crashed her car in the middle of the night in the white suburb of Dearborn Heights. Seeking help, she ventured to nearby homes and banged on the door of a white middle-aged man, Theodore Wafer. He responded by shooting her dead through his unopened screen door.

The day I got my brief from editors in New York, I was due to meet with my family friend Justin, a Detroit native who, at the time, was working in the lines at Ford. Feeling a responsibility for me, and knowing me to be so far from home, Justin had quickly taken on a brotherly role with me. I liked to refer to him as my fairy godmother.

We made for an eclectic pair. Justin is 6ft 5in, weighs 300lb and looks like he could be a former American football player. He is black. I am a medium-sized white woman, with peroxide hair and a very British accent. He offered to drive me around as I spoke to neighbors of the shooter, community members, the police and activists.

But as we entered Dearborn Heights, a white suburb, I noticed Justin would let me out of the car but never come with me. When we got to the police station, he shrunk in his car. We had lunch together, and the white waitress scowled when we declared we would share the soup.

"What you don't see, Rose," he said to me, "is that I am in danger here."

It turns out, despite working down the road, Dearborn Heights was a place Justin made sure to never come through. Driving through carried the threat of being pulled over, at the very least. Citing a history of housing discrimination, Justin said he knew he wasn't welcome there. Detroit activists later referred to Dearborn Heights as a " sundown town " - a place black people would historically know they shouldn't get caught after dark. Little had changed, they said.

At the police station, white officers welcomed me with open arms. They laughed and made jokes when I told then I lived in the heart of Detroit, a city as overwhelmingly black as their suburb was overwhelmingly white. Was I safe there? they asked me.

Justin was constantly shrinking, silently modifying his behavior to remain safe

There I was, a single young white woman, and everyone near and far was concerned for my safety. But it was the 300lb man next to me, Justin, who was constantly shrinking, silently modifying his behavior to remain safe. To protect his life. He was the body that was unsafe. Constructs and prejudice meant that black and male was a dangerous combination for him.

The killings last week of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, at the hands of police, reminded me of the lessons from that day.

In America, black men have historically been depicted as aggressive, hypersexual and violent - to be controlled, to be exploited, to be tamed. The result of that construct and the accompanying racist fear and forced subjugation it justifies has been counterintuitive: black men in America are in fact deeply fragile and constantly at risk.

"The emotional connection I have [to the news] is that it could be me at any time, any day it could be me," says William Jones, a 22-year-old New Yorker who works in high-end retail.

Every single black man I spoke to for the purpose of this article echoed Jones's feelings.

"Every day, I live and operate with that feeling of fragility, that feeling that I could be taken out at any time. I am a chokehold away from being Eric Garner," says Ben Saunders, a 37-year-old professor of psychology at Long Island University.

Up until now, Saunders says that he has been vigilant with himself in public. He makes sure to avoid causing a fuss, even if a fuss is warranted. He suppresses any strong feelings of anger. He doesn't speak up. His white wife sometimes wonders why not. "Black people have been killed for saying less than that," he says he responds to her.

The consequence of having to modify his behavior in such a way? "A loss of dignity," he says.

Josh Lott: 'I know I am a potential target'. Photograph: Nick Oza

Joshua Lott, a 37-year-old industry-renowned photojournalist who has traveled across the United States on assignment for the world's biggest news organizations, says that experience has taught him to always be on edge when he arrives in a new place to work.

"I am extremely cautious, especially when I go into a place where there aren't many minorities. I know I am a potential target. I am a target because I am a journalist, because I am a black man, I am tall and I wear colors."

People have called the police on him while he has been on assignment, he says. He recalls sirens and police cars racing towards him in a quiet neighborhood in Arizona where he was covering the housing crisis. A woman had told him he didn't belong there and called 911.

On top of his usual press credentials, Lott always carries a copy of the New York Times with him, featuring one of his credited photos on the front page. It is a frustrating reality that he knows is a necessary one to keep him safe.

"I shouldn't have to keep newspapers to tell people what I am doing and what I am about."

Lott says he has had his fair share of unprovoked "police encounters", including one very bad case of police brutality that occurred while he was covering a demonstration in Chicago and that was settled out of court, but he considers himself lucky.

"I am extremely fortunate, the cops could have pulled a gun on me and killed me. They could have made up any old thing."

Michael Oppenheimer, a 39-year-old public defender who has practiced in New York City, Washington DC and Baltimore, says that it is the norm in his job to meet a black or brown man who has just been arrested on a misdemeanor and has suffered a broken nose, stitches or a black eye at the hands of police.

There is little that can be done to seek justice for these men, he says. "The three charges, especially in New York, that ring a bell are disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and assaulting of a police officer - that's code for the cops beat you up and now they have to figure out a way to justify it."

No one is born racist. Racism is taught, and it should be untaught

William Jones

Oppenheimer says that part of what drew him to a career as a public defender is the knowledge that as a black man, however well educated or well dressed you can be, however well you behave, you can be mistreated. There is no escaping it.

"This is not black people saying we feel we are being discriminated against. It is statistical," he says, referring to data showing a disproportionate number of people killed or subjected to force by police are black.

Oppenheimer has had a policeman draw a gun on him while he was paying for a yellow cab in New York with his credit card after a night out at a restaurant. The policeman, after talking with the cab driver and realizing his mistake - that the lawyer was not in fact robbing the cabbie - told him "you know how it is around here" by way of explanation.

"His response was basically, you know what, black man, you should be used to this. My role in that instance is to shut up and take it. But I was freaked out. You don't know what's in other people's hearts. He could have fired a shot."

Everyone has a story. It becomes almost like this perverse rite of passage for black men in America."

Saunders, the psychology professor, says that in any given situation, he makes sure to always be aware of whether there is a police officer around. If one is around, he makes sure to modify his own behavior and be in tune with how he might be perceived at any given moment.

William Jones, the 22-year-old, is 6ft 6in. He says he knows he can be perceived as threatening. He says that is simply not fair. No one is born racist, he points out: racism is taught, and it should be untaught.

Jones knows his historical facts and informs me, sitting on a sidewalk in south Harlem, that not that many years ago I would not have been allowed to interview him. "It's not just that we wouldn't have been able to talk, it's that I could be killed for you talking to me," Jones says, explaining that history is not that far away. In 1955, 14-year-old African American Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi after he interacted with a white woman in a grocery store.

"It's like we are seen as animals. Treated like animals. It's not easy."

Jones's words recall the way in which the Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson who shot black teenager Michael Brown to death, described perceiving Brown as "aggressive", "angry" and like a " demon " just moments before he ended the 18-year-old's life.

A psychology study from 2014 authored by Phillip Goff at the University of California found that black children were consistently perceived by police officers as older and less innocent than their white peers.

"We found evidence that overestimating age and culpability based on racial differences was linked to dehumanizing stereotypes," Goff said of the study.

"Stereotypes always undermine the experience of an individual, or of being in a group," Saunders, the psychology professor, says. This past week, as he has sought community and to make sense of the events in the news, he says he has witnessed many of his black male friends break down in tears.

"The reluctance to view black men as being fragile is something that has been projected on African American men through stereotyping and prejudice."

"People think about black men, they do not think of vulnerability. There is not even an opportunity for black men to show vulnerability," he continues.

But for Saunders, this moment marks a turning point.

The outrage and despair he feels have made him rethink his way of interacting with the world.

"Philando Castile was killed for cooperating. I realized you can be killed for cooperating. That was liberating because I don't need to focus on cooperating as much," he says, referring to the fact that Castile was shot by a police officer as he reached for his identification.

Referring to a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Wearing The Mask, he says he is done with the wearing of a mask.

"Through having this unconscious cooperative mindset, I have built good credit with all these people, white people. They have thought of me as the good negro. I am ready to cash every chip that I have in this fight for social justice. Whether or not it means pushing people away. I am willing to cash it all in for this," he says.

"I always try and approach social justice issues from a place of cooperation, now I am approaching social justice issues from a place of demands."

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'It's like we're seen as animals': black men on their vulnerability and resilience

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n the fall of 2013, very shortly after moving to Detroit, I covered the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renisha McBride. It was a disturbingly grim story. McBride, a 19-year-old black woman from Detroit, had crashed her car in the middle of the night in the white suburb of Dearborn Heights.

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'The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children' (Phillip Goff and Colleagues, 2014)

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'The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children' (Phillip Goff and Colleagues, 2014)

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The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children. - PsycNET

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The social category “children” defines a group of individuals who are perceived to be distinct, with essential characteristics including innocence and the need for protection (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). The present research examined whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood…

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'Exploring the Label of ‘the Angry Black Woman’ (Dr Valerie Daniel, 2020)

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'Exploring the Label of ‘the Angry Black Woman’ (Dr Valerie Daniel, 2020)

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diversity of women in educational leadership

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gender pay gap in educational leadership roles

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representation of women in educational leadership

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unconscious bias against women in educational leadership

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gendered stereotypes in educational leadership

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imposter syndrome in educational leadership

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WomenEd blogs for women in leadership roles in education

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'Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna' (Herwig Czech, 2018)

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'Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna' (Herwig Czech, 2018)

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Abstract

Background

Hans Asperger (1906-1980) first designated a group of children with distinct psychological characteristics as 'autistic psychopaths' in 1938, several years before Leo Kanner's famous 1943 paper on autism. In 1944, Asperger published a comprehensive study on the topic (submitted to Vienna University in 1942 as his postdoctoral thesis), which would only find international acknowledgement in the 1980s. From then on, the eponym 'Asperger's syndrome' increasingly gained currency in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the conceptualization of the condition. At the time, the fact that Asperger had spent pivotal years of his career in Nazi Vienna caused some controversy regarding his potential ties to National Socialism and its race hygiene policies. Documentary evidence was scarce, however, and over time a narrative of Asperger as an active opponent of National Socialism took hold. The main goal of this paper is to re-evaluate this narrative, which is based to a large extent on statements made by Asperger himself and on a small segment of his published work.

Methods

Drawing on a vast array of contemporary publications and previously unexplored archival documents (including Asperger's personnel files and the clinical assessments he wrote on his patients), this paper offers a critical examination of Asperger's life, politics, and career before and during the Nazi period in Austria.

Results

Asperger managed to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded for his affirmations of loyalty with career opportunities. He joined several organizations affiliated with the NSDAP (although not the Nazi party itself), publicly legitimized race hygiene policies including forced sterilizations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated with the child 'euthanasia' program. The language he employed to diagnose his patients was often remarkably harsh (even in comparison with assessments written by the staff at Vienna's notorious Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' institution), belying the notion that he tried to protect the children under his care by embellishing their diagnoses.

Conclusion

The narrative of Asperger as a principled opponent of National Socialism and a courageous defender of his patients against Nazi 'euthanasia' and other race hygiene measures does not hold up in the face of the historical evidence. What emerges is a much more problematic role played by this pioneer of autism research. Future use of the eponym should reflect the troubling context of its origins in Nazi-era Vienna.

Background

Despite the international prominence of Hans Asperger (Fig. 1) as one of the pioneers in the history of autism and as the namesake of Asperger's syndrome, factual knowledge about his life and career is limited. This is surprising given that his successful career in Nazi-controlled Vienna raises questions concerning his potential political or professional involvement with National Socialism. The existing literature on the topic has tended to downplay or overlook any such involvement, or even to postulate that Asperger took a position of active resistance. With few exceptions, however, these judgments are based on a limited number of sources-a few passages from Asperger's Nazi-era publications, particularly a 1938 lecture containing the first references to "autistic psychopaths" [ 1] and his 1944 postdoctoral thesis [ 2], and statements by Asperger himself or by persons close to him from after 1945 (most importantly, a 1974 radio interview [ 3]).

The goals of this paper, based on comprehensive archival research, are to provide an account of Asperger's life and career during National Socialism and to submit prevailing narratives to the test of historical evidence. The picture that emerges is that of a man who managed to further his career under the Nazi regime, despite his apparent political and ideological distance from it. This was not least due to opportunities created by the political upheaval after Austria's Anschluss (annexation) to Germany in 1938, including the expulsion of Jewish physicians from the profession. (On the expulsion of Jews from the university clinic, which began before 1938, see [ 4] and below). As I will demonstrate, this career was made possible by Asperger's political concessions to the Nazi ideology and involved a certain degree of collaboration with the race hygiene apparatus, including the Nazis' child "euthanasia" program.

The analysis of patient case files written by Asperger and his colleagues from 1928 to 1944-a crucial set of documents mistakenly assumed to have been destroyed in World War II-sheds new light on the fate of Asperger's patients during the Nazi period (on Asperger's case files, see the " Asperger's Jewish patients" to " Asperger's diagnoses compared to those at Spiegelgrund " sections).

A review of the existing literature on Asperger's life and career shows the current fault lines in the narrative of his Nazi-era trajectory. Lorna Wing's seminal paper from 1981 which popularized the term "Asperger's syndrome" made no reference to the historical context of Asperger's work [ 5]. Similarly, Uta Frith's 1991 book chapter "Asperger and his syndrome" barely mentioned National Socialism in the few pages dedicated to Asperger's professional and personal life in Vienna during the 1930s and 1940s. Based on her reading of Asperger's 1944 article on "autistic psychopaths," she stated that "Asperger clearly cared about these children, who in most people's eyes were simply obnoxious brats" ([ 6]: 7). Her text established what has become the most common view of Asperger's behavior during the Nazi period, namely that he defended his patients against the Nazi regime at great personal risk: "Far from despising the misfits, he devoted himself to their cause-and this at a time when allegiance to misfits was nothing less than dangerous." She defended Asperger against accusations of "allegiance to Nazi ideology" that had been raised because of his early commitment to the German Youth Movement ([ 6]: 10). Eric Schopler, one of Asperger's fiercest critics, was one of those who explicitly drew this connection, but apparently had no evidence to back his accusations. When Frith published an annotated translation of Asperger's 1944 paper, her sole comment on its origin in Nazi-era Vienna was that it contained only one reference to "fascist ideology at a time when it would have been opportune to make many more such references" ([ 7]: 86).

Brita Schirmer published the first paper explicitly addressing Asperger's role during National Socialism [ 8]; her stance is already indicated in the subtitle: "Hans Asperger's defense of the 'autistic psychopaths' against Nazi eugenics." Her argument was based on Asperger's 1938 paper "The mentally abnormal child" [ 1] from which she drew conclusions similar to Uta Frith's. A 2003 paper by Helmut Gröger, also in German, examined possible influences of Nazi race ideology on Asperger's published work. Citing no less than 23 of Asperger's publications in the years from 1937 to 1974, Gröger concluded that Asperger generally "avoided topics touching race ideology" and maintained a "critical, differentiated attitude" ([ 9]: 204, 206). In line with the other authors cited here, Gröger credited Asperger with advocating on behalf of his patients, defending their value as human beings, and calling for loving care for each of them ([ 9]: 204-5, 210).

Interestingly, Gröger mentioned-without discussing the implications-that Asperger's name "appears" in the files of a 3-year-old girl with mental deficiencies who was sent to the child "euthanasia" clinic Am Spiegelgrund in Vienna ([ 9]: 209). As I demonstrate in the " Limits of 'educability': Asperger and the Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' facility " section, Herta Schreiber, the girl in question, was in fact transferred to the Spiegelgrund facility on Asperger's authority and died there 2 months later.

From 2005, cracks started to appear in the predominantly apologetic narrative of Asperger's role during National Socialism. Michael Hubenstorf, in an extensive book chapter on the history of Vienna University's Pediatric Clinic where Asperger worked, presented a host of previously unknown aspects of Asperger's career. The close ties between the pediatric clinic and the "euthanasia" facility Am Spiegelgrund, including connections between Asperger and Spiegelgrund's director Erwin Jekelius (1905-1952, Fig. 2), are of particular importance in the context of this paper ([ 4]: 171-4). Hubenstorf also documented the relationship between Asperger and his mentor Franz Hamburger, a fervent Nazi ideologue ([ 4]: 93, 118-9, 126-35, 191-3; see the " 'The best service to our Volk': Asperger and Nazi race hygiene" to " Asperger's diagnoses compared to those at Spiegelgrund" sections). Based among other sources on Hubenstorf's work, on personal documents, and on her own memories, Maria Asperger Felder published a nuanced portrait of her father, not shying away from his possible involvement in National Socialism-without, however, adding significant new facts [ 10]. Citing Schirmer [ 8], Daniel Kondziella in a 2009 paper on 30 neurological eponyms associated with the Nazi era included Asperger among the "physicians with ambivalent roles" because he had "been accused on uncertain grounds of harboring sympathy for Nazi politics" (while he had also "cautiously defended mentally disabled children") ([ 11]: 59).

Some preliminary results of my own research were presented at a 2010 symposium marking the 30th anniversary of Asperger's death and published in the conference proceedings ([ 12]; see also [ 13]: 201, 206, 217). In the same volume, Helmut Gröger argued along the lines of his above-cited 2003 article [ 14], while Roxane Sousek hinted at problematic aspects of Asperger's activities ([ 15]: 19). Ina Friedmann in her recent work on the topic also refrained from presenting an idealized picture of Asperger and the Austrian school of Heilpädagogik (therapeutic pedagogy) [ 16, 17, 18].

Adam Feinstein's 2010 book on the history of autism illustrated the increasing gap between the English- and German-language literature. The author qualified the affirmative references to Nazi ideology in some of Asperger's papers as a deliberate tactic to deceive "the Nazis" about his true intentions, namely to protect his patients. A cornerstone of his argument is Asperger's claim that he had faced arrest by the Gestapo for his stance against Nazi race hygiene policies ([ 20]: 15-18). Steve Silberman's 2015 book NeuroTribes, written for a general audience, also pushed the narrative of Asperger as an Oskar Schindler-like protector of children with autism. One of Asperger's alleged strategies was that he "intentionally highlighted his 'most promising' cases to deflect the wrath of the Nazis" ([ 21]: 216). As far as Asperger's conduct during National Socialism is concerned, Silberman's argument (and the evidence presented) is very similar to Adam Feinstein's and some of the other texts already mentioned ([ 21]: 108-9, 128-9, 137-8). The " 'The best service to our Volk': Asperger and Nazi race hygiene" section is dedicated to a discussion of these and similar claims.

One of Silberman's original findings regards the question of Asperger's and Kanner's respective roles in the "discovery" of autism. Georg Frankl (1897-1976), a close collaborator of Asperger's, left Vienna for the USA in 1937, going on to work with Leo Kanner ([ 21]: especially 167-8, 180). This information revived earlier suspicions that Kanner had known about Asperger's work before his own publications on the topic, based on the fact that Asperger had already mentioned autistic psychopathy in a 1938 publication [ 1], years before his more widely known postdoctoral thesis [ 2], and that the Austrian-born Kanner had access to German-language medical publications [ 22, 23].

The latest addition to a growing body of literature on the subject, John Donvan and Caren Zucker's In a Different Key is the first English-language publication to break with the narrative of Asperger as an active opponent to Nazi race hygiene and to introduce critical, hitherto unknown elements into the debate on his Nazi-era trajectory. This shift is mainly based on sources that I shared with the authors, which are presented in detail below ([ 24]: 316-41).

Although the precise nature of Asperger's relationship to National Socialism has been the elephant in the room for some time now, the necessary questions have so far evidently either not been asked at all, or they have been answered on the basis of a too limited number of sources. In what follows, I will present a more multifaceted picture both of Asperger's Nazi-era career and of the historical context of the inception of autism, based on an extensive body of sources, many of which are presented here for the first time.

Methods

This paper is based on a qualitative analysis of documents relating to Hans Asperger's life, work, and political orientation from archives in Austria and (to a lesser degree) Germany, and of his own publications, most of which have not previously been examined with regard to the questions raised here. The documentary sources include, among others, Asperger's personnel files, political assessments by Nazi authorities, and medical case records from various institutions, most importantly from the child "euthanasia" clinic Am Spiegelgrund and Asperger's Heilpädagogik ward. Despite claims to the contrary ([ 21]: 140, [ 25]: 37, [ 26]: 22), these records were not destroyed in the war. Apart from a gap between 1945 and 1969, the files (which go back as far as 1912) are today kept in the Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna. They pertain to those children admitted as inpatients; the documentation on the much larger number of children examined at the outpatient clinic is lost. From the critical years of 1938 to 1944, 1012 case files survive. Between 1940 and 1944, 62.7% of patients admitted were boys and 37.3% girls. Apart from a number of recurring elements (such as admission forms), the files vary in content and scope. It cannot be ruled out that single documents or whole files have been lost or purged. These records are analyzed here for the first time.

Results and discussion

Asperger's career before 1938

In 1911, Erwin Lazar (1877-1932) established the Heilpädagogische Station (Therapeutic Pedagogy Ward) at the Vienna University Children's Clinic (part of the city's general hospital), which had achieved international renown under its director Clemens von Pirquet (1874-1929) ([ 27]: 320, [ 28]: 161). Lazar regarded Heilpädagogik as a direct descendant of psychiatry, although the classic psychiatric illnesses such as psychoses were rarely diagnosed in the children he treated. Instead, he diagnosed the vast majority of his patients with "psychopathy" or mental "imbalance." Most of the ward's patients-in 1925, he mentioned a figure of 5000 annually-were diagnosed at the outpatient clinic. Only a relatively small number-complicated cases or cases of special clinical interest-was admitted over longer periods. Many children were referred by welfare institutions, the police, or the courts. Under Lazar, Heilpädagogik took inspiration from a variety of concepts, including Cesare Lombroso's criminal biology, Ernst Kretschmer's constitutional types, and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis [ 28].

Asperger joined the children's clinic in May 1931 under Pirquet's successor Franz Hamburger (1874-1954). In 1932, he started working at the clinic's Heilpädagogik ward as an "auxiliary physician" ( Hilfsarzt). In May 1935, he took charge of the ward and reached the position of an assistant. Asperger had not obtained his specialist doctor qualification in pediatrics and had published only a single work in Heilpädagogik (on bed-wetting) [ 29]. This raises the question why Asperger's colleague Georg Frankl was not promoted to the position-Frankl was 9 years older and had been working at the ward since 1927. Two years after Asperger's promotion, Frankl emigrated to the USA, where he joined Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins ([ 21]: 122). Another highly qualified Jewish employee, the psychologist Anni Weiss (1897-1991), who later married Frankl, had already left Austria in 1935 ([ 21]: 122).

Austrian universities were sites of virulent anti-Jewish agitation at the time (see [ 30]), which almost certainly was a factor in their decision to leave. Jewish doctors faced increasing difficulties in securing university positions, with some clinics and departments practically closed to Jews ([ 31]: 312). With Hamburger's appointment as chair in 1930, the children's clinic became a flagship of anti-Jewish policies long before the Nazi takeover ([ 4]: 69, 112). Regarding Anni Weiss and Valerie Bruck (1894-1961), Asperger's immediate predecessor as head of the Heilpädagogik ward, hostility towards working women also played a role: The Austrofascist regime (1933-1938) sought to push women out of the labor market, a stance shared by Nazi ideologues such as Hamburger ([ 16]: 181).

After Pirquet's sudden death in 1929, Hamburger introduced sweeping changes at the clinic. Pirquet's former collaborators, many of them Jewish, were replaced. The political orientation of Hamburger's assistants is illustrated by the fact that of those who attained the highest academic qualification ( Habilitation), all but one were dismissed in 1945 as Nazis-the exception being Hans Asperger ([ 27]: 320). Among Hamburger's recruits was Erwin Jekelius, who later became responsible for the deaths of thousands of psychiatric patients and mentally disabled children. He remained at the clinic from August 1933 to February 1936, spending part of this time at the Heilpädagogik ward. Another result of Hamburger's influence was a sharp decline in scientific standards and output ([ 4]: 87-94, 104, 117-8).

Hamburger and Jekelius were not the only fervent Nazis with whom Asperger had close professional contact during his early career. In 1932, he co-authored a paper with Erwin Risak (1899-1968), who had been his colleague at the university's III. Medical Clinic for a few weeks in 1931 [ 32]. Under Franz Chvostek junior (1864-1944), this clinic became known as a hotbed of Pan-German nationalist and Nazi agitation. Risak became an assistant to Hans Eppinger junior (1879-1946), director of the I. Medical Clinic, who was later involved in the Dachau seawater experiments. Following the Anschluss, Risak became one of the figureheads of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in the Vienna Medical Faculty, along with figures such as Hamburger, the anatomist Eduard Pernkopf (1888-1955), and others ([ 4]: 129).

Whatever the specific motivations for Hamburger's decision to appoint Asperger as the head of the Heilpädagogik ward in 1935, Asperger's promotion was aided by the anti-Jewish and misogynist tendencies then dominating Austria's social and political life. Although Asperger did not join the Nazis, due to his Pan-Germanic, völkisch orientation, he shared considerable ideological common ground with Hamburger and his network, allowing him to blend in without apparent frictions. When anti-Jewish persecution became state policy after the Anschluss, 65% of Viennese physicians were classed as Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws, including 77 pediatricians (70% of the specialists in this field). Tellingly, in 1938, not one Jewish pediatrician who had attained a Habilitation was working in Hamburger's clinic ([ 4]: 71-3, 112).

Asperger had the unreserved support of Franz Hamburger, even if he did not belong to his mentor's circle of underground Nazi activists. At a young age, and in an environment marked by political strife and a difficult labor market, he rose to Austria's most prominent position in the expanding field of Heilpädagogik, which would soon be forced to find its place within the new order of the Nazi state.

Asperger's political background before 1938

In order to understand how Asperger positioned himself vis-à-vis the Nazi regime after March 1938, it is first necessary to examine his political orientation during his formative years, when there was still a spectrum of political options to choose from. This will help explain why Asperger in 1938 found enough common ground with National Socialism to establish himself as a credible fellow traveler in the eyes of the party, without directly embracing National Socialism.

In Asperger's own words, his formative experience within the polarized political landscape of interwar Austria was membership in the so-called Bund Neuland, a Catholic youth organization focused on outdoor activities, with roots in the predominantly völkisch-nationalist Wandervogel and the German Youth Movement ([ 4]: 192-3). In 1914, 92% of the Wandervogel chapters (in Germany and Austria) had no Jewish members, due mostly to formal anti-Jewish regulations ([ 33]: 92-4).

Founded in 1921, the Austria-based Bund was a split-off from the Christian-German Student Union (CDSB) but stressed its affinities with the German Youth Movement as represented by the "Meißner formula," which Asperger cited in 1974 as a guiding principle in his life [ 3]. After World War I, the CDSB had become rife with aggressive anti-Jewish propaganda, including calls to boycott Jewish businesses ([ 33]: 175-81), tendencies which the Bund shared.

The Bund's intellectual influence was greater than its approximately 2000 strong membership would suggest ([ 34]: 92). It defined itself as Christian, Catholic, and Pan-German, and in sharp opposition to everything perceived as Marxist-leftist, liberal, or modern, which included parliamentary democracy. There was a degree of political diversity, and the Bund is sometimes classed as a "socially progressive" Catholic organization because some members supported social reforms in order to bring workers into the fold of the Church ([ 35]: 46). Nevertheless, in its fundamental principles, the Bund stood close to the fascist and authoritarian currents of the time ([ 36]: 835). A draft program from 1931 confirmed its opposition to the democratic state "in its current form" and stated that "the equivalence between Volk and state leads necessarily to the ideal of the Greater German Reich" (cited in [ 34]: 99).

During the 1930s, important sections of the Bund were infiltrated by Hitler Youth groups and members of other Nazi organizations ([ 34]: 95, 193, [ 37]). In 1935/1936, press reports estimated that 20% of Neuland members were (illegal) Nazis ([ 38]: 70-1). The authoritative account of its history states that the "predominant majority in the Bund was oriented towards Pan-Germanism, supported Austria's unification with Germany, and was at best indifferent vis-à-vis National Socialism," despite the fact that the official policy was to identify and exclude Hitler Youth cells within the organization ([ 36]: 586-7). The most striking example for the Bund's infiltration is its leader Anton Böhm (1904-1998), who joined the NSDAP in 1933 and remained an "illegal" party member until the Anschluss in 1938, even serving as an informant to the Austrian Nazis' intelligence services and the Gestapo in Munich ([ 34]: 103, 189-95). Arguably, the Bund constituted one of Nazism's most important intellectual bridgeheads in the powerful Austrian Catholic milieu during the crucial years leading up to the Anschluss ([ 34]: 100-1).

In 1933, Böhm published a programmatic comment on the political situation following the Nazi takeover in Germany, referring also to the persecution of the Jewish population: "There can be no doubt that the strong Jewish influence in Germany has had baleful consequences. Therefore, the anti-Jewish measures in Germany are justified as acts of national self-defense" ([ 39]: 106-7).

Over the following years, the Bund published a number of articles supporting the anti-Jewish persecutions in Nazi Germany [ 40]. The Bund's official mouthpiece also denounced the Viennese "Jewish press" as a corrosive influence in Austrian public life, attacked Jews as an alien element within the Catholic-German Austrian population, and warned against the dangers of "racial" and religious intermarriage ([ 41, 42, 43]: 20-1, [ 44]: 215).

While the Bund's periodical welcomed the German Nazis' anti-Jewish policies, its stance towards National Socialism as a whole was more complex. Although the Bund shared the Nazis' contempt for parliamentary democracy and all forms of cultural and intellectual modernism, as well as their glorification of the German Volk as the basis for cultural regeneration, they nevertheless regarded the NSDAP with the same suspicion as they did all other political parties. Catholicism remained the central point of reference, and the NSDAP was mainly judged according to its policies towards the Church. In 1933, Böhm signaled that the organization would support the Nazis' "national revolution" in Germany provided that Hitler would choose to strengthen the anti-capitalist tendencies of his movement and, more importantly, grant the Catholic Church and Christianity generally its due place in the German Reich [ 45]. In the following issue, Böhm openly called for the integration of the Nazis into the Austrian government ([ 39]: 110).

Within the organization, which was far from ideologically homogenous, Asperger belonged to a group called the Fahrende Scholaren (Wandering Scholars), part of the Bund's decidedly völkisch and right-wing faction. He was associated with the inner circle of "organic romanticists" around Michael Pfliegler (1891-1972), a Catholic priest and founding member of the Bund, and its leader Anton Böhm ([ 33]: 207-8, 342; [ 34]: 63-5).

After the Anschluss, at least some of the Bund's former members joined anti-Nazi networks, notably in Innsbruck and Lower Austria ([ 35]: 46). Resistance activities, which included an assembly of 300 youths in Vienna on the night of the German invasion, were primarily the work of the younger generation. By contrast, the older generation to which Asperger belonged tended to seek immediate accommodation with Nazism ([ 36]: 586-8, 839). This is evident in Asperger's path after 1938, as he joined a number of Nazi organizations (although not the NSDAP) and sought to accommodate himself with the new regime.

According to a questionnaire dated 1940, Asperger was also a member of the Verein Deutscher Ärzte in Österreich (Association of German Doctors in Austria, Fig. 3). "German" in this context refers to a Pan-German orientation, excluding Jewish doctors. The Verein Deutscher Ärzte emerged from a 1904 federation between the anti-Jewish Verein Wiener Ärzte and various Pan-German medical associations in Austria ([ 4]: 78). In the 1920s and again after the Nazi takeover in Germany, the organization called to limit the number of Jewish students ([ 47]: 90). A considerable portion of leading (non-Jewish) Viennese doctors, including the former head of the pediatric clinic Clemens Pirquet, belonged to the association-an indication of how widespread anti-Jewish sentiment was in Viennese medical circles ([ 4]: 78).

In the same questionnaire, Asperger mentioned another membership indicating his affinity to the Pan-German nationalist wing, despite his Catholic orientation. In 1932, he joined the Deutscher Schulverein Südmark (German School Association for the Southern Border Region), which sought to strengthen German cultural influence abroad with the help of German-speaking minorities. Many of the Schulverein's members were close to the Austrian Großdeutsche Volkspartei (Greater German People's Party), which in 1933 formed an alliance with the Austrian Nazi Party.

Despite these associations, there is no indication that Asperger actively sympathized with the Nazi movement prior to 1938, unlike many of his colleagues. Rather, the evidence points to an ambivalent attitude. Potential obstacles to his supporting National Socialism were his religious convictions, his humanist background, and his elitist, cultivated habitus. Furthermore, following the ban of the Austrian Nazi Party in 1933, the movement remained attractive only to a core of ideologically hardened supporters, whereas for mere sympathizers or opportunists, the risks of adherence far outweighed potential advantages. Nevertheless, Asperger's record of organizational affiliations over the years prior to 1938 suggests that there was more common ideological ground than has previously been acknowledged. Asperger's political socialization in Neuland likely blinded him to National Socialism's destructive character due to an affinity with core ideological elements (see [ 36]: 848-9). In 1974, Asperger himself put it this way: "[Then] the National Socialist time arrived, whereupon it was clear from my previous life that one could well go along with many let's say quote unquote 'national' things, but not with the inhuman [ones]" [ 3].

In post-World War II Austria, "national" as a political label invariably referred to Pan-Germanism and is to this day used by right-wing groups as a euphemism to avoid overt association with (neo-) Nazism. In other words, Asperger in 1974 distanced himself from the Unmenschlichkeiten (inhumanities) of National Socialism, but not from its Pan-German program, which in 1938 had led to the annexation of Austria and later to World War II. Asperger's ambivalent attitude towards National Socialism was already palpable in a diary entry from April 1934 (when he spent some time in Nazi Germany), which evinced both skeptical distance and a certain fascination: "How a whole people marches in one direction, fanatical, with narrowed vision, certainly, but with enthusiasm and dedication, with enormous discipline and formidable vigor. Only soldiers, soldierly thinking-ethos-German paganism."

Political trajectory after the Anschluss in 1938

The established narrative concerning Asperger's relationship to National Socialism after 1938 is that Asperger actively opposed the regime, or at least kept his distance, under considerable professional and personal risk. In 1993, Lorna Wing argued that as a devout Catholic, he could not have been a Nazi ([ 24]: 330). This argument is misleading, however, given the overlap discussed above between Catholicism and the völkisch extreme right represented by organizations such as the Bund Neuland.

The strongest claim to the effect that Asperger was an active opponent of the Nazis and that he risked his life defending the children in his care is based on an episode reported in Adam Feinstein's book on the pioneers of autism research. Allegedly, the Gestapo twice came to the clinic to arrest Asperger, either because of his 1938 talk [ 1] or because he had refused to "hand [patients] over to officials" ([ 20]: 17-8). The only known source for this claim is Asperger himself, who mentioned the incident in 1962 at his inauguration as the Vienna chair of pediatrics [ 48] and in the above-cited 1974 interview:

This is the only recorded instance I could find in which Asperger publicly mentioned Nazi "euthanasia"-despite the fact that this was such an incisive event for his field and its patients. According to this account, the Gestapo was after Asperger because he refused to report patients with certain deficiencies to Vienna's Public Health Office. It is true that doctors were increasingly obliged to report patients to the authorities in defiance of patient/physician confidentiality. Regarding race hygiene policies, the two most important instances were the compulsory reporting of patients as mandated by the sterilization law and of children with mental deficiencies who were slated for "euthanasia." Based on the available evidence, it is impossible to determine whether Asperger in some cases abstained from reporting children who met the criteria for child "euthanasia." However, it is documented that he personally referred a number of children to the Spiegelgrund "euthanasia" facility (" Limits of 'educability': Asperger and the Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' facility" and " Asperger's diagnoses compared to those at Spiegelgrund " sections).

Other facts speak against Asperger's self-portrayal as a man persecuted by the Gestapo for his resistance to Nazi race hygiene, who had to flee into military service to avoid further problems. On several occasions, he published approving comments on race hygiene measures such as forced sterilizations (see [ 49]: 353; for further examples, see the " 'The best service to our Volk': Asperger and Nazi race hygiene" section), and as is discussed further below, the Nazi hierarchy saw him as someone willing to go along with race hygiene policies. In July 1940, the deputy Gauleiter of Vienna wrote to Asperger's superior and protector Franz Hamburger that the party had "no objections whatsoever" against his assistant. The Vienna Gestapo, when asked for a political assessment of Asperger, answered in November 1940 that they had nothing on him. This contradicts claims that Asperger's early publications after the Anschluss, including those most frequently cited as proof for his public opposition to Nazi policies, were perceived by the regime as expressions of political opposition.

Initially, before Asperger had a chance to prove his willingness to adjust to the new political order, the NSDAP was unsure about his loyalty. Immediately following the Anschluss, a preliminary investigation was initiated to decide whether the "Decree for the Reorganization of the Austrian Professional Civil Service" of 31 May 1938, which stipulated the dismissal of Jewish and politically undesirable officials ([ 50]: 235), applied to Asperger. In June 1939, the official charged with implementing the decree, Otto Wächter (1901-1949), decided to close the file because Asperger was 'politically acceptable' from the National Socialist standpoint. According to the Vienna NSDAP Personnel Office, Asperger was "unobjectionable with respect to his character and politics." His Catholic orientation was considered a minus, but this was mitigated by the fact that he had not been actively involved with the Christian Social Party or the Austrofascist regime. Crucially, the assessment concluded that Asperger "was in conformity with the National Socialist racial and sterilization laws" (Fig. 4).

In this context, a crucial question concerns Asperger's role in a truly heroic episode involving the pediatrician Josef Feldner (1887-1973), who over many years volunteered on the Heilpädagogik ward. In September 1942, he took in Hansi Busztin (1925-1996), a Jewish patient of his, and hid him until the end of the war. Unusually, Busztin lived a relatively open life, with regular visits to the public library and the opera; he estimated that around 100 people knew about him, many of whom provided support [ 51]. In a memoir written in the 1980s, Busztin referred to "a group of opponents of National Socialism" on the Heilpädagogik ward, "nearly all of whom knew" about him and "helped his later adoptive father in various situations." Did Asperger belong to this circle of supporters? Busztin does not mention Asperger-and, interestingly, Asperger did not mention the episode even in instances where he was trying to establish his anti-Nazi credentials [ 3, 48] or in his 1975 obituary for Feldner [ 52]. Remarks published by Asperger in 1962 on the occasion of Feldner's 75th birthday suggest, however, that he at least knew about Feldner's activities, but did not play an active role in them:

This episode could help explain why Asperger joined the military in March 1943. In the 1974 interview already mentioned, he claimed to have volunteered to escape reprisals from the Gestapo because he had refused to cooperate with Nazi race hygiene policies [ 3]. While this is contradicted by the favorable assessments he continued to receive from Nazi officials (for example during the vetting for his Habilitation), the cited evidence and the timeline of events suggest a direct connection-namely, that he wanted to get away from the Vienna clinic in case Busztin were discovered.

One of the main arguments for Asperger's ostensible distance to National Socialism is the fact that he never joined the NSDAP. Given the high proportion of party members among non-Jewish physicians, this is certainly significant. This does not mean, however, that Asperger kept a principled distance from the NSDAP apparatus. In fact, he sought membership in several organizations affiliated with the NSDAP. According to a 1940 questionnaire, Asperger joined the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front, DAF) in April 1938, the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist People's Welfare Organization, NSV) in May 1938, and (as a candidate; see below) the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund (National Socialist German Physicians' League, NSDÄB) in June 1938. He also mentioned that he had committed himself to working for the Hitler Youth.

These memberships should be seen against the backdrop of the heavy Nazi influence at the clinic (see [ 4]: 120-1). Most likely, Asperger took these decisions in order to protect and further his career. By foregoing NSDAP membership, he chose a middle path between keeping his distance to the regime and outright alignment.

It is important to note that Asperger had all the political protection he needed through his mentor Franz Hamburger. Given the hierarchical structure of Austrian universities and the strong position of clinic chiefs, Hamburger was in a position to make or break Asperger's career even under less complicated political circumstances. The political capital Asperger enjoyed thanks to Hamburger's unwavering patronage was much stronger than anything he could have achieved on his own. Hamburger was one of the NSDAP's figureheads within the Vienna medical school and had considerable clout within the Nazi medical establishment both in Vienna and-thanks to his position as president of the German Association of Pediatrics-in Germany generally ([ 4]: 129, 134). After the Anschluss, when the ban on the NSDAP was lifted, Hamburger could openly declare his allegiance to Adolf Hitler ([ 4]: 126). In a programmatic speech in 1939 ("National Socialism and Medicine,") he revealed how central Nazi ideology was to his approach to medicine: "A teacher of obstetrics, a teacher of pediatrics, internal medicine, or neurology has to be a true National Socialist. He has to be completely permeated with the foundations of National Socialist life and health leadership" ([ 55]: 142). Asperger, without being a convinced National Socialist, clearly managed in Hamburger's view to conform somehow to this highly ideological model of a physician.

As mentioned above, NSDAP functionaries on several occasions wrote confidential assessments of Asperger's political orientation. Although they are the best sources available regarding Asperger's attitude towards National Socialism and his standing in the eyes of the regime, these documents have not previously been examined. In all, they demonstrate how after an initial phase of distrust the party authorities came to see Asperger in an increasingly positive light. On 4 January 1939, for example, Asperger's Ortsgruppenleiter (Local Party Group Leader) put the following on record: "no merits for the [Nazi] movement," "attitude towards the NSDAP before the Anschluss indifferent," "does not participate in public political life," and "political orientation of the family Christian-Social". It was noted positively that he had not taken any stance against the Nazi takeover in Austria. The Kreisleiter (District Party Leader) added to the same document: "his readiness to engage is only partially existent, because as a former Christian-Social he is quite indifferent."

Less than 2 years later, Asperger's political evaluations had changed in tone, even if his past affiliation with the Christian-Social camp was still held against him. One of several similar documents from his NSDAP personnel file reads as follows:

In response to your enquiry from 25 October 1940 I declare that Dr. Asperger is a faithful Catholic, but without supporting the political tendencies of Catholicism. Although he was a member of the Catholic association 'Neuland', he had no common interests with the politicians of the [former Austrian] system. Regarding questions of the racial and sterilization laws he conforms to National Socialist ideas. With respect to his character and in political terms he is considered unobjectionable.

Another high-ranking Nazi official's evaluation from roughly the same time is similar in tone:

Dr. Asperger hails from Catholic circles and his orientation during the period of the [previous Austrian] system was strictly Catholic. He was a member of the Catholic organization 'Neuland' and of the physicians' association 'Lukas Guild'. He has never taken active steps of any kind against National Socialists, although it would have been easy for him to procure incriminating evidence at the Pediatric Clinic, which was staffed exclusively with Nazi physicians. In terms of his character, Dr. A. receives favorable descriptions.

Due to his political past, the party hierarchy treated Asperger with a certain reservation. This changed over time, however, as he was increasingly regarded as politically reliable, and no obstacles to his career resulted. This development culminated in Asperger obtaining his Habilitation in 1943, the academic qualification necessary to become a lecturer (and, eventually, a professor). According to the Nazi doctrine, medicine should be based both on science and the ideology of National Socialism. Therefore, Asperger had to both submit a postdoctoral thesis (his work on "autistic psychopaths") and pass political vetting by the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (National Socialist German Lecturers League)-which raised no objections (Fig. 5). Additionally, since he had not obtained the title of Facharzt (medical specialist) in pediatrics, the NSDAP Gauärzteführer (Physicians' Leader) of Vienna, Otto Planner-Plann (1893-1975), had to certify that he had the necessary qualifications. This is another indicator that Asperger enjoyed the trust of the highest ranks of the Nazi medical establishment in Vienna.

In April 1943, the Vienna chapter of the NSDAP's Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (National Socialist German Lecturers' League) approved Asperger's application to receive his postdoctoral Habilitation. (UAW, MED PA 17, Asperger)

After the Anschluss, Asperger tried to prove his loyalty to the new regime in various ways. In public lectures (which were later published), he argued in favor of his discipline's mission within the Nazi state and declared his allegiance to the tenets of Nazi medicine (see the " 'The best service to our Volk': Asperger and Nazi race hygiene" section). Indeed, Asperger went so far in these attempts that his collaborator, Josef Feldner, had to reign him in lest he risk his credibility: "Your lecture: the introduction is good as it is (maybe just a little bit too Nazi for your reputation). E.g., I would drop the thanks to the Führer. ... I write what I have in mind, forcing myself to blow Hitler's horn a little. Maybe you can make something of it." Asperger's case files also demonstrate how he tried to prove his loyalty. Beginning in 1938, he took to signing his diagnostic reports with "Heil Hitler"-a merely symbolic, but revealing gesture.

Asperger's Jewish patients

The question of Jewish patients on Asperger's ward has not been raised in the literature so far, despite the fact that their fate is relevant for a number of reasons. How they were diagnosed and what decisions about their future were taken at the clinic had an important impact on their chances of survival. The files on the Jewish children also provide insights regarding Asperger's actions under National Socialism and on his general attitude towards Jews.

At the time of the Nazi takeover in Austria, two 13-year-old Jewish boys, Alfred S. and Walter Brucker, were patients at the ward. Alfred's file contains no evidence that he was treated in any way differently from the other children. Admitted because of a scuffle at school, Asperger diagnosed the boy as an "autistic psychopath" on 22 March 1938. He found Alfred's intellectual capabilities "above average in some respects" and recommended placing him with Jewish foster parents rather than returning him to his non-Jewish foster mother (whom Alfred liked). At the time, approximately 8000 children had been entrusted to foster families by Vienna's youth welfare services. A number of these children-like Alfred-were Jews living with non-Jewish families. When the Nazis took over the city administration, this came to be regarded as a problem, and Jewish foster children were separated from their caretakers and segregated in Jewish orphanages, which for many became death traps during the Holocaust. Whatever his specific motivation might have been, in recommending Alfred's placement specifically with Jewish foster parents, Asperger anticipated the Nazis' official policy of segregation which took shape in the following years ([ 56]: 90, 101). At a time when Jews were subjected to humiliation and violence in the streets and anti-Semitism became official policy, the decision to highlight the boy's Jewish background-for which no medical or pedagogical reasons were given-seems questionable. A safer alternative would have been to avoid any reference to Alfred's biological family, although in retrospect, it is impossible to say whether this would have made a difference. The diagnostic report itself is rather benevolent in tone; Asperger considered Alfred capable of functioning among adults, who would feel less provoked by his behavior than children. Ultimately, Asperger's recommendation was not followed, and Alfred was transferred to a Jewish orphanage. His fate is unknown.

Walter Brucker was admitted to the clinic on 14 March 1938, the day following the Anschluss, because of extreme agitation. His record allows a rare insight into daily life on Asperger's ward during these critical days. On 15 March, amidst cheering youngsters, Walter had to listen to a triumphant speech by Hitler. Despite the fact that as a Jew Walter had every reason to panic, his fearful reaction was held against him. The entry of that day (not in Asperger's handwriting) stated that Walter "is much more disagreeable than three weeks ago, when he was [last] here. During Hitler's speech, he put his head into his hands on the table and stared into a void. He was very agitated; when a child broke out in cheers he opened his eyes wide and turned pale." Asperger's diagnosis all but ignored the boy's precarious situation and framed his mental troubles as follows: "severe psychopathy, with a particular sensitivity and paranoid irritability." Asperger thus pathologized and de-politicized the boy's reactions to the anti-Jewish persecution then pervading the city; based on the same logic, in a formulation that was perhaps meant as an act of generosity, he stressed that Walter could not be held fully responsible for his sometimes aggressive reactions. In his diagnosis, Asperger omitted the fact that Walter was Jewish and that his life was under threat from the Nazi regime. Although this is in line with Asperger's general tendency to attribute mental troubles to "constitution" rather than environmental factors, in this particular case, it is possible that he was also trying not to highlight the boy's Jewish background (in contrast to his actions in Alfred's case). As it turns out, Walter indeed had every reason to be fearful. He died on 26 February 1945 as a slave laborer of "Projekt Riese," the construction in Lower Silesia of underground facilities that included Hitler's new headquarters [ 57].

As far as the written record is concerned, there is no indication that Asperger was guided by personal animosity towards Jews, but there is a notable absence of empathy for their plight under Nazi rule. The report he wrote in November 1940 on 11-year-old Ivo P. supports this interpretation. He stressed that the boy was "not constitutionally dissocial," and that he had good potential, provided that he would be held under permanent supervision in an institutional setting. Almost as an afterthought, he added: "The only problem is that the boy is a Mischling of the first degree" (Nazi jargon meaning that he had one Jewish parent)-a piece of information that under the circumstances was extremely dangerous for the boy.

Racial stereotyping became-not surprisingly-more frequent following the Anschluss. Marie Klein, admitted as a 9-year-old in late 1939, was described by one of Asperger's assistants as a "normally developed, slightly underweight girl of Jewish appearance." Asperger himself remarked that her manner of speaking stood "in contrast to her quite Jewish character" and noted on the cover sheet of her record that she was a "Mischling." According to her file, Marie had never caused any trouble until she and her mother-who was a Catholic of Jewish descent-were forced out of their apartment in August 1938. They had to move to an asylum run by the Catholic relief organization "Caritas Socialis" for Catholics of Jewish descent and children classified as "non-Aryan." From then on, Marie began to suffer from violent fits, which led to her admittance first to the psychiatric clinic and then to Asperger's ward. When she spoke of the violent abuse she had suffered at the asylum, this was taken as an indication of her dishonesty rather than an explanation for the changes in her behavior. Two years after her transfer from the Heilpädagogik ward to a children's home in February 1940, Marie Klein was deported to the Wlodawa ghetto, 11 km north of the Sobibor extermination camp. The precise time of her death is unknown, but in summer 1942, there was an "Aktion" specifically targeting Jewish children between 10 and 14 years of age (Marie would have been 12 by then), who were separated from their parents and killed in the gas chambers at Sobibor [ 58, 59].

This leads to the broader question whether Asperger held anti-Semitic views. Apart from the case files quoted above, there is scant direct evidence. On the one hand, hostility towards Jews and their alleged corrupting influence was a common ideological denominator of the groups Asperger associated with. Until the end of his life, as far as his public statements are concerned, he never distanced himself from the racialized anti-Semitism that pervaded Austrian and German political life during the twentieth century nor did he comment on the destruction this had brought down on the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. On the other hand, Asperger worked closely with Jewish colleagues such as Anni Weiss and Georg Frankl before the Anschluss-a relationship that due to the tightly knit community at the Heilpädagogik ward went beyond the purely professional and was renewed after the war ([ 10]: 102-4, 109). Like many aspects of Asperger's life, his relationship to Jews was fraught with ambivalence-and further complicated by the fact that his early career profited from the removal of so many Jewish colleagues, including those he called his friends.

"The best service to our Volk": Asperger and Nazi race hygiene

Although Asperger published at least a dozen papers during the Nazi period, the existing (especially English-language) literature focuses almost exclusively on two of these: "The Mentally Abnormal Child" from 1938 and "The Autistic Psychopaths in Childhood" from 1944 [ 1, 2]. In the following, I will broaden this narrow scope and present an analysis based on the full range of Asperger's published statements on politics, race hygiene, and the role of Heilpädagogik in society. I will show that Asperger on several occasions supported tenets of Nazi race hygiene and medicine, contributing to their legitimization.

Among Asperger's Nazi-era publications, the 1938 paper stands out for several reasons. Published 5 years before Leo Kanner's famous 1943 article on autism, it contains the first account in the scientific literature of "autistic psychopathy" as a not previously described syndrome. As the written version of a lecture held less than 7 months after the Anschluss, it also reveals how Asperger positioned himself vis-à-vis the new rulers as someone who could be trusted to adapt to the new political situation. Crucially, Asperger opened with an endorsement of National Socialism's anti-individualistic and totalitarian approach to medicine and health:

We stand in the midst of a massive reorganization of our intellectual and spiritual life, which has seized all areas of this life-not least in medicine. The central idea of the new Reich-that the whole is more than its parts, and that the Volk is more important than the individual-had to bring about fundamental changes in our whole attitude, since this regards the nation's most precious asset, its health ([ 1]:1314).

Asperger repeated this motive of "responsible cooperation" with Nazi race hygiene in later writings. We will see shortly what these tasks entailed and how he handled them in the context of his own work. In his lecture, he went on to specify how the sterilization law should be implemented with regard to those children who had "features opposed in nearly every way" to the high-functioning autistic type described for the first time in the paper:

This passage has been quoted as evidence that Asperger tried to publicly protect his patients from forced sterilizations ([ 8]: 464; more cautiously [ 9]: 206-7). This call for restraint is all the more significant given the pending investigation into Asperger's political reliability (closed in June 1939, see above). Why did these comments then not hurt his standing in the eyes of the Nazi hierarchy, which came to the conclusion that he was in conformity with Nazi race hygiene policies?

It should be noted that calling for a "holistic" approach to children's personalities was not unusual as such-it was in fact characteristic of the approach at the Heilpädagogik ward since Lazar's days. In the ideological context of post-Anschluss Vienna, putting Gemüt ("soul" or "character") and "practical intelligence" over "abstract intelligence," far from being out of line, corresponded with the Nazis' overall disdain for analytical thought, which they connoted as "Jewish." Indeed, the official legal commentary on the sterilization law defined "feeble-mindedness" along similar lines ([ 61]: 119). The notion of Lebensbewährung ("probation in life"), which the sterilization courts applied in cases with unclear heredity, also underlines how race hygiene policy was guided by a "holistic" approach to intelligence ([ 62]: 124). In 1940, practical skills and "performance" became the decisive criteria in decisions on race hygiene measures.

It is important to note that Asperger focused on skills, where others were primarily concerned with defects. Overall, however, assessing "hereditary value" according to a range of criteria rather than intelligence alone could cut both ways for the patients; those classified as "autistic psychopaths" may well have scored better on intelligence alone. While Asperger's 1938 speech should not be misconstrued as a fundamental critique of race hygiene, it is an example of how he managed to formulate certain concerns without violating the boundaries of the politically acceptable.

Another of Asperger's publications (from 1939) captured in a nutshell the central tenets of Nazi medicine, including its typically euphemistic language, as in "restrictive measures":

In the new Germany, we physicians have assumed an abundance of new responsibilities in addition to our old ones. To the task of helping the individual patient is added the great obligation to promote the health of the Volk, which is more than the welfare of the individual. I do not need to elaborate on the enormous dedicated work being performed in terms of positive, supporting measures. But we all know that we also have to carry out restrictive measures. Just as the physician often has to make painful incisions during the treatment of individuals, we also have to perform incisions on the national body [ Volkskörper], out of a sense of great responsibility: We must ensure that the diseased who would transmit their diseases to remote generations, to the detriment of the individual and of the Volk, are stopped from transmitting their diseased hereditary material ([ 63]:943).

The potential impact of the Nazi race hygiene paradigm on Asperger's work was to a large extent determined by the role inheritance was thought to play in the transmission of personality traits and mental disorders. In this regard, Asperger stressed the benefits of optimal environmental conditions (such as those present at his clinic) even when hereditary makeup (what he referred to as "constitution") was defective:

A key element in the established narrative of Asperger as a principled opponent of Nazi policies derives from his repeated appeals to treat troubled children with the utmost dedication to help them overcome their challenges ([ 20]: 17, [ 21]: 127-9). A number of Asperger's publications indeed convey an attitude of sympathy towards his patients, and on several occasions, he pleaded for tolerance and attention towards them. One of the most significant passages in this regard is contained in his 1944 paper on autism:

This is in line with his 1938 speech, in which he also expressed his determination to side with his patients:

But let me discuss this problem today not from the standpoint of the Volk as a totality-in this case one would have to primarily focus on the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring-but from the standpoint of the abnormal children. How much can we accomplish for these children shall be the question ([ 1]:1314).

Again the question is whether this approach put Asperger at odds with the regime or even made him vulnerable to reprisals, which is a central claim in the narrative of his resistance to the Nazis. The evidence, however, does not support this. Indeed, the fact alone that Asperger's statements continued to be published in journals controlled by Nazi loyalists shows that they were not perceived as critical of the regime. Furthermore, Asperger's career advanced unhindered during this period. Repeatedly vetted for promotion, he received positive assessments regarding his political reliability, as discussed in the " Political trajectory after the Anschluss in 1938 " section.

Most importantly, it is a misunderstanding that therapeutic support for "abnormal" children had no place in the Nazi state, determined as it was to exterminate mentally disabled individuals. Due to increasing labor shortages, it became a political and military imperative to rehabilitate as many potential workers as possible, even those considered of inferior hereditary quality. In the context of "euthanasia," the extermination of "incurable" patients-after attempts to improve their condition had failed-coincided with an increased interest in "active therapy." The dichotomy of murder and therapy is exemplified in the introduction of electroconvulsive therapy, which was promoted by "T4," the organization responsible for the gassing of tens of thousands of patients, to reduce the residual group of "incurable" patients [ 65]. In this light, Asperger's pleas to spare no effort in educating and guiding "difficult" children were not necessarily a challenge to Nazi pedagogy and race hygiene; rather, this was easily compatible with the Nazi state's aim to control, discipline, and organize children and youths deemed "worthy" of belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community"). This was stressed by Asperger himself, who repeatedly insisted on the productive role Heilpädagogik could play within the new Nazi order, including in his 1938 speech:

And if we help them [the abnormal children] with all our dedication, we also render the best service to our Volk; not only by avoiding that they burden the Volksgemeinschaft with their dissocial and criminal acts, but also by trying to ensure that they fulfill their duties as productive individuals in the living organism of the Volk ([ 1]:1314).

Jekelius had received part of his training at the Therapeutic Pedagogy Ward under Asperger's direction, where he was employed from August 1933 to February 1936 ([ 10]: 102, 118). The two men maintained professional contacts during the Nazi period. In 1941, when Jekelius became the first chairman of the newly established Viennese Association for Therapeutic Pedagogy, Asperger represented the Pediatric Clinic along with Hamburger ([ 4]: 172-3). At Vienna's Main Health Office, where Jekelius directed a unit in charge of "the mentally ill, psychopaths, and addicts"-a position that he used as a cover for his activities for "T4"-Asperger on 1 October 1940 began to work (part-time) as a medical specialist and evaluator of children with mental "irregularities" ( Auffälligkeiten). One document in Asperger's personnel file suggests that in this capacity, he was attached to Jekelius' unit, while others place him in a different unit of the same department, a discrepancy possibly due to disruptions in the city administration during this period. In any case, the fact that Asperger was named as a member of Jekelius' staff suggests that he obtained the position on Jekelius' recommendation or at least with his consent. Due to a lack of sources, the exact nature of Asperger's work for the city in this context (and of his collaboration with Jekelius) remains unclear-with the crucial exception of the screening of more than 200 children in a mental institution in Gugging near Vienna, many of whom were sent to die at Jekelius' Spiegelgrund institution (see the " Limits of 'educability': Asperger and the Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' facility " section).

Erwin Jekelius represents Nazi medicine in its most inhumane extremes: a fanatical Nazi and a murderer responsible for the deaths of thousands of patients. Had Asperger deviated from the party line, Jekelius would certainly have reined him in. Instead, this is what Jekelius had to say about Asperger and his therapeutic approach:

This utilitarian approach, broadly accepted as the raison d'être of Heilpädagogik, is a leitmotif throughout Asperger's writings during the Nazi period and beyond:

In the 1941 paper referred to by Jekelius, Asperger defined the relationship between his own professional credo and the Nazi state's pedagogic program in even more explicit terms:

This paper was originally presented in September 1940 at a prominent pediatric conference in Vienna. Asperger was one of only three speakers from Vienna. The keynote speaker was Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti (1900-1945). While this helps explain Asperger's references to the war effort and the party, it also demonstrates that he was deemed trustworthy enough to represent his field in such a prominent forum and that the positions he adopted were by no means considered unacceptable or even controversial by the Nazi hierarchy. On the same occasion, Werner Villinger (1887-1961), the founding father of youth psychiatry in Nazi Germany and an expert evaluator for the "T4" killing campaign, expressed the dichotomy between "education" and "elimination": "Only where this [successful educational attempts] proves to be impossible, a weeding out needs to take place, with permanent internment in a work colony of sorts" ([ 68]: 1161). The complex and sometimes contradictory attitude towards children with disabilities or other challenges is underlined by the fact that the Hitler Youth had special formations for the blind and the deaf ([ 64]: 166-75). Overall, as we have seen, it was not in dispute that Heilpädagogik had an important role to play in helping alleviate the acute shortage of manpower that threatened Nazi Germany's war effort.

The decisive question that remained was what should happen to the residual group of children whose disabilities were so impairing that efforts towards rehabilitation could not be justified under the utilitarian approach dominant at the time, and also professed by Asperger. While Jekelius explicitly mentioned "concentration camps" (for the rebellious) and "asylums" as a last resort (omitting the extermination of disabled children then taking place under his direction), Asperger chose to remain silent on this matter. This has critical implications, not least with regard to the relatively small subset of his patients whom he labeled as "autistic psychopaths." Some authors argue that Asperger put the spotlight on children at what is often called the "high-functioning" end of the spectrum, interpreting this as a tactic to protect all children with autistic traits from race hygiene measures (e.g., [ 21]: 129, 216). This argument is problematic for several reasons.

First, the idea that Asperger tried to protect autistic children from Nazi race hygiene cannot be easily reconciled with the fact that he dedicated a section of his 1944 paper to the hereditary basis of the condition, insisting that "any explanation based on exogenous factors is absurd". While this position anticipated later advances in autism research, the question arises whether under the circumstances it was prudent to put such an emphasis on heredity. Had protecting his autistic patients been his primary goal, he could have taken a more flexible position, one less likely to draw the attention of race hygienists to his patients ([ 2]: 128-32).

Second, his prognoses for the "autistic psychopaths" were far from universally optimistic. In his 1938 paper "The Mentally Abnormal Child," he presented two boys. One boy was "intelligent far beyond his age" but suffered from mental and physical "oversensitivities" (no link to autism). The other represented the first case of an "autistic psychopath" in medical literature. Like the first boy, he exhibited "a contrast between pathological and in some ways valuable traits," but as Asperger insisted, he suffered from a "profound disorder of the personality." In this article, Asperger did not highlight the potential of "autistic psychopaths" but rather contrasted them unfavorably with other, less impaired patients. Even if the boy Asperger chose as an example of "autistic psychopathy" clearly belonged to the "high-functioning" group, Asperger emphasized that the condition varied greatly in terms of "social prognosis" and "worthiness." While he deemed some of the "autistic psychopaths" capable of "great intellectual achievements," in other cases, "autistic originality" was deemed "bizarre, eccentric, and useless", with "fluid transitions towards schizophrenia" whose "main characteristic is also autism, the loss of any contact with the surroundings" [ 1]. The four boys featuring in his better known 1944 paper also varied considerably regarding the degree of their impairments, belying the notion that he focused on the most promising cases in order to present "autistic psychopathy" in a mostly favorable light. Fritz had (for his age) outstanding abilities in mathematics, but was incapable of attending regular school, having passed the first three school years by homeschooling. Harro's autistic symptoms were less severe, but despite his good intellectual potential, he also had great difficulties concentrating and learning in the traditional school setting. The best hope for "autistic psychopaths," according to Asperger, was to find a way to compensate for the lack of "instinctive social adaptation" via the intellect. The problem was, however, that the "autistic character" also occurred in the "intellectually lesser able, and even in the severely feeble-minded" ([ 2]: 85-103). In the case of Ernst, Asperger expressed "doubt whether he was particularly smart or feeble-minded" (he struggled to keep up even in special school). But, as Asperger insisted, there were "numerous clearly feeble-minded children who also exhibited the unmistakable features of the autistic psychopath" ([ 2]: 108). These latter cases, according to Asperger, were often very similar to conditions caused by organic brain damage such as birth trauma. He illustrated this with the fourth case in his study, Hellmuth, whom he described not as an "autistic psychopath" but as an "autistic automaton" ([ 2]: 110-1).

One could argue that even though Asperger mentioned children with impairments so severe as to exclude them from any useful place in society, he nevertheless embellished the overall picture of "autistic psychopathy" as far as his scholarly standards would allow him. Indeed, he insisted that only a small number of "autistic psychopaths," those additionally burdened with a "clear mental inferiority," were incapable of at least some degree of social integration. Nevertheless, the argument that Asperger focused on the better-functioning cases in order to protect all of his patients (presumably, by deflecting attention from the less well-functioning) is questionable given that Asperger by no means withheld from his readers the severe impairments of some of the boys.

Third, there is a fundamental flaw in the assumption that highlighting the potential of some of his patients would benefit all of them. The children at the lower end of the spectrum did not benefit from the potential ascribed to those on the higher end, even if they shared the overall diagnosis of "autistic psychopathy." Their fate did not depend on the diagnostic label but on the individual assessment of their skills or disabilities. If anything, the utilitarian argument of "social worth" employed by Asperger (and by many of his colleagues) increased the danger to those children who could not fulfill these expectations. Focusing on the higher functioning children did nothing to lift the boat for all of them; those on the lower end still risked being left to drown. Often, Heilpädagogik's function in this context was to decide where to draw the line.

The preference for children who could be expected to respond positively to pedagogical intervention and the exclusion of the "hopeless" was a feature of Heilpädagogik from its inception in early twentieth-century Austria. It is important to keep in mind that the mission of Asperger's Heilpädagogik ward was primarily to deal with "difficult" children who caused problems that their caregivers were unable to confront without professional help. Children with severe mental disabilities were considered to fall outside the remit of Heilpädagogik since they promised no tangible progress. At the 1935 founding meeting of the Austrian Society of Heilpädagogik, Theodor Heller (1869-1938), one of its most influential figures, stated: "Curative pedagogy, however, will only attend to the educable elements and must hardly burden itself with the care for idiots." The "uneducable" should be cared for in special institutions on humanitarian grounds, by contrast to the rationally and economically justified efforts of Heilpädagogik for the "educable" ([ 69]: 8-9). During the Nazi period, Bildungsunfähigkeit (uneducability) became the key criterion in the child "euthanasia" program [ 70].

Highlighting the potential of some patients should not then be mistaken for the defense of all children with disabilities. Rather, it served to point out the usefulness of Heilpädagogik to society. Also, Asperger did not adopt this strategy in reaction to the Nazi takeover in Austria. A 1937 paper (with the same title he would use in 1938) already used similar arguments in support of Heilpädagogik's mission [ 71]. It is not hard to see why in the post-Anschluss climate Asperger felt it necessary to explain what he and his discipline had to offer to the new political regime, by stressing his allegiance to the fundamental principles of National Socialism and by adapting earlier arguments of Heilpädagogik's utilitarian mission to the new political realities.

Overall, Asperger's pleas to devote the best possible care to "abnormal" children did not place him outside the mainstream of Heilpädagogik and the nascent discipline of youth psychiatry under National Socialism. The papers presented to the first conference of the newly founded German Society for Child Psychiatry and Heilpädagogik, held in Vienna in September 1940, also reveal that Asperger's positions clearly aligned with the opinions considered legitimate at such a representative forum. Although some of the speakers emphasized Heilpädagogik's role in implementing mechanisms of race hygienic selection, the positive aspects of helping children reach their potential (within the limits set by their inherited constitution) also had a prominent place. If Asperger's writings on his patients stood out because of their warmer tone, nothing, however, of what he said was out of line with the officially sanctioned discourse ([ 72]; for details, see also [ 73]).

The adaptation of the Viennese brand of Heilpädagogik to the new political order and its race hygiene paradigm was facilitated by the fact that, since 1930, Hamburger had purged the influence of currents such as psychoanalysis and established the predominance of a purely biologistic paradigm based on the importance of inherited "constitutional" defects [ 74, 75]. Asperger, who had begun his career under Hamburger, shared many of these views, including a staunch opposition to psychoanalysis [ 76].

Heilpädagogik, then, was not only compatible with the Nazi state's goal of building a national community (while excluding "unworthy" and "racially alien" elements); there was even an increased demand for experts willing to draw the line between those who could be expected to become useful members of this community and those who should be cast aside ([ 73]: 184). This increased demand, together with the exclusion of Jewish doctors, led to additional career opportunities for Asperger, for example, his appointment as an expert witness in May 1938 to the Vienna Juvenile Court. As mentioned, in October 1940, he additionally acquired a part-time position at the Public Health Office as the city's medical specialist for "abnormal children," a function related to Vienna's special school system. In this capacity, he routinely wrote expert opinions which are hard to reconcile with his 1974 claim not to have reported patients to this office [ 3]. According to Hamburger, Asperger's expert opinions were regarded as the "highest authority" not only by the youth welfare office and the youth court but also by the National Socialist Welfare Organization (NSV).

Public health offices in Nazi Germany systematically collected information for a "hereditary index" ( Erbkartei) of the whole population, designed to direct race hygiene measures against those deemed of inferior hereditary quality. Staff at the Spiegelgrund "euthanasia" facility routinely reported patients in this context. The records from Asperger's ward, by contrast, contain only a small number of such documents. This would indicate that Asperger was indeed reluctant to report his patients for the "hereditary index"-provided that the records have not been purged of incriminating documents, which cannot be ruled out, since they were kept at the clinic where Asperger was director from 1946 to 1949 and again from 1962 until his retirement in 1977 [ 77]. In some cases, however, he demonstrably cooperated in such matters. At least seven patient files from his ward contain correspondence with the Public Health Office's Department for Hereditary and Racial Care ( Erb- und Rassenpflege), in four cases signed by Asperger personally. There is no indication as to why the department responsible for the "hereditary index" was involved in these cases but not in so many other similar ones.

A sample of 30 patients admitted both to Asperger's ward and to Spiegelgrund allows for a comparison of how children were diagnosed at the two institutions. In the next section, we will see what this comparison reveals about Asperger's diagnostic approach, not least with regard to his often-claimed "pedagogical optimism" (details on the sample are also offered there). Regarding references to heredity and race hygiene, the result is the following: In 14 of the 30 cases, the files contain reports suggesting a hereditary factor in the child's condition. In two of these cases, both Asperger and the Spiegelgrund staff suggested a hereditary etiology. In two other cases, Asperger included a reference to heredity in his report, but the Spiegelgrund staff did not. In ten of the cases, however, only the Spiegelgrund doctors referred to heredity. In the four cases in which Asperger referred to a hereditary factor, he did so by using the term "degenerative" (for example ascribing to the children a "degenerative constitution" or "degenerative personality"), without however suggesting any eugenic measures such as sterilization. The doctors at Spiegelgrund were clearly more inclined to refer to heredity, either directly as an alleged etiological factor or indirectly by including negative information on the child's Sippe (kin).

These findings support Asperger's claim of non-cooperation with the sterilization program, though here, too, we must allow for the possibility of files having been purged. This raises the question whether this non-cooperation by omission should be considered a form of resistance. It is important to note that the sterilization program in Nazi Austria was never implemented on a scale comparable to Nazi Germany between 1934 and 1939 and that children were not its primary targets. In Vienna, the Hereditary Health Court decreed a total of 1515 sterilization cases. Although in one case a child as young as 13 was ordered to be sterilized, 83% of victims were older than 20 ([ 78]: 97, 144). Failure to comply with the sterilization law was widespread at the time, and there are no indications that this carried personal risks such as persecution by the Gestapo ([ 78]: 115). In 1942, the Public Health Office complained to the director of the general hospital (to which Hamburger's pediatric clinic belonged) that the hospital's clinics often failed to report patients with hereditary conditions ([ 78]: 116). Also, for those of Asperger's patients who were admitted to the clinic, this responsibility fell on Hamburger as the director, shielding Asperger from-in any event unlikely-consequences.

There is one case in which documents suggest that Asperger may have helped shield a patient from possible persecution. In the fall of 1939, he examined Aurel I., the 14-year-old son of a civil servant, who showed "behavioral peculiarities." In his report, Asperger wrote that the boy would suffer mental and physical damage if placed among a group of children, which resulted in his exemption from school. His family then moved him to the countryside, where he spent the war in the care of relatives. In a 1962 letter, his sister credited Asperger with having saved Aurel from "castration" and possibly worse. Asperger wrote his report just days before the sterilization law was introduced in Austria, an event that was widely publicized [ 79]. In 2009, a Cologne art dealer (who had bought Aurel's estate of drawings and papers) wrote to Asperger's daughter speculating that Aurel, who after the war was diagnosed with schizophrenia, might have shown autistic traits when examined by Asperger. Ultimately, it is impossible to say with certainty what happened in 1939, and to what extent the dramatic elements of the story are a product of the years that passed before the quoted letters were written.

What emerges from the available sources is that Asperger's approach to the forced sterilization program was ambivalent. On the one hand, as mentioned, he publicly signaled his fundamental agreement with the policy while calling for its cautious and "responsible" implementation-which is consistent with his overall strategy to demonstrate his willingness to cooperate with the regime without taking hardline positions on race hygiene. At the same time, based on his ward's patient records, it appears that he abstained from reporting children for sterilization-a stance that does not seem to have put him at odds with the Nazi authorities, given the circumscribed implementation of the sterilization law in Austria. By the time the first procedures under the sterilization law were carried out in Austria in the fall of 1940, the prevention of "hereditarily diseased offspring" could rely on another, more radical method; with the establishment of Am Spiegelgrund in July 1940, the child "euthanasia" program had a dedicated killing facility in Vienna. Even if the vast majority of Asperger's patients did not suffer from the degree of mental disability that the program was designed to eradicate, a number of them were killed at Spiegelgrund. His role in this context is the topic of the next section.

Limits of "educability": Asperger and the Spiegelgrund "euthanasia" facility

In his wartime publications, Asperger appears as someone who declared his willingness to cooperate with the Nazi state, propagated-albeit less enthusiastically than others-elements of Nazi race hygiene, and tried to argue that his discipline had an important role to play within the new political order. His main argument was the ability of Heilpädagogik to turn troubled, difficult, or "abnormal" children into useful members of society. His professed pedagogical optimism reached its limits, however, in children with greater degrees of mental disability. Although in his ward he usually dealt with more promising cases, in the course of his manifold activities as an expert for "abnormal" children, he was also confronted with children for whom the Nazi state had little more in mind than discreet medicalized extermination. In this regard, as we will see, his record was mixed.

Am Spiegelgrund was founded in July 1940 on the premises of Vienna's Steinhof psychiatric hospital, after approximately 3200 patients had already been sent to the T4 killing facility in Hartheim [ 80]. The new facility was headed by Erwin Jekelius, Asperger's former colleague at the university clinic. During Jekelius' tenure at Spiegelgrund, the facility became a collecting point for children who did not conform to the regime's criteria of "hereditary worthiness" and "racial purity." From 1940 to 1945, nearly 800 children perished at the institution; many of them murdered by poisoning and other methods [ 81].

On 27 June 1941, 2 months before her third birthday, Asperger examined a girl at his clinic named Herta Schreiber (Fig. 6). The youngest of nine children, Herta showed signs of disturbed mental and physical development ever since she had fallen ill with encephalitis a few months before. Asperger's diagnostic report on Herta reads as follows:

Severe personality disorder (post-encephalitic?): most severe motoric retardation; erethic idiocy; seizures. At home the child must be an unbearable burden to the mother, who has to care for five healthy children. Permanent placement at Spiegelgrund seems absolutely necessary. (Fig. 7)

A note in Herta's Spiegelgrund file indicates that her mother not only knew what fate awaited her child at the facility but that she accepted or even expected it:

Mother asks to be notified if the condition of the child should get worse. The husband should not be informed, he would be too upset. She says in tears that she can see for herself that the child is mentally not well. If she cannot be helped, it would be better if she died. She would not have anything in this world, she would only be ridiculed by others. As the mother of so many other children she would not want that for her, so it would be better if she died. (Fig. 9)

In the context of Nazi-ruled Vienna, it seems that Herta's mother, with a husband at war and six children to take care of-one of them with a severe mental disability-had reached a point where the possibility of having that responsibility taken off her shoulders would seem like a relief, even if it meant knowingly surrendering her daughter to death. In a society permeated by contempt for "unworthy life," the social stigma of mental disability must have been acute-and the fear of ridicule is indeed the main argument in the quoted document. From Herta's religious denomination gottgläubig (theistic), it can be inferred that the family had left the Catholic Church under the influence of the Nazis' opposition to organized religion, a practice that was usually followed only by a radical minority of Nazi sympathizers ([ 82]: 281-3). To this, we have to add a lack of institutional support since more and more homes for disabled children were dissolved and rededicated as institutions for the "healthy" and "valuable" children.

What took place between Herta's mother and Asperger before the latter decided to transfer Herta to Spiegelgrund? Did they openly discuss the possibility of "euthanasia"? If so, did she turn to Asperger with her mind already made up, or was it he who offered this as a "solution" to her? Or did he decide independently what he thought best, based on the information she provided? From the available documents, we cannot know with certainty. All we have to go by is Asperger's short note on Herta in which he calls for her "permanent placement" at Spiegelgrund-whether this was a conscious euphemism for murder or not, it is clear that he did not expect Herta to return.

This case is revealing not least with respect to Asperger's therapeutic credo. As previously mentioned, he repeatedly called for giving people with mental anomalies the best available care in order to develop their potential as far as possible. However, he never addressed the question of what should happen in cases without hope of improvement. The children Asperger advocated for were those who promised some future benefit to society. We must not confuse them with the group labeled bildungsunfähig (uneducable), which was targeted for murder in the child "euthanasia" program. In Herta Schreiber's case, Asperger did not expect any future improvement, rendering further efforts futile. His diagnosis (albeit with a question mark) was "post-encephalitic status." In 1944, he published an article on this topic, in which he wrote: "All the work done at our ward is carried forward by a strong pedagogic optimism [...]. But in the case of these post-encephalitic personalities, we too have to say that one in most cases has to largely capitulate" ([ 83]: 116). The transfer of Herta Schreiber to the Spiegelgrund facility looks like such a capitulation.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that another girl who was recommended for transferal to Spiegelgrund by Asperger suffered from similar symptoms, also attributed to an earlier infection. According to Asperger's evaluation, the case of 5-year-old Elisabeth Schreiber (no apparent relation to Herta) bears other similarities as well:

Erethic imbecility, probably on a post-encephalitic basis. Salivation, 'encephalitic' affects, negativism, considerable language deficit (is now slowly starting to speak), with relatively better comprehension. In the family, the child is without a doubt a hardly bearable burden, especially under their crowded living conditions, and due to her aggressions she endangers the small siblings. Therefore it is understandable that the mother pushes for institutionalization. Spiegelgrund would be the best possibility. (Fig. 10)

Was Asperger aware that Elisabeth would have almost no chance of survival at Spiegelgrund, that he was sending Herta to her death? Is it possible that he meant "permanent placement" just in its literal meaning, or do we have to consider it a euphemism for murder (comparable to "special treatment," "final solution," or less obliquely, "euthanasia")? Significantly, the extermination of the mentally ill was never explicitly referred to in written documents, at least not outside the smallest circles of the initiated. For example, Hitler's 1939 "authorization" providing cover for the extermination of 70,000 people in gas chambers only mentioned the intention to "accord a merciful death" in individual, carefully selected cases ([ 84]: 114). In documents not protected as state secrets, it would have been a grave breach to even mention the possibility of killing patients. Asperger's expression, used in reference to a secret killing facility, could hardly be understood as anything other than a recommendation for "euthanasia"-provided that he knew what was going on there.

While the "euthanasia" killings at Spiegelgrund (as elsewhere) were officially a secret, and parents were routinely deceived about the true nature of the institution and the fate awaiting their children, rumors nevertheless abounded, and Asperger was in an exceptional position to know the truth. After his arrest in 1945, Ernst Illing (1904-1946), Jekelius' successor as Spiegelgrund's director, gave the following statement:

I point out that my clinic [Spiegelgrund] was always overcrowded, since other clinics [...], including the University Pediatric Clinic, transferred-or wanted to transfer-such hopeless cases, evidently because they believed that in my clinic euthanasia was possible on account of the mentioned circular, while they were not allowed to practice euthanasia. I am absolutely convinced that the directors of the mentioned institutions were aware of euthanasia and the mentioned circulars.

Illing had every reason to diminish his own responsibility, but there is further evidence for the close ties between Spiegelgrund and the university clinic. As mentioned before, Spiegelgrund's founding director Jekelius had trained under Hamburger and Asperger; Jekelius and Asperger were colleagues at the Vienna Public Health Office, and all three men played a leading role in the establishment of the Viennese Association for Heilpädagogik in 1941, part of a broader attempt to strengthen curative pedagogy's profile in Nazi Germany as a medical discipline in accordance with race hygiene ([ 4]: 172-3). In line with Illing's testimony, children were routinely sent from the pediatric clinic to Spiegelgrund ([ 13]: 203). A number of them were subjected to tuberculosis vaccine experiments by Asperger's colleague Elmar Türk. After the experiments, the children were sent to Spiegelgrund, where they were murdered so that the vaccine results could be compared with the pathological findings. Staff at the pediatric clinic were not only aware of what happened at Spiegelgrund but exploited the research opportunities created by the murders [ 85].

Furthermore, knowledge of the mass murders euphemized as "euthanasia" was not limited to insiders; it was in fact widespread among the Viennese population. During the so-called "T4" killing campaign, patients' relatives staged public protests in front of the Steinhof psychiatric hospital in Vienna. They could not prevent approximately 3200 Steinhof patients from being transported to the gas chamber at Hartheim, but they took a courageous stance against the regime's campaign of murder. Rumors were so widespread that the Viennese edition of the Völkischer Beobachter-the Nazi Party's daily newspaper-was compelled to deny the killings. The article mentioned lethal injections and even gas chambers, which shows how specific the public's knowledge was ([ 86]: 7). Anny Wödl, a Viennese nurse, had no doubt that the transfer of her son Alfred to Spiegelgrund, enforced in early 1941 despite her resolute resistance, would mean his death ([ 87]: 298). Even abroad, the killings at Spiegelgrund became known. In the fall of 1941, the Royal Air Force dropped leaflets mentioning both the Steinhof hospital and Jekelius' name in connection with the systematic murder of patients.

In light of this evidence, it seems extremely implausible that Asperger-a longtime colleague of Erwin Jekelius and a well-connected player in his professional field-was unaware of the activities at Spiegelgrund. When he reflected on the Nazi period in 1974, Asperger did not mention the child "euthanasia" program directly but claimed that he had from the outset refused to accept the Nazis' concept of "unworthy life" or to participate in race hygiene measures, implicitly acknowledging that he was aware of its ramifications [ 3].

In the cases of Herta and Elisabeth, were there alternatives to sending them to Spiegelgrund? Could he have saved their lives? Under the circumstances, and given the parents' lack of support, ensuring the long-term survival of the two children would certainly have been difficult. Facilities for children with severe disabilities continued to exist (both public and religious), but they were under pressure to hand over those among their patients deemed "unworthy" of support. Nevertheless, Asperger was under no obligation to send children directly to the killing facility, even if they suffered from severe disabilities. He could, without any risk to himself, have transferred them elsewhere, and in a number of other cases, he did just that.

Due to overlapping jurisdictions (the Gugging hospital was on Viennese territory and property of the city, but leased to the Niederdonau administration), the committee consisted of seven members from both provinces. Asperger was asked to join in his role as medical advisor for Vienna's special school system. He was the only expert on Heilpädagogik on the panel and the only clinician with scientific credentials (the only other physician was the director of the Gugging mental institution, the psychiatrist Josef Schicker, 1879-1949).

The commission relied on suggestions prepared by Schicker but examined the children individually and took a decision in each case. Among a group of 50 children whom the director deemed unfit for school and wanted to keep in Gugging, the committee found 18 who in their opinion warranted further pedagogical efforts. However, regarding the 35 children placed in the lowest category by Schicker, the commission confirmed his verdict in every case: "The school-age children who are uneducable, incapable of any development or occupation [ nicht bildungs- und entwicklungs- bzw. beschäftigungsfähig] were examined and it was determined that in none of these cases noteworthy education results could be expected." By changing the diagnosis for 18 children of the first group, the commission improved their chances of being sent to a special school rather than remaining at the mental hospital, which means that they faced a lesser risk of being selected for killing. Even so, 20 children of the original 50 ended up as "euthanasia" victims at Spiegelgrund, in addition to the 35 children whose classification as hopeless cases slated for "euthanasia" had been confirmed by the panel. In all, 59 of 158 children evaluated by the commission died at Spiegelgrund before the end of the war, a death rate of 37.3%.

Was the commission in a position to save at least some of the children had they wanted to? Due to the limited sources available, this question cannot be answered conclusively. What can be shown, however, is that at least in some cases their families wanted to take them into their care but were not permitted to do so by the authorities. Engelbert Deimbacher was a patient at the children's ward when the commission visited. He was deaf-mute from his birth in 1929. His case file mentions hydrocephaly and severe mental disability. Although he could not attend school, there was hope he might be able to improve his physical abilities to perform simple tasks. He was described as lively and sociable. Engelbert's file contains three letters from his father asking him to be released into his care, the last of which was received on 15 February 1942, 3 days before the commission's visit. The requests were denied on all three occasions, the last under the pretext that further examinations were necessary. On 20 May 1942, Engelbert was transferred to Spiegelgrund, where he died on 8 November. In the case of Georgine Schwab (born 1934), her grandmother repeatedly pleaded for her release, again to no avail. The files contain numerous similar examples, proving that these children were neither unwanted nor unloved.

In this case, it seems that Asperger was a well-functioning cog in a deadly machine. Even if the ultimate responsibility for the deaths of these children fell on Schicker, Gugging's director, who signed off on the transferals, and on the Spiegelgrund staff, the episode shows that the authorities trusted Asperger to lend his expertise to the selection of children for elimination.

Asperger's diagnoses compared to those at Spiegelgrund

In his publications, Asperger projected an image of himself as benevolent, optimistic, and affectionate towards the children in his care-a characterization echoed in the biographical literature. While there is little doubt that he was passionate about his work and genuinely cared about many of his patients, in the context of this paper, we must ask whether this positive attitude extended to those children who did not offer hopes of future development or who defied attempts to educate or discipline them. Based on the narrative promoted by Asperger himself and others who took his cue, one would expect to find considerable differences between his reports on troubled children and those written by colleagues committed to the idea of "unworthy" lives and their exclusion from the body politic.

Gerald St. is the second boy in the sample who besides the aforementioned Friedrich K. was described, among other labels, as "autistic." Asperger saw him in July 1941, when he was 28 months old. He diagnosed him with "intellectual retardation" and a "disturbed personality," and more specifically with a "restriction of personal contact, abrupt impulses, increased and inadequate affects, and stereotypical movements." In the context of a "normal children's community," he considered the boy an "unbearable burden" and therefore recommended either private care or transferal to Spiegelgrund. Gerald was admitted to Spiegelgrund 8 months later, via two other institutions. The first psychological assessment at Spiegelgrund came to similar conclusions: "intellectually retarded, especially with regard to language," "impulsiveness," and "tendency to tantrums." "It is very difficult to establish contact, the child just talks in a spontaneous and autistic manner." The overall diagnosis was "neuropathy." A year later, Heinrich Gross (1915-2005), one of the most notorious Austrian "euthanasia" perpetrators, came to a much more optimistic result and recommended Gerald's release into the care of his grandparents as Gerald, although still behind in his overall development, had caught up regarding his mental abilities. Gross now described the boy as emotionally responsive, cheerful, and excitable. This is an example of Asperger's reputed "pedagogical optimism" ringing hollow in the face of what he actually wrote in his patients' files.

Gerald was initially described in similar terms by Asperger and at Spiegelgrund. Leo A., by contrast, is a typical example of the 12 out of 30 cases in which Asperger appears harsher than his peers. Born in April 1936 to a single mother, Leo was placed in foster care immediately after his birth. At age four, Leo was an intelligent but difficult child. He suffered from fits of rage and was accused of cruelty towards animals. In November 1940, he was sent to Asperger's ward for observation and diagnosis. In his assessment, Asperger qualified Leo as a "very difficult, psychopathic boy of a kind which is not frequent among small children." Although he was "in some respects intellectually ahead of his age," Asperger pointed out the boy's "heightened impulsiveness" and his "acts of malice carried out with great skill." Asperger's recommendation contains an expression he often used to characterize his ideal style of education: What the boy needed was the "very sovereign guidance" (sehr überlegene Führung) that only an institution following the principles of Heilpädagogik (such as Spiegelgrund) could provide. Leo was sent to Spiegelgrund 4 months later, after a stay with his aunt. After 4 months of observation, Erwin Jekelius and Heinrich Gross signed their own assessments: Leo was "very well developed in every respect and very intelligent." He was found to be solitary and withdrawn in the company of other children and easily irritated, but he caused no difficulties. While not very helpful towards other children, no signs of a lack of empathy ( Gemütsarmut) had been observed. Jekelius' and Gross' recommendation was to return the boy to his father since they thought that the difficulties leading to his hospitalization had been caused by his environment in foster care. Asperger's diagnosis of "psychopathy"-with its implication of a constitutional, potentially lifelong condition-had no merit in the eyes of his former collaborator Jekelius.

In this as in other cases, Asperger's belief in the etiological preponderance of innate constitutional factors (or, alternatively, organic brain damage) led him to negative verdicts on his patients, which could easily turn into self-fulfilling prophecies.

As mentioned, of these 30 cases, there are only 2 in which Asperger appears to have taken a more positive position than his peers at Spiegelgrund: In November 1938, he saw 6-year-old Johann T., whom he described as "an erethic, feeble-minded boy who recognizes no danger and who, unless constantly supervised, due to his restless drivenness endangers himself and his surroundings." Asperger recommended institutionalization at the Biedermannsdorf reformatory near Vienna (Spiegelgrund had not been established yet). At Biedermannsdorf, as in similar institutions, children were routinely subjected to emotional, physical, and sexual violence from their peers and from staff [ 88]. It is hardly surprising then that Johann did not make much progress over the next years. In May 1941, Jekelius diagnosed the boy as "uneducable" and an "imbecile" and demanded his transferal to Spiegelgrund. Despite the dangerous diagnosis, Johann survived the "euthanasia" facility, though his later fate remains unknown. Asperger's diagnosis in this case appears more lenient and optimistic, but it is possible that Johann's state deteriorated during the 30 months between the two diagnoses, especially in light of the adverse conditions at Biedermannsdorf.

The cases analyzed here demonstrate that Asperger did not refrain from diagnoses such as "feeble-mindedness," which could entail serious dangers in the context of a youth welfare system dominated by an eliminatory ideology towards the weakest members of society. In one regard, however, Asperger did show a certain restraint. As outlined in a previous section, while the Spiegelgrund staff routinely included information on the patients' and their families' "hereditary qualities" and sometimes even raised the possibility of (forcible) sterilization, Asperger in most cases avoided such references.

Apart from this qualification, the sample yields no evidence that Asperger proved more benevolent towards his patients than his peers at Spiegelgrund when labeling children with diagnoses that could have an enormous impact on their future-quite the opposite. Like many of his colleagues, Asperger had a marked tendency to separate children from their families-which he often considered dysfunctional-and to commit them to closed institutions. Of course, many children were exposed to violence or neglect at home, and institutional education in principle could have been a means of protecting them. All too often, however, it seems that Asperger preferred the pedagogical environment of a hierarchical institution over the home provided by parents he considered neurotic, incapable, or merely too "weak" in dealing with their child. In practice, though perhaps despite his best intentions, this meant that he regularly sent minors to institutions ripe with abuse and violence [ 89].

In 1941, Asperger sent a 15-year-old boy to a "labor education camp for work-shy youth" in Bavaria because he hoped that strict discipline and forced labor would help alleviate his severe hypochondriac symptoms. Although this case is in some respects unusual, it illustrates how authoritarian Asperger's approach could be. The case records kept by his clinic are full of examples revealing how he considered strict discipline and "sovereign guidance" ( überlegene Führung, a signature phrase in his written reports) the answer to many of his patients' (and their caregivers') troubles.

Asperger in the post-war years

This is not the place to give a full account of Asperger's post-war career, which spanned more than three decades, therefore I will limit myself to a few points that are relevant in the context of this paper. Little is known about Asperger's life during the final 2 years of the war, which he spent in the Wehrmacht. After 9 months of training and service in Vienna and Brünn/Brno, he was sent to Croatia in December 1943 with the 392nd Infantry Division, deployed for "protection" of the occupied territories in Yugoslavia and the fight against "partisans." The German forces' tactics against irregular troops in Yugoslavia included mass killings of civilians as hostages or in reprisals, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths ([ 90]: 161). Asperger briefly mentioned his war experiences in his 1974 interview:

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Asperger returned to the Vienna University Pediatric Clinic. The Heilpädagogik ward had sustained severe damage from a bomb attack which also killed Viktorine Zak, Asperger's closest assistant [ 3]. On 1 September 1945, Asperger applied for the confirmation of the Habilitation he had obtained in 1943-all such degrees awarded during the Nazi period were made void upon liberation, pending an inquiry into the candidate's political background. As mentioned, in 1938, Asperger had joined the National Socialist Welfare Organization (NSV) and the German Labor Front (DAF) and had applied for membership in the National Socialist German Physicians' League (NSDÄB). In contrast to party formations such as the SS or Hitler Youth, these were considered "affiliated organizations" of the Nazi Party, and not part of the NSDAP itself. This distinction allowed Asperger to emerge with a clean slate under the Austrian implementation of denazification since he had never joined the NSDAP. He avoided the career interruptions that many of his colleagues faced and retained his position as the head of the Heilpädagogik ward. Additionally, from July 1946 to May 1949, he served as provisional director of the pediatric clinic. In 1957, he moved to Innsbruck, where he headed the local university pediatric clinic until 1962 when he was formally appointed as Chair of the Vienna Pediatric Clinic, the most prestigious position in Austrian pediatrics.

With respect to Austria's Nazi past, judging from his writings, Asperger formed part of the wall of silence established during the first years after the war. He made a rare reference to the Nazi period in his 1977 retirement speech from the Vienna clinic, vaguely referring to the Germans' "arrogance, hubris, [and] cruel iniquities" which had "inexorably led to war" and to "terrible suffering." As in his 1974 interview [ 3], he painted the war in terms of his personal experiences as an existential learning opportunity ([ 4]: 196, [ 91]: 217). According to some, Asperger in 1938 risked his life to speak out against the threat that race hygiene ideology posed to the children in his care. In 1977, while explicitly addressing the war in a speech summarizing his intellectual legacy, he did not care to mention National Socialism, its millions of victims, or even the hundreds of children, some of them his patients, who had been killed practically under his eyes.

Although later in his career he represented pediatrics as a whole, Heilpädagogik remained his central concern. At least in Austria, he dominated the field for decades, curtailed only by competition from the emerging discipline of youth psychiatry. Judging from his writings after 1945, the central tenets of his thinking and his pedagogical approach remained relatively unchanged. On a conceptual level, he saw his main opponents in the representatives of psychoanalysis and related theories focusing on dynamic psychological processes and childhood experiences ([ 76]: 2-3, 272, and numerous other passages). In principle, he also distanced himself from the genetic determinism typical of Nazi race hygiene, at least to the extent necessary to claim a space for his own discipline and its therapeutic options ([ 76]: 55). Yet despite his often-stressed "pedagogic optimism," he believed that his patients were a "selection of children with endogenous constitutional damages" ([ 76]: 79). It is hardly surprising, then, that he would refer to his work as a heroic and often hopeless fight against the terrible odds of constitutional deficiencies of all kinds ([ 76]: 272-5). A typical example of his approach is a 1952 paper on the "Psychopathology of Young Criminals," in which he named three groups of children with constitutional or organic defects as particularly prone to committing crimes: the so-called "unstable" (or "disorganized") type, those with encephalitis-induced brain damage, and the "autistic, with disturbed instincts, especially those with normal or above-average intelligence" ([ 92]: 31).

Despite his emphasis on heredity and constitution, he mostly avoided explicit references to eugenics, which due to its association with Nazi crimes had become discredited in mainstream scientific discourse, at least in Austria and Germany. In one passage of his textbook, he criticized the term "unworthy of living" and stressed the need to dedicate the best schools and the best teachers to the education of the mentally disabled ([ 76]: 93). However, in a book with very few references overall, he also quoted Otmar von Verschuer (1896-1969), one of the leading race hygienists in Nazi Germany with ties to Josef Mengele [ 93, 94], and Johannes Lange (1891-1938), a contributor to the Nazis' "Bible" of race hygiene [ 95]), using their twin research to bolster his views on the importance of heredity ([ 76]: 53-4, 140, 144, 207, 274). In his handbook on Heilpädagogik, Asperger also included the following passage on the eugenic dangers of "feeble-mindedness":

While eugenics appeared only of peripheral concern to Asperger, the idea of an inherited "general inferiority of the nervous system" as a common etiological basis for most childhood disorders was of central importance to him ([ 76]: III, 1-3, 53-61, 272). In a number of passages, this is linked to the concept of "degenerative stigmas"-small bodily anomalies, which were supposed to indicate the "degenerative constitution" of some of his patients ([ 76]: 84, 85, with a reference to Lombroso, 86-7, 125, 142, 194).

One troubling consequence arising from this approach is how Asperger regarded the sexual abuse of children. He was convinced that victims of sexual abuse shared a common constitutional disposition and certain character traits such as "shamelessness," leading them to "attract" such experiences, while children with "natural defensive forces" should be able to "reject" them ([ 96]: 27). If a child suffered from trauma as a result of abuse or rape, Asperger again took this as a sign of an inherent constitutional weakness, since a "healthy personality" should be able to "outgrow" even "brutal acts of sexual violation" without suffering any damage in terms of psychological development ([ 96]: 24, [ 76]: 58-60, 197, 262-3). In his textbook, the only examples offered on this subject are cases in which the abuse was presented as a fabrication of the child, reinforcing the impression that the victims were always to blame-either because they were phantasizing, if not outright lying, or because they had "provoked" the deeds due to their constitutional predisposition ([ 76]: 233, 250-6).

The case of 15-year-old Edith H. illustrates the continuity of Asperger's thinking on sexual abuse from the Nazi to the post-war period. Edith was admitted to the Heilpädagogik ward in April 1941 because she had been sexually abused by a 40-year-old man. In his report, Asperger called her "under-developed with regard to intellect and character." He deplored that she lacked "moral sense" and did not show any remorse about what had happened. He recommended placing her in permanent welfare care ( Fürsorgeerziehung), not just because of her "severe sexual depravation" but also because of the moral danger she allegedly posed to her environment. A few months later, in accordance with Asperger's recommendation, the court ordered her forced admittance to Spiegelgrund. During her stay, according to the physician Helene Jokl and Spiegelgrund's director Erwin Jekelius, she was friendly, helpful, and comradely, but also lazy and susceptible to both positive and negative influences. In contrast to Asperger, they considered her intelligence average, but echoed his opinion on Edith's "sexual depravity." They recommended sending her to Theresienfeld, a reformatory for girls.

In a similar vein, Asperger rejected the possibility that constitutionally healthy children could suffer from war-related trauma. Any observable symptoms were again either due to some inborn constitutional defect or arose from the desire to gain material advantages, such as pensions ([ 76]: 141, 194). The case of Max G. is an example of the impact this narrow focus on a child's alleged "constitution" could have on their lives. In 1938, when Max was 6 years old, his family was torn apart by the Nazis' anti-Jewish policies. His Jewish father was forced into a divorce and spent 5 years in a concentration camp. With his mother, Max then moved to Znojmo, a town annexed from Czechoslovakia after the 1938 Munich Agreement, from where he was expelled along with the German-speaking population in 1945. At 14 years old, he was living in war-torn Vienna with his father. In August 1946, Asperger wrote an expert opinion for the Juvenile Criminal Court on Max, who was accused of a series of thefts. Not a single word in his assessment referred to the fate of the boy's father or to the fact that as a "half-Jew" he had himself been under threat of persecution for half his life. While other documents in the file stressed that the boy had finished school with good grades despite his difficult situation, Asperger described him as "intellectually clearly deficient." Based on the boy's apparent "overfamiliarity" and "unreliability," he diagnosed him as an "epileptoid psychopath," a condition he described as the opposite of "autistic psychopathy" with respect to social behavior. In November 1946, after Max was fired from an apprenticeship that was seen as his last chance to prove his worth, based on Asperger's diagnosis and recommendation, the boy was sent to the Eggenburg reformatory.

As in other countries, the Austrian public has over the last years been confronted with a wave of revelations on the violence, abuse, and neglect pervading institutions set up to protect children from precisely such conditions [ 74, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103]. The same is true for children with disabilities, who were often kept in asylum-type institutions where they were denied rehabilitation or therapy and exposed to severe hospitalism [ 104, 105]. In this context, a critical assessment of Asperger's brand of Heilpädagogik with its "pronounced dominance of restrictive pedagogical concepts" ([ 74]: 613) is overdue. Specifically, what needs to be investigated is how the ideas he promoted of "hereditary constitutions" as the root of most mental troubles, his bias against victims of sexual and other abuse, his unwavering belief in the benefits of closed educational institutions, and his emphasis on the authority of the "genius educator"-the ideal of a towering father-figure that he had created for himself-impacted the lives of thousands of children who were often stigmatized with the label of "constitutional defectiveness" on scientifically dubious grounds and institutionalized.

Conclusions

Asperger's choices after Austria's Anschluss to Nazi Germany are best understood against the backdrop of his political socialization during his early years in the Bund Neuland, an organization combining both Catholic and Pan-German völkisch ideology. In the years before March 1938, the Bund became a Trojan Horse for illegal Nazi activists. While there is no evidence that Asperger actively supported Nazism before 1938, there was a common ideological ground, as he himself acknowledged after the war. The formative years he spent in an organization that often acted as a bridge between Catholic and Nazi circles help explain how Asperger could launch his career at the Vienna Pediatric University Clinic in 1931, at a time when its newly appointed director Franz Hamburger, a staunch Nazi, began pushing out the clinic's Jewish assistants and reorienting the institution according to his worldview.

After the Anschluss, like many Austrians who had not actively participated in the Nazi movement during the time it was banned (1933-1938), Asperger tried to acquire political credentials by joining a number of organizations affiliated with the Nazi Party. Unlike his colleagues at the pediatric clinic, however, he did not join the NSDAP or one of its paramilitary formations (such as the SA or SS). This decision did not hurt his career; he could afford to avoid the ideological commitment of party membership thanks to the protection provided by his mentor Hamburger, one of the Nazi figureheads in the Vienna Medical Faculty.

During the following years, repeated assessments of Asperger's political reliability show that the Nazi authorities saw him in an increasingly positive light, including as someone willing to go along with their ideas of race hygiene. As late as 1943/1944, when seeking approval of his postdoctoral thesis (the text on "autistic psychopaths" that later made him famous), he received the Nazi hierarchy's consent. Overall, during the years of the Nazi regime, Asperger managed to extend his professional activities beyond his university position, mostly within the Vienna municipal administration and the juvenile court system. The exclusion of Jewish doctors, psychologists, and pedagogues from their professions opened new opportunities for those in the field who were not affected by anti-Jewish legislation or political persecution. Apart from some initial reservations due to his Catholic orientation, there is no evidence that the Nazi authorities considered Asperger an opponent of their race hygiene agenda (or to their policies more generally) or that he ever faced reprisals such as the alleged attempts by the Gestapo to arrest him. A plausible origin of this account is the fact that a long-time associate of Asperger's, Josef Feldner, saved a Jewish boy by hiding him in his home. The way Asperger referred to this episode long after the war suggests that Feldner's heroic act and the risk of discovery by the authorities made Asperger fear for himself, which would explain his volunteering for military service.

Asperger's own attitude towards Jews appears ambiguous. As a member of Neuland, he at least tacitly accepted the organization's anti-Semitic tendencies expressed both in religious and racist- völkisch terms. Case records of his Jewish patients show that Asperger had an acute sense of their religious and "racial" otherness and that anti-Semitic stereotypes sometimes found their way into his diagnostic reports. After the Nazi takeover in Austria, the way he pathologized some children's mental troubles, rather than acknowledging the reality of the persecution they faced, suggests a certain indifference towards their fate under the regime's anti-Jewish policies. At the same time, his relationships with Jewish colleagues indicate that he separated the anti-Semitic prejudices pervading the social and political spheres in which he was moving from his personal relations-not an uncommon phenomenon in the history of anti-Semitism.

After March 1938, in line with his acquisition of political credentials by joining organizations affiliated with the Nazi Party, he used lectures and publications to signal his fundamental accordance with the Nazi state's programs concerning race hygiene and public health. At the same time, he called for the necessary resources to take care of the troubled or "endangered" children in need of Heilpädagogik's support. Although these statements deviated from the hard core of race hygiene ideology with its inhuman devaluation of the "hereditarily inferior," there is no indication that they were perceived as critical of Nazi policies, as some authors have claimed. Rather, Asperger's ideas about Heilpädagogik's mission within the Nazi state, with his emphasis on turning troubled children into useful members of the German body politic, were shared in many circles at the time. Given that Asperger used the same arguments after the war, there is no indication that the utilitarian logic of social worth he used to advocate for his patients-children considered difficult but who sometimes had normal or even above-average intellectual abilities-was merely a rhetorical strategy. Also, it would be a misunderstanding to assume that the small subset of his patients he diagnosed as "autistic psychopaths" benefited as a group from the fact that he considered some of them of superior intelligence. Just as with other diagnoses, everything depended on where they fell on the spectrum of intellectual and other abilities.

The real litmus test for Heilpädagogik under National Socialism was not how it treated the children with potential-in a time of increasing labor shortage, it was hardly controversial that they should be integrated into the "people's community" and contribute to the war effort-but those with disabilities so severe that from a utilitarian standpoint all efforts seemed futile. Since long before the Nazi period, Heilpädagogik had excluded children with severe disabilities from its remit, leaving them to psychiatric asylums or similar institutions. Overall, Heilpädagogik claimed to be able to salvage those who could be salvaged and to know where to draw the line.

Despite his advocacy, Asperger left the decisive question unanswered: What should happen with those who could not be helped by pedagogic, therapeutic, or medical means? Regarding these so-called "uneducable" children-who faced the greatest threat from the Nazis' race hygiene policies-Asperger's promises to turn his patients into valuable members of the "national community" proved futile.

With regard to such seemingly "hopeless cases" of mental disability, the records of Herta and Elisabeth Schreiber suggest that, at least under the circumstances, Asperger was willing to accept the killing of children as a last resort. In Herta's case, it seems that the mother consented to Asperger's decision to refer her directly to Spiegelgrund. According to Elisabeth's medical file, her mother also pushed for institutionalization, although there is no evidence that she knew what fate awaited her child.

Asperger's involvement in the selection of victims for the child "euthanasia" program includes an episode when, in 1942, he was part of a commission tasked with the screening of more than 200 residents of a home for children with mental disabilities in Gugging near Vienna. The commission's mandate was to categorize the children according to their intellectual abilities and prognoses and to define a residual group of "uneducable" children who should be killed at Spiegelgrund. Thirty-five children were placed in this group and later died at the "euthanasia" facility. While Asperger was not directly responsible for their deaths, this episode nevertheless shows to what extent he cooperated with the regime's murderous policies. His role on the commission was linked to his part-time employment at the City of Vienna's Public Health Office, an additional professional role he had voluntarily taken on in 1940. Cooperation with the "euthanasia" program was by no means obligatory since the operation was illegal even by the standards of Nazi Germany.

The great majority of Asperger's patients, however, was not threatened by the child "euthanasia" program-they were not mentally disabled, but simply considered "abnormal" or "difficult" in some way. The diagnostic labels they received at Asperger's clinic, while not life-threatening, nevertheless carried heavy consequences for them. Asperger's and his colleagues' opinions determined to a large extent whether a child would be taken from their family and put into foster care or even sent to a reformatory-institutions that were rife with abuse. A comparison between Asperger's diagnostic practices and those of his peers at Spiegelgrund (regarding, it should be noted, a group with more severe difficulties than Asperger's average patients) reveals that Asperger's reports on these children were in many cases harsher in how he described their intellectual abilities, their character, and their future potential than those written at Spiegelgrund. These documents do not support Asperger's self-professed "pedagogic optimism" or his alleged benevolence towards his patients-quite the opposite.

On the other hand, he appears to have been less inclined to directly invoke the possibility of hereditary defects, which could have justified interventions such as forced sterilization. The case records from his ward contain very few references to the sterilization program or other race hygiene measures, suggesting that he was reluctant to report his patients to the authorities for these specific purposes. However, the fact that in some cases he did provide information to the authorities tasked with the implementation of race hygiene suggests that he did not fundamentally oppose these policies. This is also in line with his public comments on the sterilization law, in which he argued for its necessity, but called for "responsible implementation." Overall, the importance of this point should not be overstated because the sterilization law in Austria was implemented much later, and on a smaller scale than in Germany, many doctors and hospitals neglected to report their patients without any consequences, and children were not the main focus of the program. There is no evidence that Asperger deviated from the official position of the Nazi state on sterilization, which in this case had decided-at least in principle, and more so in Austria than in Germany-to institute mechanisms of due process for its implementation.

After the war, on the few occasions when Asperger publicly commented on National Socialism, he vaguely criticized "excesses" or moral failings, but did not address the reality of persecution, violence, and destruction wrought by the Nazi regime, especially against the Jewish population. In this unwillingness to deal with the past, he was typical of large segments of Austrian post-war society. In his professional field of Heilpädagogik, which he came to dominate during the three decades after World War II, this had detrimental consequences, as children from difficult backgrounds continued to be labeled as "constitutionally defective" and to be sent to closed educational institutions where abuse was rampant [ 97, 98].

Notes

1. A copy of the postdoctoral thesis as submitted in 1942 is at the Vienna University Library. It is practically identical to the 1944 paper.

2. One of the passages quoted by Gröger to support the claim of Asperger's "critical, differentiated attitude" is ([ 2]: 128), where Asperger asserts that autism does not follow a simple hereditary pattern. For a critical discussion of this and other arguments quoted in this literature review, see the "The best service to our Volk: Asperger and Nazi race hygiene" section, in which I analyze Asperger's stance on race hygiene.

3. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Asperger to Magistratsdirektion Wien, 16 September 1936, Beilage: Lebenslauf.

4. DÖW 6217, Liste von Gelehrten österreichischen Ursprungs in den Vereinigten Staaten, 1958; ([ 22]: 87). Frankl obtained his medical degree in 1922 and joined the Vienna Medical Chamber in 1924 (WStLA, 1.3.2.212.K1 Ärzte: Georg Frankl); it is unknown what he did between 1922 and 1927. Frankl's publications show that he was an established scholar of Heilpädagogik before Asperger (e.g., [ 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116]).

5. A list of scholars of Austrian origin compiled after the war by Austrian authorities lists him as "George Frankl, b. 1897; Child Psychiatrist, Kansas Univ. Medical Center, Kansas City." DÖW 6217, Liste von Gelehrten österreichischen Ursprungs in den Vereinigten Staaten, 1958.

6. "Anni Frankl, born 25 April 1897; Asst. Prof. of Psychology; University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas." DÖW 6217, Liste von Gelehrten österreichischen Ursprungs in den Vereinigten Staaten, 1958.

7. Since he never joined the NSDAP, in 1945, Asperger was considered politically "not incriminated" by the Austrian authorities and not affected by denazification measures. For details, see the "Asperger in the post-war years" section.

8. Universitätsarchiv Wien, MED PA 17, Personalakt Hans Asperger, "Curriculum vitae," undated.

9. Much less is known about the group of trainee doctors and assistants (before obtaining their Habilitation), such as Frankl and Asperger. It is unknown if any Jewish assistants remained after Frankl's departure in 1937.

10. Asperger joined the CDSB in 1921 or 1922: Michael Hubenstorf, Hans Asperger-Biography (unpublished manuscript). In his 1974 interview, Asperger described how the Bund influenced his experience of puberty, which also points to the early 1920s. Overall, his account of the Bund was a-political.

11. See for example Bund Neuland's periodical Neue Jugend, 1935 to 1937.

12. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Fragebogen, 7 Oct. 1940.

13. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Fragebogen, 7 Oct. 1940.

14. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Fragebogen, 7 Oct. 1940. Another document refers to Asperger's membership in the Vaterländische Front (Fatherland Front, since 1934), the single party of the Austrofascist regime that governed Austria from 1933/34 to 1938. Since membership was obligatory for public employees, however, this is not a reliable indicator of political sympathies.

15. In German, the passage reads: "Die nationalsozialistische Zeit kam, wobei es aus meinem bisherigen Leben klar war, dass man wohl mit vielen sagen wir nationalen in Anführungszeichen Dingen mitkam, aber nicht mit den Unmenschlichkeiten." Here as elsewhere in this paper, the translation reflects Asperger's often convoluted and ambiguous style in order to allow readers to form their own opinion.

16. For a review of Asperger's post-war reflections on National Socialism, see the final section of this paper.

17. Austrian State Archive (ÖStA), AdR, Gauakt 36055 Hans Asperger, NSDAP, Gauleitung Wien to Franz Hamburger, 13 July 1940.

18. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Geheime Staatspolizei, Staatspolizeileitstelle Wien to Personalamt Wiener Gemeindeverwaltung, 9 November 1940.

19. ÖStA, AdR, Gauakt 36055 Hans Asperger, STK/I-S-9733, Staatskommissar Otto Wächter an das ehemalige Unterrichtsministerium, 7 June 1939.

20. ÖStA, AdR, Gauakt 36055 Hans Asperger, III D U/R/G1, Gaupersonalamt, 5 January 1939: Asperger Dr. Johann, signature illegible.

21. We would additionally have to explain why Franz Hamburger also kept silent over an episode that could have helped his reputation, which after the war was badly damaged by his heavy Nazi involvement. Wolfgang Neugebauer, one of the leading historians of National Socialism in Austria, considers the Gestapo episode a complete fabrication (personal correspondence with the author, 2 December 2016).

22. Hansi Busztin, Eitelkeit, undated [unpublished manuscript, mid to late 1980s]. Personal correspondence with Anna Goldenberg (Hans Busztin's granddaughter), 22 January 2017.

23. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Hauptgesundheitsamt to Hauptpersonalamt, 28 June 1943.

24. ÖStA, AdR, Gauakt 36055 Hans Asperger.

25. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Fragebogen, 7 October 1940.

26. In Vienna, 31.4% of those physicians who remained after the exclusion of all Jews from the profession joined the Nazi party, but only 17.6% were also members of the Ärztebund. In all of Austria (no numbers available for Vienna only), a further 8.5% became Ärztebund candidates like Asperger: Hubenstorf M. Nazi Doctors in Vienna (paper given at the conference "Austrian Physicians and National Socialism," Vienna, 16 April 2015).

27. ÖStA, AdR, Gauakt 36055 Hans Asperger, Kreisleitung I. der NSDAP Wien to Ortsgruppenleiter, Fragebogen zur politischen Beurteilung, 6 December 1938 (filled in and signed on 4 and 23 January 1939).

28. ÖStA, AdR, Gauakt 36055 Hans Asperger, Gaupersonalamtsleiter Stowasser, 1 November 1940.

29. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Schreiben des Führers des SD-Leitabschnittes Wien to Personalamt der Stadt Wien, 14 November 1940.

30. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Dozentenführer der Universität (Dr. Marchet) to Dekanat, 17 November 1942 and 15 April 1943.

31. UAW, MED PA 17, Personalakt Hans Asperger, "Bestätigung," 22 May 1942. The procedure to officially obtain the title was suspended because of the war.

32. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten.

33. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1938.

34. The city had approximately 200 Jewish foster children in its charge; how many of these were living with non-Jewish foster parents is unknown.

35. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1938, Alfred S.; 1.3.2.209.1.A57, Psychiatrie: Krankengeschichten: Männer, Alfred S. According to Austrian data protection laws, in many cases (such as documents from public archives), full names can only be published if the person in question is confirmed dead.

36. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1938, Walter Brucker.

37. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1938, Ivo P. As in many other cases after March 1938, Asperger closed his report on Ivo with the salutation "Heil Hitler." Asperger exhibited a similar detachment in many of his recommendations for the transferal of children to Spiegelgrund, to which he referred as though to a normal pedagogical institution, despite its function as a killing facility. For an analysis of these transferals, see the "Limits of 'educability': Asperger and the Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' facility" and "Asperger's diagnoses compared to those at Spiegelgrund" sections. Ivo P. was not sent to a "normal" home, as Asperger had recommended, but to an institution for "non-Aryan" children. His trace in the youth welfare office's records ends in 1943: 1.3.2.207.A6, KÜST-Kartei, Ivo P.

38. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1939, Marie Klein.

39. WStLA, 1.3.2.212, A 5/4, Gundel to Scharizer (Stellvertretender Gauleiter), 3 April 1941.

40. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1939, Marie Klein.

41. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1939, Lizzy Hofbauer. In February 1941, she was a patient at the Vienna Jewish Hospital on the ward of Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), who after the war would rise to worldwide fame as the author of the best-selling book Man's Search for Meaning [ 121] and as the creator of logotherapy and existential analysis. Citing "lack of space," Frankl wrote to Otto Pötzl (1877-1962) to have Lizzy transferred to the latter's Psychiatric-Neurological University Clinic, from where she was sent to Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital. Ten days after Frankl's letter, Lizzy was put on a transport to the extermination center Hartheim near Linz, run by the "T4" euthanasia program: WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A56, Krankengeschichte Lizzy Hofbauer; WStLA, 1.3.2.209.2.B5, Standesprotokoll 1941. This case stands in contrast to Frankl's later claim that Pötzl and himself had worked together to transfer Jewish patients from Pötzl's Psychiatric University Clinic to the Jewish hospital in order to save them from "euthanasia" ([ 122]: 60-1).

42. WStLA, 1.3.2.212.A7/7, "Richtlinien für die Beurteilung der Erbgesundheit," circular of the Reich Minister of the Interior (18 July 1940)-IV b 1446/40-1072c.

43. The author also shows how educators frequently tried to improve their professional standing by stressing the potential of their own clientele, often at the expense of other groups labeled as farther down the value hierarchy (a strategy he calls "demarcation towards below"). On the accommodation of Heilpädagogik as a whole with the Nazi regime, see above.

44. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten, e.g., case histories Elfriede P. (1935), who according to Asperger had shown a suspicious "interest" when sexually abused at age 5, or Kurt K. (1936), whom Asperger labeled an "unstable criminal" at the age of 12, see also the "Asperger in the post-war years" section.

45. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Fragebogen für den Personalkataster, 27 November 1940, and further documents in the file.

46. Jekelius did not explicitly mention the "euthanasia" killings-their existence was a state secret-but the meaning would have been clear to professional insiders (for more on how the knowledge of the killings spread among the population, see the "Limits of 'educability': Asperger and the Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' facility" section). In 1942, the Spiegelgrund "euthanasia" clinic was renamed and for a period had the term "curative pedagogy" in its official designation-an indication that the discipline, far from being under threat from the regime, at least for a time was actually gaining ground; WStLA, 1.3.2.209.A1, Anstaltenamt, Normalien des Anstaltenamtes der Hauptabteilung V, A Nr. 500, 23 November 1942.

47. WStLA, 1.3.2.213.A1.158.160.30, Tagesordnung der vom 31. August bis 4. September 1940 in Wien stattfindenden 47. Ordentlichen Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Kinderheilkunde. Conti hanged himself in 1945 in a prison cell in Nuremberg.

48. The patient registry of Asperger's ward contains information on close to 2700 children admitted between 1935 and 1949. The most common reason for admission was "education problems" ( Erziehungsschwierigkeiten): WStLA, 209.1.B1018 (prov.), Kinderklinik, Index 1921-1964.

49. Heller's speech also contained powerful arguments against the forced sterilization program that was already underway in Germany. Due to his Jewish background, Heller became an early victim of Nazi persecution after the Anschluss. He died in December 1938, months after a suicide attempt he never recovered from. His wife and daughter were later deported and killed in Riga [ 129]. Dementia infantilis Heller (in English: Heller's syndrome, now better known as childhood disintegrative disorder) was named after him.

50. Asperger himself did not give a talk at this one-day symposium, but he spoke at the pediatric conference that provided the framework (see above).

51. UAW, MED PA 17, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Prof. Franz Hamburger, Referaterstattung zur Habilitationsarbeit des Dr. Hans Asperger, 28 December 1942.

52. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Personalamt to Leiter Personalamt, 9 November 1940; Gemeindeverwaltung der Stadt Wien to Hans Asperger, 12 November 1940. Asperger had worked part-time for the city's child welfare program in addition to his position at the Pediatric University Clinic since 1936.

53. UAW, MED PA 17, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Prof. Franz Hamburger, Referaterstattung zur Habilitationsarbeit des Dr. Hans Asperger, 28 December 1942. After 1938, the NSV took over numerous children's homes; racially or politically "undesirable" children were removed from these institutions and concentrated in facilities such as Spiegelgrund: WStLA, 1.3.2.212.A7, Parville to Vellguth et al., 23 June 1941; Erlass Vellguth, 5 July 1942.

54. In Vienna, information on more than 767,000 individuals was collected in this context. For details on this so-called erbbiologische Bestandsaufnahme (hereditary inventory), see [ 131].

55. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10.A1 (Spiegelgrund), Krankengeschichten: überlebende Knaben und Mädchen 1941-1945.

56. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten.

57. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1912-1944, case histories Gertrude S., Hildegard S., Helmuth R., Theodor M., Eduard G. (1940 and 1941), Elfriede V. (filed under 1932, documents from 1942), and Ernst T. (filed under 1935, documents from 1942). The Heilpädagogik ward mentioned to the Department of Hereditary and Racial Hygiene that Ernst T.'s father was Jewish, information that put the child in considerable danger. His fate is unknown.

58. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Adolf R., Otto S., Karl S., Charlotte H. The terms "degenerative" and "degeneration," unlike today, clearly referred to negative hereditary traits, in the same sense as the now historic German term Entartung, see ([ 132]: 786-7).

59. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1912-1944.

60. The 1699 surviving Vienna records of initiated sterilization procedures show the following age distribution: 13 years, 1 case; 14 years, 5; 15 years, 22; 16 years, 31; 17 years, 44; 18 years, 76 (WStLA, 2.3.15.A1.1-3, Namensindex, Claudia Spring).

61. Verordnung zur Ausführung des Gesetzes zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses, 5 December 1933, Reichsgesetzblatt Teil 1, Nr. 138, 1021.

62. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten, 15/1933, Therese B.

63. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten 1912-1944, case history Ernst M., 1930, Wiener Kinderklinik to Hauptgesundheitsamt, Erb- und Rassenpflege, 2 March 1942.

64. Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses, 25 July 1933, RGBl. I 1933, S. 529-31, §14.

65. DÖW 51983, Stadtschulrat für Wien to Stephan I., 22 December 1939; Rosalia I. to Leo Navratil, 7 January 1962; Susanne Zander to Maria Asperger-Felder, 16 October 2009 (I thank Kathrin Hippler for these documents).

66. DÖW 51983, Stadtschulrat für Wien to Stephan I., 22 December 1939; Rosalia I. to Leo Navratil, 7 January 1962.

67. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: verstorbene Mädchen und Knaben 1940-1945, Krankengeschichte Herta Schreiber, Heilpädagogische Abteilung der Universitäts-Kinderklinik Wien, Befund Herta Schreiber, 27 June 1941, gez. Dr. Asperger. Overall, files pertaining to 562 out of a total of 789 victims have been preserved.

68. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: verstorbene Mädchen und Knaben 1940-1945, Krankengeschichte Herta Schreiber, Einlagebogen, 13 July 1941, no signature.

69. The infamous "euthanasia" propaganda film Ich klage an (I Accuse) in a subplot uses a girl with encephalitis-induced brain damage to justify the killing of mentally disabled children.

70. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: verstorbene Mädchen und Knaben 1940-1945, Krankengeschichte Elisabeth Schreiber (born 9 October 1936), Abschrift des Gutachtens der Univ. Kinderklinik Wien, 27 October 1941, Dr. Asperger.

71. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: verstorbene Mädchen und Knaben 1940-1945, Krankengeschichte Elisabeth Schreiber.

72. DÖW 7906, Luftpost, Royal Air Force, fall 1941.

73. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: verstorbene Mädchen und Knaben 1940-1945, Krankengeschichte Ulrike Mayerhofer, Krankengeschichte Richard Draskovic.

74. In this case, Asperger used the term "autistic" in its original Bleulerian sense of a symptom associated with schizophrenia.

75. Lower Austria Provincial Archives (NÖLA), Erlass der Reichsstatthalterei in Niederdonau (Gauselbstverwaltung), 9 December 1941.

76. NÖLA, Reichsstatthalter in Niederdonau to Dezernat III b-2, 2 March 1942.

77. NÖLA, Reichsstatthalter in Niederdonau to Dezernat III b-2, 2 March 1942.

78. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, B 4 Totenbuch.

79. NÖLA, Reichsstatthalter in Niederdonau to Dezernat III b-2, 2 March 1942.

80. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, B 4 Totenbuch.

81. NÖLA, Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Gugging, Krankengeschichte Engelbert Deimbacher.

82. NÖLA, Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Gugging, Krankengeschichte Georgine Schwab.

83. Not all the files are preserved, and the surviving ones may not be complete. In a sample of 76 files concerning children who died at Spiegelgrund or, in a few cases, at Gugging, 21 contain correspondence with parents. In 6 of these (including the ones quoted above), the parents had asked to take the children into their care (NÖLA, Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Gugging, Krankengeschichten der Kinderanstalt).

84. The 30 cases in the sample with detailed documentation: WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10.A1 (Spiegelgrund), Krankengeschichten: überlebende Knaben und Mädchen 1941-1945, Leo A., Karl E., Walter G., Arnold H., Alfred H., Johann K., Franz K., Gottfried K., Rudolf N., Roman R., Johann R., Adolf R., Josef R., Otto S., Karl S., Gerald St., Rudolf St., Richard S., Johann T., Leopold V., Erich We., Erich Wi., Charlotte H., Edith H., Lucia K., Edith M., Charlotte M., Hildegard P., Helene P., Charlotte R. The 10 cases excluded from the direct comparison between Spiegelgrund and Asperger's ward due to insufficient documentation (but included in the sample of 40): Anton R., Walter S., Erwin T., Mathilde H., Herta P., Margarete Schw., Margarethe Sch., Friedrich K., Theodor P. and Robert Sch.; the last three belong to WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten.

85. Friedrich K. was just under 8 years old when in March 1942 Asperger diagnosed him with an "autistic personality" and a "severe psychopathic state"; according to Asperger, the boy was "intellectually low-ranking" but sometimes "surprised with good performances in some areas." Due to his "irresponsible" and unmotivated "compulsive activity" and his "substantial mental abnormality," Asperger considered the Spiegelgrund institution the only suitable option: WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten, 1942, Friedrich K. The boy was transferred to Spiegelgrund in May 1942 (via Kinderübernahmsstelle), where he stayed for 10 months before being sent to the children's home Wimmersdorf: WStLA, 1.3.2.207.A6, index card Friedrich K.

86. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10.A1, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Knaben und Mädchen 1941-1945, Gerald St., Asperger to BJA III, 30 July 1941.

87. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Leo A., Befund, 27 December 1940, signed Asperger.

88. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Leo A., Befund und Gutachten, 23 September 1941, signed Heinrich Gross and Erwin Jekelius. It should be noted that the boy returned both to Spiegelgrund and the Heilpädagogik ward in 1942/1943, but the documents pertaining to these stays (assessments by Ernst Illing, Jekelius's successor at Spiegelgrund, and by one of Asperger's colleagues) are not relevant here.

89. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Karl E., Befund, 25 October 1940, signed Asperger.

90. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Karl E., Führungsbericht und Gutachten, signed Margarete Hübsch and Erwin Jekelius, 19 September 1941.

91. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Johann K., Befund, signed Asperger, 16 September 1942.

92. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Johann K., Gutachterliche Äußerung, signed Ernst Illing, 6 January 1943.

93. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Charlotte H., Heilpädagogisches Gutachten, signed Asperger, 20 February 1941.

94. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Charlotte H., Gutachterliche Äußerung, signed Ernst Illing, 5 August 1942.

95. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10.A1, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Knaben und Mädchen 1941-1945, Johann T., Asperger to Wohlfahrtsamt der Bezirkshauptmannschaft Mödling-Liesing, 26 November 1938.

96. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10.A1, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Knaben und Mädchen 1941-1945, Johann T., "Abschrift Küst" on Johann T., Befund Jekelius, probably 9 May 1941.

97. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10.A1, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Knaben und Mädchen 1941-1945, Hildegard P., Heilpädagogisches Gutachten, signed Asperger, 2 October 1940.

98. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10, Nervenklinik für Kinder, Krankengeschichten: überlebende Mädchen und Knaben 1941-1945, Hildegard P., Führungsbericht und Gutachten, signed Jokl and Jekelius, 29 May 1941.

99. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten, case history Karl M. On the Wanderhof Herzogsägmühle, see ([ 137]: especially 53-4).

100. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.1.A47, Kinderklinik; Heilpädagogische Station: Krankengeschichten.

101. Deutsche Dienststelle, Auskunft zur Wehrmachtdienstzeit des Dr. Hans Asperger, 28 July 2015. He returned to Vienna on 22 September 1945, after several months as a prisoner of war: WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Inhaltsverzeichnis.

102. The choice of the expression niederschießen (to gun down) in what sounds like a carefully scripted monologue hints at the particular character of the warfare he experienced, since it suggests the killing of unarmed individuals rather than military battle. A remark in his textbook, first published in 1952, points in a similar direction: "Also during the war, one had to experience time and again how strong the pressure of the 'collective' could be, what terrible deeds a group of people as a whole were capable of, deeds that none of them would have committed on their own in their civil lives" ([ 76]: 81).

103. WStLA, 1.3.2.202, Personalakt Hans Asperger, Fragebogen, 7 October 1940.

104. UAW, MED PA 17, Personalakt Hans Asperger.

105. WStLA, 1.3.2.209.10.A1 (Spiegelgrund), Krankengeschichten: überlebende Knaben und Mädchen 1941-1945, Edith H.

106. The concept of "pension neurosis" was created by German psychiatrists after World War I. It served to deny benefits to war veterans who suffered from what today would be called PTSD. After World War II, the concept was often turned against survivors of Nazi medical experiments, concentration camps, and ghettoes, again by denying a causal link between experiences of persecution and long-term effects on mental health ([ 142]: 166). A paper that Asperger published in 1939 with his colleague Heribert Goll demonstrates to what extent Asperger thought that inborn (if not necessarily hereditary) characteristics determined personality traits in later life. The article was published in the journal Der Erbarzt, edited by leading race hygienist Otmar von Verschuer (1896-1969) [ 143].

107. A large part of the work for this article was completed at the author's previous institution, the Documentation Center of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW), Vienna.

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Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and "race hygiene" in Nazi-era Vienna - Molecular Autism

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Background Hans Asperger (1906-1980) first designated a group of children with distinct psychological characteristics as 'autistic psychopaths' in 1938, several years before Leo Kanner's famous 1943 paper on autism. In 1944, Asperger published a comprehensive study on the topic (submitted to Vienna University in 1942 as his postdoctoral thesis), which would only find international acknowledgement in the 1980s.

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'Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color' (Kimberlé Crenshaw, 1991)

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'Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color' (Kimberlé Crenshaw, 1991)

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Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color

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Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color | Kimberle Crenshaw | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics' (Kimberlé Crenshaw, 1989)

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'Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics' (Kimberlé Crenshaw, 1989)

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'The Adultification of Black Boys' (Elon Dancy III, 2014: p49-55)

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'The Adultification of Black Boys' (Elon Dancy III, 2014: p49-55)

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Trayvon Martin, Race, and American Justice: Writing Wrong

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Trayvon Martin, Race, and American Justice: Writing Wrong | Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Rema E. Reynolds, Katrice A. Albert, Lori L. Martin (eds.) | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Critical Race Theory: An Introduction' (Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, 2001 [2017])

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'Critical Race Theory: An Introduction' (Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, 2001 [2017])

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'Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center' (bell hooks, 1984)

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'Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center' (bell hooks, 1984)

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'The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism' (Casper  Erichsen and David Olusoga, 2010)

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'The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism' (Casper  Erichsen and David Olusoga, 2010)

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Review
''Haunting book ... an unforgettable and unflinching account of a neglected atrocity.' -- Sunday Telegraph >> 'The authors ... seek to show that the Kaiser's Germany displayed an enthusiasm for "social Darwinism" and the imposition of white racial superiority long before Hitler got to work. The first half of their book tells a fascinating story ... a remarkable story, well told here.' -- Max Hastings, Sunday Times >> '(A) provocative and uncomfortably absorbing book. ... Impressively researched, The Kaiser s Holocaust unflinchingly catalogues the abuse of human life in a continent the Kaiser never even visited. Olusoga and Erichsen, with their novelist s flair for narrative, provide a grimly readable history ... the book remains a vitally important addition to the ever-growing literature of atrocity and deserves to be read widely.' -- Ian Thomson, Daily Telegraph >> 'In this powerful book, two historians seek to show that another component of Nazi thinking was the Second Reich s genocidal impulse towards the Herero and Nama peoples of German South-west Africa (now Namibia) in the early 1900s. David Olusoga, an Anglo-Nigerian BBC producer and Casper W Erichsen, a Danish-born historian who runs an NGO in Namibia, write with precision and passion about this chilling episode and its aftermath.' -- Christopher Silvester, Daily Express >> 'The authors powerfully show the crucial role that the bloody colonial period played in the development of the Nazi dogma ... Even more unsettling, the implication of this highly readable book is that the colonial experience of Europe must be re-examined for such unintended consequences. Olusoga and Erichsen have thus succeeded not only in authoritatively reviving a fascinating episode from a neglected past, but also in requiring a reassessment of some of our assumptions about the European colonial legacy.' -- Paddy Docherty, Financial Times >> 'Olusoga and Erichsen have written a vivid, powerful narrative of the Namibian genocide though disputed, the term does seem apt and of the ways it has been forgotten and remembered, concealed and exhumed. They have done some fascinating archival digging, and offer moving evocations of the sites of slaughter today; most especially Shark Island, now a tourist resort, but a century ago the most deadly of the colonial concentration camps. They give a compelling sketch of the multiple connections between Namibia and Nazism.' -- Stephen Howe, Independent >> 'German imperial ambition and theories of nationalism and racial purity were already powerful before the First World War. These combined with the struggle to possess land in Germany's African empire, provoked exterminations as strategies of control. This book focuses particularly on what is now Namibia, where the Herero and Nama peoples were killed, or driven into the desert to die, and finally interned in prototype death camps. This shocking episode is presented as evidence that 20th-century Nazism was not an isolated abberation.' -- The Times, Saturday Review >> 'The Kaiser's Holocaust lifts the veil on a horrific and little-known episode of history.' --Daily Mail
Book Description
The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism, by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, is the unknown story of the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Germany's forgotten African Empire - an atrocity that foreshadowed the Nazi genocides forty years later.

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The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism

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Review ''Haunting book ... an unforgettable and unflinching account of a neglected atrocity.' -- Sunday Telegraph >> 'The authors ... seek to show that the Kaiser's Germany displayed an enthusiasm for "social Darwinism" and the imposition of white racial superiority long before Hitler got to work.

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'“They Don't Know, Don't Show, or Don't Care”: Autism's White Privilege Problem' (Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, 2020)

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'“They Don't Know, Don't Show, or Don't Care”: Autism's White Privilege Problem' (Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, 2020)

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Publishing with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. delivers end-to-end benefits from the time of submission through to publication and beyond.

We welcome the opportunity to work with you and your institution. Find everything you need to get the most out of Liebert journals in your library and to keep your collection up-to-date.

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Publishing with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. delivers end-to-end benefits from the time of submission through to publication and beyond. We welcome the opportunity to work with you and your institution. Find everything you need to get the most out of Liebert journals in your library and to keep your collection up-to-date.

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'Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna' (Edith Sheffer, 2018)

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'Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna' (Edith Sheffer, 2018)

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Asperger’s Children by Edith Sheffer – review

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The story that Hans Asperger saved autistic children from the Nazis is exposed as a myth in Edith Sheffer’s new biography

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'Chris Packham: Asperger's and Me' (2020)

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'Chris Packham: Asperger's and Me' (2020)

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Available: Box of Broadcasts

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Chris Packham invites us inside his autistic world to try to show what it is like being him. Chris explores the question of whether Asperger's has helped make him who he is today.

For most of his life, broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham didn't tell anyone about the one thing that in many ways has defined his entire existence. Chris is autistic - he has Asperger's Syndrome, which means he struggles in social situations, has difficulty with human relationships and is, by his own admission, 'a little bit weird'. But what if there was a way of taking away these autistic traits? Would Chris ever choose to be 'normal'?

In this film, Chris invites us inside his autistic world to try to show what it is really like being him. He lives alone in the woods with his 'best friend' Scratchy the dog, but he also has a long-term partner, Charlotte, who discusses the problems Asperger's creates in their relationship - she describes Chris as being sometimes 'like an alien'. Chris experiences the world in a very different way, with heightened senses that at times are overwhelming, and a mind that is constant bouncing from one subject to the next.

Growing up at a time when little was known about autism, Chris wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's until he was in his forties. With scientific advances offering new possibilities to treat his condition, Chris travels to America to witness radical therapies that appear to offer the possibility of entirely eradicating problematic autistic traits, but he also meets those who are challenging the idea that autistic people need to change in order to fit into society. Confronting this deeply personal subject with brutal honesty, and reflecting on the devastating struggles of his adolescence, Chris explores the question of whether he would ever want to be cured himself or whether, ultimately, Asperger's has helped make him who he is today.

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BBC Two - Chris Packham: Asperger's and Me

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Chris Packham invites us inside his autistic world to try to show what it is like being him. Chris explores the question of whether Asperger's has helped make him who he is today. For most of his life, broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham didn't tell anyone about the one thing that in many ways has defined his entire existence.

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'If You’re Whitewashing Autism, You’re Part of the Problem' (Children's Health Defense, 2018)

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'If You’re Whitewashing Autism, You’re Part of the Problem' (Children's Health Defense, 2018)

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CHILDREN'S HEALTH DEFENSE NOTE: April, Autism Awareness Month, came and went with less fanfare than in recent years. Usually, the new autism numbers come out at the beginning of the month, journalists get their marching orders of what to cover, sprinkle it throughout our news cycles all month, and life goes on. The CHD Team has noticed that more and more, autism stories have become fluff vs. headlines declaring "autism at record highs, one in 59 children" or "the epidemic shows no signs of abating." The following editorial was written several months ago and has been updated and republished here by CHD because, unlike other autism articles of late, it lays autism out, plainly and unabashedly, in hopes the world can understand that autism is not a gift. Rather than the rare basketball star or math savant, most autistic children suffer from myriad comorbid conditions like seizures, migraines, insomnia and autoimmune issues in addition to poor communication and social skills. Their parents, siblings and extended families suffer right along with them. Individuals with autism need successful therapies and treatments-and to be understood.

From "better diagnosis" to the idea the autistic brain is "wired differently" to the emphasis on those with extraordinary talents, efforts to whitewash the realities of autism are endless. We've been spoon fed a bogus narrative that normalizes autism and most people buy it despite the fact that kids in this country are clearly suffering more than ever, and not just with autism.

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that insurance claims for dangerous allergic reactions to peanuts, dairy, and eggs have increased nearly 500% across the past decade. Between 2002 and 2013, the rate of Type 1 diabetes in children soared by 60%. Meanwhile, our nation's children are doing so poorly psychologically, emotionally, and behaviorally that the Boston Globe reported that 500 school children in Massachusetts were arrested during 2016 in what is being called a national trend. Between 2001 and 2009, asthma rates in black children rose by nearly 50%. Between 2011 and 2015, the Denver public school system found itself increasing spending on elementary school therapy services by 244%.

Like the disconcerting increases in autoimmune diseases and allergies, the increasing rates of autism are real too. If you have any true familiarity with autism, you know that there is no way these children would have passed as typically developing before autism became an epidemic. That idea is about as ludicrous as assuming that just a generation ago, parents, teachers, and doctors were too stupid to notice anaphylaxis, diabetic neuropathy, and asthma attacks.

Do we have to refer to anaphylaxis as a beautiful variation of food tolerance to be deemed supportive of the peanut-allergic?

Professing that there has been no alarming increase in autism benefits a number of companies and government entities, but it certainly doesn't benefit people with autism. Would pretending there has been no increase in peanut allergies and distributing peanuts on every airplane and sending peanut butter into every classroom like we did in 1980 benefit those with life-threatening allergies to peanuts? Do we have to refer to anaphylaxis as a beautiful variation of food tolerance to be deemed supportive of the peanut-allergic?

The whitewashing of autism comes not only in the delusional declaration that it has always been here, but also the claim that the autistic brain is simply wired differently. Clearly our children with autism are beautiful human beings who should be valued, but not for the reasons sometimes suggested in news accounts and social media. While some may believe the unfounded theory that autism is a unique variation of healthy neurological function, there is a growing body of science that is much more grim and sobering.

...by failing to recognize autism as an urgent health crisis, they're pawns in a scheme much bigger than promoting acceptance of people with autism.

Immune dysfunction and brain inflammation in autism are implicated in study after study like these:

Complications of heart inflammation, or myocarditis, include dilated cardiomyopathy and cardiac arrest. Pleurisy is inflammation of the lungs and complications include respiratory distress and lung collapse. Inflammation of the liver, known as hepatitis, can cause scarring, cancer, or liver failure resulting in death.

Inflammation of the brain, of course, is no less serious.

In contrast to inflammation of the kidneys, appendix, or spleen, we are told that there is no reason for concern over brain inflammation. That even if our kids are spending the entire day head banging and crying, the entire night fighting insomnia, all the moments in between trapped in ritualistic compulsions, and locked helplessly within their own minds, that we need to accept it. And that it is normal. And it has always been here. And that it is part of a wide continuum of healthy neurological functioning that should be embraced.

I believe most people assume that I feel supported and my son feels accepted when they share articles and videos highlighting the beauty, creativity, and genius of autism. They don't realize that by failing to recognize autism as an urgent health crisis, they're pawns in a scheme much bigger than promoting acceptance of people with autism.

Alas, pretending autism is a gift doesn't demonstrate acceptance any more than pretending a peanut allergy is a gift. Calling brain inflammation and immune dysfunction beautiful isn't support. Acceptance of people with autism, who are each inherently valuable and beautiful in their own right, means acknowledging the actual research, not mindlessly parroting whitewashed folklore.
Ashlyn Washington is a tired mom to two kids, one with autism and an immunodeficiency. She loves espresso, April Fool's Day, and yoga pants and lives for quiet moments when her kids are sound asleep instead of destroying her house. F or more from Ashlyn, visit her blog, Walking in Quicksand.
Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children's Health Defense. CHD is implementing many strategies, including legal, in an effort to defend the health of our children and obtain justice for those already injured. Your support is essential to CHD's successful mission.

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If You're Whitewashing Autism, You're Part of the Problem

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From "better diagnosis" to the idea the autistic brain is "wired differently" to the emphasis on those with extraordinary talents, efforts to whitewash the realities of autism are endless. We've been spoon fed a bogus narrative that normalizes autism and most people buy it despite the fact that kids in this country are clearly suffering more than ever, and not just with autism.

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What happens when people with autism interact with police

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A study says teens and adults with autism have frequent interactions with police, highlighting the need preparation to reduce the likelihood of negative interactions.

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Autistic People Can Read Emotions and Feel Empathy (Spectrum News, 2016)

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Autistic People Can Read Emotions and Feel Empathy (Spectrum News, 2016)

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There is a persistent stereotype that people with autism are individuals who lack empathy and cannot understand emotion. It's true that many people with autism don't show emotion in ways that people without the condition would recognize.

But the notion that people with autism generally lack empathy and cannot recognize feelings is wrong. Holding such a view can distort our perception of these individuals and possibly delay effective treatments.

We became skeptical of this notion several years ago. In the course of our studies of social and emotional skills, some of our research volunteers with autism and their families mentioned to us that people with autism do display empathy.

Many of these individuals said they experience typical, or even excessive, empathy at times. One of our volunteers, for example, described in detail his intense empathic reaction to his sister's distress at a family funeral.

Yet some of our volunteers with autism agreed that emotions and empathy are difficult for them. We were not willing to brush off this discrepancy with the ever-ready explanation that people with autism differ from one another. We wanted to explain the difference, rather than just recognize it.

So we looked into the overlap between autism and alexithymia, a condition defined by a difficulty understanding and identifying one's own emotions. People with high levels of alexithymia (which we assess with questionnaires) might suspect they are experiencing an emotion, but are unsure which emotion it is. They could be sad, angry, anxious or maybe just overheated. About 10 percent of the population at large - and about 50 percent of people with autism - has alexithymia.

It's tempting to think that having autism somehow causes alexithymia, but it's worth remembering that you can have autism without alexithymia and vice versa. Also, even though there are higher rates of alexithymia in people with autism, there are equally high rates in people with eating disorders, depression, substance abuse, schizophrenia and many other psychiatric and neurological conditions.

So can alexithymia explain why some individuals with autism have difficulties with emotions and some don't? Perhaps it is alexithymia, not autism, that caused the emotional difficulties we heard about from some of our participants, the difficulties that people often assume happen in everybody with autism.

To find out, we measured empathy for another's pain in four groups of people: individuals with autism and alexithymia; individuals with autism but not alexithymia; individuals with alexithymia but not autism; and individuals with neither autism nor alexithymia.

We found that individuals with autism but not alexithymia show typical levels of empathy, whereas people with alexithymia (regardless of whether they have autism) are less empathic. So autism is not associated with a lack of empathy, but alexithymia is.

People with alexithymia may still care about others' feelings, however. The inability to recognize and understand anger might make it difficult to respond empathically to anger specifically. But alexithymic individuals know that anger is a negative state and are affected by others being in this state. In fact, in a separate test we conducted last year, people with alexithymia showed more distress in response to witnessing others' pain than did individuals without alexithymia.

Autism is associated with other emotional difficulties, such as recognizing another person's emotions. Although this trait is almost universally accepted as being part of autism, there's little scientific evidence to back up this notion.

In 2013, we tested the ability of people with alexithymia, autism, both conditions or neither to recognize emotions from facial expressions. Again, we found that alexithymia is associated with problems in emotion recognition, but autism is not. In a 2012 study, researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London found exactly the same results when they tested emotion recognition using voices rather than faces.

Recognizing an emotion in a face depends in part on information from the eyes and mouth. People with autism often avoid looking into other people's eyes, which could contribute to their difficulty detecting emotions.

But again, we wanted to know: Which is driving gaze avoidance - autism or alexithymia? We showed movies to the same four groups described above and used eye-tracking technology to determine what each person was looking at in the movie.

We found that people with autism, whether with or without alexithymia, spend less time looking at faces than do people without autism. But when individuals who have autism but not alexithymia look at faces, they scan the eyes and mouth in a pattern similar to those without autism.

By contrast, people with alexithymia, regardless of their autism status, look at faces for a typical amount of time, but show altered patterns of scanning the eyes and mouth. This altered pattern might underlie their difficulties with emotion recognition. (People who have autism or alexithymia and would like to participate in our studies can click here for details.)

Emotional rescue:

We think these results, and the others we have found since, disprove the theory that autism impairs emotion recognition. If people assume that someone with autism lacks empathy, they will be wrong about half the time (because only half of individuals with autism have alexithymia). Making this assumption is unfair and can be hurtful.

What's more, our work demonstrates that we urgently need tools to help individuals who have both autism and alexithymia understand their own and other people's emotions. Meanwhile, people with autism who don't have alexithymia might focus on building on their emotional strengths to mitigate the social difficulties associated with the condition.

At the same time, alexithymia doesn't preclude acting in a prosocial and moral fashion. Indeed, one of our studies shows exactly this in individuals with autism. Although people who have alexithymia but not autism find it acceptable to say hurtful things to others, people who have both autism and alexithymia do not. We think people with autism use other information (such as social rules) to decide whether what they say will be hurtful, rather than relying on their understanding of emotions.

We recommend that researchers test some of the basic assumptions about the capabilities of people with autism. Importantly, they should try to separate the impact of autism from that of conditions such as alexithymia that frequently accompany it.

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People with autism can read emotions and feel empathy

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There is a persistent stereotype that people with autism are individuals who lack empathy and cannot understand emotion. It's true that many people with autism don't show emotion in ways that people without the condition would recognize. But the notion that people with autism generally lack empathy and cannot recognize feelings is wrong.

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As a queer woman in love, sometimes it's hard to relate to what my straight sisters are going through. What used to make me want to hold rap stars accountable is now likely to pass my ears without so much as a raised eyebrow of concern from me. This is deeply disturbing and I don't know what to make of this shift. Is it age? A creeping conservative that has me running from my radical roots?

I honestly feel like I'm just so sick and tired of being sick and tired, I'd rather overlook the rampant misogyny and sexism on the airwaves to focus on what's compelling in the music. This is really troublesome because I wasn't this girl. In fact, there was a time when I abhorred people who gave conditional passes or tried to see the possibilities in a genre I thought was causing so many problems.

I feel like my ambivalence is in some ways a decision to opt out of the foolishness because honestly it's just too much to bear at times. The seemingly innocuous radio hit " BedRock " by Young Money has a line penned by the now incarcerated Wayne that I hadn't paid much attention to.

"I knock her lights out
but she still shine..."

Clever for sure, but violent as fuck. It really gave me pause because it's the type of lyric that washes over you, sandwiched between lyrics that are more or less memorable. This slightly veiled violence is often dismissed because it's said playfully and in the context of a medley that suggests a more amorous interpretation.

My reorientation to the misogynoir[1] ruling the radio took place when I tried to make the argument that " All the Way Turnt Up " was a great song because it didn't objectify women. This was something I could get behind; a song simply extolling the youthful value of keeping the bass bumping in your vehicle. That was until I read the lyrics and found the choice lyric "three dike bitches, and they all wanna swallow."

Only one line, one line out of 40 odd rather mundane lyrics (materialism, present controversy, and drug use notwithstanding). Is this a big deal? Should I be offended? I do feel disappointed. Even when things attempt to move away from the formula, MONEY+ CARS + HOES = hit record, they can't move that far; money+ cars+ hoes = hit record. A song about playing your music loud still has to call on the transformative power of Roscoe Dash, Travis Porter, et. al's masculinity to make lesbians want to suck a dick? Nice.

I wonder what it means that there are no songs on mainstream radio that challenge the status quo. And when artists do manage to break out, they look so out of place. Did you see the trippiness that was Erykah "On and On" Badu on 106 and park last year? Painfully awkward. I think folks still don't know what to do with her next to latest offering Jump Up in the Air, even with Wayne's ubiquitous co-signing.

So rather than deal with the persistent and pervasive assault on women in the music, I've cultivated a world that supports the age old adage in hip hop apologist vernacular that used to make my blood boil; "He's not talking about me." In my mostly queer academic class privileged world, I am pretty much immune to the direct fallout of lyrics like the ones I've mentioned. They are frustrating and disappointing but their utterance and repetition seem to have less and less direct effect on my movements or relationships with cis gendered black men.

I see my work in this life as trying to address these issues in the music as oppose to retreat from them but I find a fatigued ambivalence the most accurate articulation of where I am right now. I am trying to figure out what my evolving relationship to rap music will be and I welcome you along for the ride.

*update*

My feelings might be best expressed by this video (what's up w/ the (non) relationship between the single black girl dancer and the white girl ensemble?). Thanks @ Chaseology for the link.

LOOSEWORLD x Waverly Films: Reggie Watts in F_CK SH_T STACK from LOOSEWORLD on Vimeo.

[1] Word I made up to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual & popular culture.

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As a queer woman in love, sometimes it's hard to relate to what my straight sisters are going through. What used to make me want to hold rap stars accountable is now likely to pass my ears without so much as a raised eyebrow of concern from me.

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SOCIAL MURDER: Friedrich Engels - 'The Conditions of the Working Class in England' (1845)

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SOCIAL MURDER: Friedrich Engels - 'The Conditions of the Working Class in England' (1845)

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Where are you really from?

You're British. Your parents are British. You were raised in Britain. Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British.

So why do people keep asking you where you are from?

We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present. Brit(ish) is Afua Hirsch's personal and provocative exploration of how this came to be - and an urgent call for change.

'The book for our divided and dangerous times'
David Olusoga

Brit(ish) is about a search for identity. It is about the everyday racism that plagues British society. It is about our awkward, troubled relationship with our history. It is about why liberal attempts to be 'colour-blind' have caused more problems than they have solved. It is about why we continue to avoid talking about race.

In this personal and provocative investigation, Afua Hirsch explores a very British crisis of identity. We are a nation in denial about our past and our present. We believe we are the nation of abolition, but forget we are the nation of slavery. We are convinced that fairness is one of our values, but that immigration is one of our problems. Brit(ish) is the story of how and why this came to be, and an urgent call for change.

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Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging

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Where are you really from? You're British. Your parents are British. You were raised in Britain. Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British. So why do people keep asking you where you are from? We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present.

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'Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Racial Trauma' (Guilaine Kinouani, 2021)

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'Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Racial Trauma' (Guilaine Kinouani, 2021)

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'Revelatory, necessary and brilliant' Candice Carty-Williams | 'A must read' Robin DiAngelo | 'A powerful wake-up call' Patrick Vernon | 'An incisive and important book that will change the way you think' Nikesh Shukla | 'An unmissable read for everyone' | 'Honest, razor-sharp, f ascinating and impressive' The Psychologist | 'Groundbreaking' Bad Form

For the past 15 years, radical psychologist and therapist Guilaine Kinouani has helped hundreds of Black people to protect their mental and physical health from the harm of white supremacy. In this timely book, she brings together powerful case studies, eye-opening research and effective coping techniques from her anti-racist academy and award-nominated blog, Race Reflections, helping readers to:

- set psychological boundaries and process trauma
- protect children from racism
- handle difficult race-based conversations
- understand the complexities of 'Black love'
- find connection, beauty and joy in the world

Living While Black empowers you to adopt radical self-care tools that improve day-to-day wellness. It teaches you how to thrive not just survive and find hope - or even joy - in the face of racial adversity. It is also an essential anti-racist resource for allies who want to do better.

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Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma

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'Revelatory, necessary and brilliant' Candice Carty-Williams | 'A must read' Robin DiAngelo | 'A powerful wake-up call' Patrick Vernon | 'An incisive and important book that will change the way you think' Nikesh Shukla | 'An unmissable read for everyone' | 'Honest, razor-sharp, f ascinating and impressive' The Psychologist | 'Groundbreaking' Bad Form For the past 15 years, radical psychologist and therapist Guilaine Kinouani has helped hundreds of Black people to protect their mental and physical health from the harm of white supremacy.

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'What Decolonising the Curriculum Really Means' (Sofia Akel, 2020)

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'What Decolonising the Curriculum Really Means' (Sofia Akel, 2020)

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The discussion around decolonising our education system has been recharged by the recent spate of Black Lives Matter protests. Sofia Akel gets to the heart of what this movement is about.

Movements of the past decade such as Why is my Curriculum white? have long sought to decolonise our education, but what does that mean?

We must first understand what is meant by 'colonial' education and its intrinsic link to academia. The way in which we come to know, understand and view the world - what academics term 'epistemology' - is learned throughout our lifetimes from many influences, known as formal and informal agents of social control. These include the state, the law, religion, our families, our neighbourhoods and public opinion. This process is known as socialisation, and it is ideologically reinforced through our education.

The British education system itself, is firmly rooted in colonial epistemology, which centres and upholds the British empire and the forms that it takes today. What this can look like in schooling is a whitewashed retelling of the history of empire that speaks only to its 'successes,' whilst omitting its evils, the voices of the oppressed and the lasting legacy of imperialism today.

Throughout centuries of British imperialism, universities were not benevolent institutions who abstained from the violent massacring, plunder and invasion of 90% of the world's countries.

Sofia Akel

Decolonisation typically refers to the withdrawal of political, military and governmental rule of a colonised land by its invaders. Decolonising education, however, is often understood as the process in which we rethink, reframe and reconstruct the curricula and research that preserve the Europe-centred, colonial lens. It should not be mistaken for 'diversification,' as diversity can still exist within this western bias. Decolonisation goes further and deeper in challenging the institutional hierarchy and monopoly on knowledge, moving out of a western framework.

Within education there exists a complex web of coded and overt systems through which some forms of knowledge are 'legitimised' - those which fit a narrow, conservative view of 'British values' and the government of the day's agenda. This is no accident. Education in Britain has and continues to be greatly intertwined with the state. Throughout centuries of British imperialism, universities were not benevolent institutions that abstained from the violent massacring, plunder and invasion of 90% of the world's countries. In fact, some of the subjects we hold in high esteem were founded to support Britain's pursuit for global control.

The Education Takeover
The Black Lives Matter movement must be more than a passing moment. As a small step towards this end, EachOther is lending its platform to four Black guest editors who are working to fight injustice. They will examine the themes of justice, education, charity and journalism in the UK. Our education editor is Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University.
Subjects such as anthropology, the study of human societies and their culture, were inextricably linked to the colonial project. Anthropologists would voyeuristically study the 'subjects' in former colonies, providing highly sought-after insights about the peoples Britain wished to rule over. The surveillance of communities enabled the plunderers to strategically plan invasions, divide, conquer and quell insubordination. Certain fields of science, such as medicine, were not exempt from this either. Colonialists were exposed and vulnerable to 'new' types of diseases, terrain and environments that hindered their exploits. Therefore, research into "tropical" diseases and medicine was carried out to maintain good health of those invading, not necessarily the invaded. Sir Ronald Ross, former lecturer at Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases reportedly believed that "in the coming century, the success of imperialism will depend largely upon success with the microscope." Ross' life and work was actively shaped by empire, born in India he later became a surgeon in the British Imperial army, using his research to strengthen colonial rule and eventually winning the Nobel Prize for his Malaria research.

The impact of university curated racism, which supported the notion of the 'white man's burden' to 'civilise' the world, echoes loudly today. In 2020, we have witnessed historic global protests against racism and police brutality. Racism that has also masqueraded as academia, fortified in the dusty hallways and dark corridors of Britain's universities. Eugenics, the 'study' of improving the human race through selective breeding, was widely subscribed to and even set up as legitimate research subjects in universities prior to the Second World War. Eugenicists believe the 'white race' is naturally the most superior of all. This pseudoscience was a catalyst for the Holocaust and plays a large role in our educational and societal inequalities today. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself expressed eugenicist views and has called for the recolonisation of Africa. While only two years ago, secret eugenics conferences were held at University College London, attended by prominent white supremacists.

When many of us reflect on our journeys through compulsory, further and higher education, we don't often recognise the knowledge we gain as inherently political. But it is impossible to divorce our worldview - including our political and moral values - from the subject matter we're taught. If we don't challenge the colonial roots of our education, we are ultimately breathing life into an ideological framework borne out of an empire steeped in blood. The task then, is for each of us to consciously and intently work to decolonise both our own minds and the institutions that uphold this. There are revolutionary futures that we can imagine for ourselves through alternative ways of understanding the world that do not start, end and seek validation from darkness.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of EachOther.

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What Decolonising The Curriculum Really Means

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Movements of the past decade such as Why is my Curriculum white? have long sought to decolonise our education, but what does that mean? We must first understand what is meant by 'colonial' education and its intrinsic link to academia.

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'Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race' (Tom Nicholas, 2020)

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'Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race' (Tom Nicholas, 2020)

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Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (Sara Ahmed, 2004)

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (Sara Ahmed, 2004)

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. 2004. Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism. Borderlands, 3(2), [Article]

No full text available

Abstract or Description

This paper examines six different modes for declaring whiteness used within academic writing, public culture and government policy, arguing that such declarations are non-performative: they do not do what they say. The paper offers a general critique of the mode of declaration, in which 'admissions' of 'bad practice' are taken up as signs of 'good practice', as well as a more specific critique of how whiteness studies constitutes itself through such declarations. The declarative mode involves a fantasy of transcendence in which 'what' is transcended is the very 'thing' admitted to in the declaration (for example, if we are say that we are racists, then we are not racists, as racists do not know they are racists). By investigating declarative speech acts, the paper offers a critique of the self-reflexive turn in whiteness studies, suggesting that we should not rush too quickly beyond the exposure of racism by turning towards whiteness as a marked category, by identifying 'what white people can do' , by describing good practice, or even by assuming that whiteness studies can provide the conditions of anti-racism. Declarations of whiteness could be described as ''unhappy performatives', the conditions are not in place that would allow such declarations to do what they say.

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2004. Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism. Borderlands, 3(2), [Article] No full text available This paper examines six different modes for declaring whiteness used within academic writing, public culture and government policy, arguing that such declarations are non-performative: they do not do what they say.

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https://www.instagram.com/thepsychdoctormd/

https://www.instagram.com/thespectrumgirl/

https://www.instagram.com/tylgrnt/

https://www.instagram.com/theblackdyspraxic/

https://www.instagram.com/ellen__jones/

https://www.tiktok.com/@dykotomy/video/6888963366006590722?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v3

https://www.tiktok.com/@paigelayle/video/6833149427536907526?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v3

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA53j5KHPGJ/

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'White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society' (Kalwant Bhopal, 2018)

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'White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society' (Kalwant Bhopal, 2018)

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Why and how do those from black and minority ethnic communities continue to be marginalised? Despite claims that we now live in a post-racial society, race continues to disadvantage those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Kalwant Bhopal explores how neoliberal policy making has increased rather than decreased discrimination faced by those from non-white backgrounds. She also shows how certain types of whiteness are not privileged; Gypsies and Travellers, for example, remain marginalised and disadvantaged in society.

Drawing on topical debates and supported by empirical data, this important book examines the impact of race on wider issues of inequality and difference in society.

Kalwant Bhopal is Professorial Research Fellow and Professor of Education and Social Justice in the Centre for Research on Race and Education at the University of Birmingham. She is visiting Professor at Harvard University at the Graduate School of Education and visiting Professor at King's College London. Her areas of interest and expertise focus on the educational experiences of black and minority ethnic groups as well as Gypsies and Travellers. Her research specifically explores how processes of racism, exclusion and marginalisation operate in predominantly white spaces with a focus on social justice and inclusion.

"Many of the critical analyses of neoliberalism in education have neglected the ways in which neoliberalism as a theory and as a set of policies and practices is deeply connected to racialisation. In White Privilege, Kalwant Bhopal provides us with a clear and powerful analysis of these connections and of why they are so crucial to understand." Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"A lucid straightforward illumination of whiteness and white privilege, as it is currently acted-out in school and society, despite social justice policies. It puts before readers the pervasiveness and meanness of white privilege in education/schooling and society in this neoliberal, non-post-racial era. Timely and deserving of urgent attention." Carl A. Grant, Hoefs Bascom Professor University Wisconsin-Madison and author of Du Bois and Education.

"White Privilege brilliantly dismantles the myth of a post-racial society. It is a 'must-read' for all those concerned about inequalities of race in society." Diane Reay, University of Cambridge

"More than ever, the study of whiteness proves indispensable. Kalwant Bhopal is a voice of reason in a cacophony of fervor. She takes to task the presumptions of post-raciality and defies its pretenders. We will be post-racial in a condition of post-racism. Until then, evidence and ethics are on her side." Zeus Leonardo, University of California, Berkeley, Author of Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education

"A valuable insight into the complexities and subtleties of modern day racism, the intersection of race and class and the unfinished battle to transcend white hegemony." Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner

"In this wide-ranging book Bhopal addresses racial inequality in Britain and the United States. She demonstrates how racial inequality is pervasive in British society across sectors, especially education and the labor market, an important perspective for scholars. A great introduction to issues of racial inequality." Natasha Kumar Warikoo, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education.

"Offers a crucial and timely focus on the perpetuation of white privilege in a society that claims to be post-racial, and the continuing disadvantages experienced by black and minority ethnic groups... provides a wealth of data on social, educational and economic inequalities in both the UK and USA where white supremacist hate is increasing. It should be read by policy makers, practitioners and the public to help them realise how white privilege works and disadvantage is perpetuated" Sally Tomlinson, University of Oxford

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White privilege: The myth of a Post-Racial Society

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Why and how do those from black and minority ethnic communities continue to be marginalised? Despite claims that we now live in a post-racial society, race continues to disadvantage those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Kalwant Bhopal explores how neoliberal policy making has increased rather than decreased discrimination faced by those from non-white backgrounds.

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A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of the top scientists in the humane livestock handling industry. A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of the top scientists in the humane livestock handling industry. A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of the top scientists in the humane livestock handling industry.

Biopic of - Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who overcame the limitations imposed on her by her condition to become a Ph.D. and expert in the field of animal husbandry. She loves animals! She developed an interest in cattle early in life while spending time at her Aunt and Uncle's ranch. She did not speak until age four and had difficulty right through high school, mostly in dealing with people. Her mother was very supportive as were some of her teachers. She is noted for creating her "hug box", widely recognized today as a way of relieving stress in autistic children, and her humane design for the treatment of cattle in processing plants, which have been the subject of several books and won an award from PETA. Today, she is a professor at Colorado State University and well-known speaker on autism and animal handling. garykmcd

If this were not a TV movie I would expect it to be listed as an Oscar nominee. The movie is captivating not only for the exceptional acting but providing us with a glimpse into the world of autism. Everything about this movie points to excellence: the writing, the direction, the cinematography and the acting of a superb cast featuring Claire Danes in what must be the role of a lifetime.

The movie is moving in its emotional impact without becoming maudlin. The pace of the movie is quick and takes us through a number of years in the fascinating life of Temple Grandin without losing us or boring us.

Temple Grandin describes herself in the movie as "different not less." I would describe the movie as "different and great."

The cast and the crew may well be in line for Emmys and Golden Globes. If so, let no one say it was because of sympathy for the subject matter. It deserves any awards it wins for the excellence of the production values.

This is TV at its best!

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By what name was Temple Grandin (2010) officially released in India in English?

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A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of the top scientists in the humane livestock handling industry. A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of the top scientists in the humane livestock handling industry.

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A woman who moves into an apartment across the hall from two brilliant but socially awkward physicists shows them how little they know about life outside of the laboratory. A woman who moves into an apartment across the hall from two brilliant but socially awkward physicists shows them how little they know about life outside of the laboratory. A woman who moves into an apartment across the hall from two brilliant but socially awkward physicists shows them how little they know about life outside of the laboratory.

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Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper are both brilliant physicists working at Cal Tech in Pasadena, California. They are colleagues, best friends, and roommates, although in all capacities their relationship is always tested primarily by Sheldon's regimented, deeply eccentric, and non-conventional ways. They are also friends with their Cal Tech colleagues mechanical engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali. The foursome spend their time working on their individual work projects, playing video games, watching science-fiction movies, or reading comic books. As they are self-professed nerds, all have little or no luck with women. When Penny, a pretty woman and an aspiring actress from Omaha, moves into the apartment across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon's, Leonard has another aspiration in life, namely to get Penny to be his girlfriend. - Huggo

This show is definitely one of my guilty pleasures! Tuesdays are spent anxiously awaiting its posting on iTunes so I can download it, as I live in Canada & don't have cable. TBBT is a trip down memory lane for me, as it IS my high school experience (20+ years ago, I was a smarter Penny). I love the characters, especially Leonard who is adorable, and the smarmy yet surprisingly charming Wolowitz. It has the feel of "Frasier Goes To College". I do agree though that they should lose the laugh track - annoying, but not enough to make me stop watching. BTW, very smart of CBS to originally have offered the pilot as a free download or I would never have given it a look. Now I'm an addict!

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The Big Bang Theory (TV Series 2007-2019) - IMDb

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The Big Bang Theory: Created by Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady. With Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg. A woman who moves into an apartment across the hall from two brilliant but socially awkward physicists shows them how little they know about life outside of the laboratory.

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The world is a confusing place for Wendy Welcott, a fiercely independent and brilliant young woman with autism. Wendy longs to leave her group home and return to living with her sister's family and new baby girl. She is sure that in order to reunite with her family, all she needs to do is convince them of her newfound competence and abilities. As a lover of all things Star Trek, Wendy writes in her free time; so when she hears about a Star Trek screenplay competition, she seizes the opportunity to submit her 500-page script and prove her worth. However, her only problem: if she doesn't hand in her 500-page script to Paramount Pictures in person, she will miss the deadline. Wendy sneaks out of her group home and travels hundreds of miles outside her protective boundaries and refuses to allow anything to stop her from achieving her goals. - Magnolia Home Entertainment

Brilliant heart felt movie

Not sure which movie the two who slated this movie watched but I thought Dakota was as great. I've lived with an autistic person and it's so difficult to get it right because they are all different. This is a good feel movie and was directed perfectly.

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By what name was Please Stand By (2017) officially released in India in English?

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Please Stand By: Directed by Ben Lewin. With Dakota Fanning, Alice Eve, Toni Collette, Lexi Aaron. A young autistic woman runs away from her caregiver in an attempt to submit her 500-page manuscript to a "Star Trek" writing competition at Paramount Pictures.

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Quotes

[first lines]
: [on telephone] Now it's five and a half weeks and I'm still sitting on four Lamborghinis that can't meet spot emissions standards. Now, how many times you wash out with EPA?
: [on a separate line] Uh, yes sir, they're finally, uh, clearing EPA; uh, just one or two more days.
: Three times? You're really on a roll here, my friend; four cars, three times each - that's zip for twelve. What are you, a... mechanic, or a NASA engineer? Now listen, now, I told you I've never dealt with these ...
See more "

Soundtracks

Shoes with Wings On
(1948) (uncredited)
Music by Harry Warren
Danced by Fred Astaire
From the film The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
See more "

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Quotes [first lines] : [on telephone] Now it's five and a half weeks and I'm still sitting on four Lamborghinis that can't meet spot emissions standards. Now, how many times you wash out with EPA?: [on a separate line] Uh, yes sir, they're finally, uh, clearing EPA; uh, just one or two more days.: Three times?

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'White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness' (Ruth Frankeberg, 1993)

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'White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness' (Ruth Frankeberg, 1993)

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White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness

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White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness | Ruth Frankenberg | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'White: Essays on Race and Culture' (Richard Dyer, 1997)

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'White: Essays on Race and Culture' (Richard Dyer, 1997)

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White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial position. At the level of racial representation, whites are not of a certain race. They are just the human race, a 'colour' against which other ethnicities are always examined.In White, Richard Dyer looks beyond the apparent unremarkability of whiteness and argues for the importance of analysing images of white people. Dyer traces the representation of whiteness by whites in Western visual culture, focusing on the mass media of photography, advertising, fine art, cinema and television.Dyer examines the representation of whiteness and the white body in the contexts of Christianity, 'race' and colonialism. In a series of absorbing case studies, he discusses the representations of whiteness in muscle-man action cinema, from Italian 'peplum' movies to the Tarzan and Rambo series; shows the construction of whiteness in photography and cinema in the lighting of white and black faces, and analyses the representation of white women in end-of-empire fictions such as The Jewel in the Crown, and traces the disturbing association of whiteness with death, in vampire narratives and dystopian films such as Blade Runner and the Aliens trilogy.

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White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial position.

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'Women and Girls with Autism Face Double Discrimination From a Patriarchal Society That Fails to See Them' (The Independent, 2018)

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'Women and Girls with Autism Face Double Discrimination From a Patriarchal Society That Fails to See Them' (The Independent, 2018)

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‘Women and girls with autism face double discrimination from a patriarchal society that fails to see them’

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The idea that autism is simply an ‘extreme of the male brain’ has not only trapped generations of men in cliché, but has also prevented thousands of women from getting the support and understanding they need

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'Thousands of Autistic Girls and Women 'going undiagnosed' due to gender bias' (Prof Hannah Devlin for The Guardian, 2018)

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'Thousands of Autistic Girls and Women 'going undiagnosed' due to gender bias' (Prof Hannah Devlin for The Guardian, 2018)

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Hundreds of thousands of girls and women with autism are going undiagnosed due to it being viewed as a "male condition", according to one of the UK's leading neuroscientists.

Prof Francesca Happé, director of the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King's College London, warned that the failure to recognise autism in girls and women was taking a stark toll on their mental health.

"We've overlooked autism in women and girls and I think there's a real gender equality issue here," she said. "I think we are missing large numbers and misdiagnosing them too."

700,000 is the NHS estimate of the number of people in the UK on the autism spectrum

8% of girls with autism are diagnosed before the age of six, compared with 25% of boys

20% of girls are diagnosed by the age of 11, compared with 50% of boys

41% of females with autism are initially diagnosed with another condition, compared with 30% of males

23% of female anorexia patients met diagnostic criteria for autism in a small study

Thank you for your feedback.

Until recently, autism without intellectual impairments, sometimes called Asperger syndrome, was thought to predominantly affect boys and men, at a ratio of 10 to every one woman.

However, there is growing evidence that the number of girls and women with the condition may have been vastly underestimated. Recent research, based on active screening rather than clinical or school records, found a ratio of 3:1. Happé and others believe this could fall further - potentially to as low as 2:1 - as diagnostic processes become better tailored to identifying autism in girls and women.

Due to early assumptions about autism mostly affecting men, studies have often recruited male-only cohorts. Male participants in brain imaging studies on autism outnumber females by eight to one, and in earlier research the bias was even more pronounced.

"This means that what we think we know about autism from research is actually just what we know about male autism," said Happé, who has a £500,000 grant to investigate gender differences in autism spectrum disorders.

More recent work suggests there may be subtle differences in how autism presents in girls and women. Narrow special interests may superficially appear more mainstream (horses or boybands, say, rather than electricity pylons) - although the nature of the interest would still be unusual in terms of persistence and narrowness.

Autistic girls and women also tend to be more adept at masking their autistic traits. "They might pick a popular girl in their class or workplace and study them and copy them," said Happé.

The idea that autism could be a result of having an " extreme male brain " due to hormone differences has dominated popular narratives about the biology driving the condition, although Happé said that the theory remained scientifically contentious. Media portrayals of autism, such as the movie Rain Man, have also been almost exclusively male. So parents, teachers and clinicians tend to be less inclined to consider autism as a likely explanation for girls and women struggling with social and communication problems than with boys and men.

The failure to diagnose autism is of concern because many of those affected experience secondary mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and self-harm. A small study last year found that 23% of women hospitalised for anorexia met the diagnostic criteria for autism. More work is needed to confirm the findings, which were based on 60 women, and to gauge whether the women's social and communication difficulties predated their eating disorder.

"If clinicians don't have autism in mind when they see an eating disorder, they stop there," Happé said. Many people find a diagnosis helpful in making sense of why they feel "different" and in finding acceptance and understanding from family and friends.

Hannah Belcher, an autism researcher at Anglia Ruskin University who was diagnosed as an adult, said she had anxiety as a child and stopped going to school at 14 because she was struggling to cope.

"It was only when I was 23 that I saw an art therapist who suggested I was possibly autistic," she said. "I am certain I would have gained more support around my anxiety as a child and would have suffered from less mental health difficulties had I had the diagnosis earlier. I also masked my autistic traits a lot, and I think knowing and understanding what these were would have enabled me to be myself more."

The NHS estimates there are about 700,000 people on the autism spectrum in the UK, based on a roughly 10:1 gender ratio. If the real ratio were shown to be 3:1, this would suggest that up to 200,000 girls and women with autism have been omitted from the national tally.

Carol Povey, director of the National Autistic Society's Centre for Autism, said there was growing recognition of the issue, with a steady increase in referrals of women and girls to specialist diagnostic centres during the past few years.

"Recent research suggests that the number of males and females on the autism spectrum is far more equal than previously thought and diagnostic statistics suggest," she said. "The problem is that professionals often don't understand the different ways autism can manifest in women and girls, with many going through their lives without a diagnosis and an understanding of why they feel different."

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Thousands of autistic girls and women 'going undiagnosed' due to gender bias

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Number of girls and women with the condition in UK may be vastly underestimated, leading neuroscientist says

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'Racial Disparities in the Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder' (Psyciatry Advisory, 2021)

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'Racial Disparities in the Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder' (Psyciatry Advisory, 2021)

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There are significant racial inequities existing in access to services for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Multiracial children are diagnosed with ASD later than their White counterparts, report difficulty accessing treatment services, and ultimately experience worse health outcomes. ¹

We spoke with Doris Lebischak, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with over 37 years of experience, about this important and vital issue.
Why do racial disparities exist in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, or ASD?
Dr. Lebischak: Structural racism, in its many forms, affects access to health care. It is also in the health care industry. For example, structural racism affects income and education. Income and education are directly associated with one's access and proper use of health care, as it acts as a cascade effect and a pervasive disease.

What must providers and families consider so they don't reinforce or perpetuate systemic racism in the diagnosis of ASD?

Dr. Lebischak: Providers and families together need to acknowledge it is present. It has lived in all cultures and has never been eradicated during any time in history. It's a disease within our country that has to be managed by all of us.

For example, the disparity delays the identification of individuals with the diagnosis of autism. Providers need to be aware of the disparity and be more vigilant. Families need to know they may be at increased risk and take steps to care for their health. I recommend keeping appointments, following recommendations, and working with providers or seeking someone you can work with to determine the right path forward. Asking questions or seeking information if you feel misunderstood is critical.

As a society, we must learn about and practice identifying racism within ourselves and our environment. We must take responsibility and do our part to eradicate racism, particularly when it comes to the diagnosis of autism in a child or teen, no matter their heritage or background. Be mindful that asking for a change and following up when it occurs can help reinforce the behavior. We all need to be willing to make the effort to manage and nudge the cultural disease of racism away.

How can the system work together to close these gaps and destigmatize disparities when it comes to ASD?

Dr. Lebischak: Structural racism significantly adds to the stress of the individual. It can account for 30% of one's overall stress. ² In a family with a child who has been diagnosed with ASD, the disparities and the level of stress can have a tremendous effect on the parents and potentially the larger family unit. There is high risk for behavioral health disorders and chronic disease.

Health care providers need to evaluate and monitor family members who may be at this increased risk. Families need to educate themselves and seek care when their functioning is impaired.

The health care industry is acclimating to AI (artificial intelligence). The work we put into monitoring disparities of all races, religions, and classes in our industry will be multiplied as we move toward this explosion. I see AI as "the hope" of monitoring and eradicating racism in health care. However, while technology is increasing our ability to help fight racism in some sectors, we still need to address this disparity in other sectors that affect our health, including income, education, environmental, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual factors.

Reference

1. Broder-Fingert S, Mateo CM, Zuckerman KE. Structural Racism and Autism. Pediatrics. Published online August 24, 2020. doi:10.1542/peds.2020-015420

2. Churchwell K, Elkind MSV, Benjamin RM, et al. Call to action: Structural racism as a fundamental driver of health disparities: A presidential advisory from the American Heart Association. Circulation. Published online November 10, 2020. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000000936

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Racial Disparities in the Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder

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There are significant racial inequities existing in access to services for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Multiracial children are diagnosed with ASD later than their White counterparts, report difficulty accessing treatment services, and ultimately experience worse health outcomes.

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'Structural Racism and Autism' (Sarabeth Broder-Fingert and Colleagues, 2020)

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'Structural Racism and Autism' (Sarabeth Broder-Fingert and Colleagues, 2020)

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Structural Racism and Autism | Broder-Fingert, Sarabeth; Mateo, Camilla; Zuckerman, Katherine E. | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Study Challenges Idea That Autism is Caused By An Overly Masculine Brain' (Science, 2019)

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'Study Challenges Idea That Autism is Caused By An Overly Masculine Brain' (Science, 2019)

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Of the many proposed triggers for autism, one of the most controversial is the " extreme male brain" hypothesis. The idea posits that exposure to excess testosterone in the womb wires both men and women to have a hypermasculine view of the world, prioritizing stereotypically male behaviors like building machines over stereotypically female behaviors like empathizing with a friend. Now, a study is raising new doubts about this theory, finding no effect of testosterone on empathy in adult men.

The work does not directly address whether high levels of prenatal testosterone cause autism or lack of empathy. That would require directly sampling the hormone in utero, which can endanger a developing fetus. But the new study's large size-more than 600 men-makes it more convincing than similar research in the past, which included no more than a few dozen participants, experts say.

The extreme male brain hypothesis was first proposed by psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In 2011, he and colleagues found that women given a single hefty dose of testosterone fared significantly worse at the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET), which asked them to gauge the emotional states of others based on their facial expressions. The women's performance seemed to track with a controversial metric called the 2D:4D ratio, the relative lengths of the second and fourth fingers. Men-and people with autism-tend to have a longer ring finger than index finger, and some researchers believe that is due to higher prenatal exposure to testosterone. ( Others are skeptical.)

Taken together with the observation that men are at least 10 times more likely to develop autism, Baron-Cohen argued that the condition results from a "masculinization" of the brain in utero.

But as the theory caught on in psychology circles, few seemed to notice that the small follow-up studies that other researchers attempted failed to replicate the original findings, says Amos Nadler, a neuro-economist and visiting scholar at the University of Toronto in Canada. "People referred to that original study as if it was a solid stepping stone," he says. "Pardon my French, but nobody was calling bullshit."

Nadler and colleagues decided to run a much larger study. They also focused on men rather than women, partly because men are disproportionately affected by autism. After measuring the baseline testosterone levels of 243 volunteers, the team gave each man the first half of the RMET. The scientists then administered a single dose of testosterone gel applied to the shoulders, or a placebo. Then the participants took the second half of the RMET and once again, the team measured their performance and testosterone levels. In a separate experiment, the team followed a similar protocol with 400 additional men at a different location but administered the testosterone as a nasal gel.

There was no difference in performance on the empathy test between the placebo and testosterone groups in either study, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers also measured participants' 2D:4D ratios, and found no detectable pattern that could connect the purported testosterone exposure in the womb to empathy levels. "Even when we tried to be very forgiving about it, there was nothing there. Like, no effect," Nadler says.

To Melissa Hines, a neuroscientist also at Cambridge, the team's inability to replicate earlier findings is "unsurprising." The small size of past studies and the unreliability of the 2D:4D measure make it unlikely that the results would replicate in women either, she says.

Still, Baron-Cohen finds it "strange" that Nadler's team conducted the study exclusively in men "because to expect to see an effect of testosterone, one needs to study people who at baseline have relatively low" testosterone, he says-in other words, women.

But Nadler says Baron-Cohen's objection is "incongruous" with the original paper's hypothesis, which predicted that people with higher prenatal testosterone levels would be more sensitive to the empathy-blunting effects of testosterone. That means men should show "more pronounced effects [than women], not less," he says.

Nadler cautions, however, that the study can't disprove any theories about testosterone's impact on the developing brain. "What we're saying is that giving people testosterone as adults has no influence on their ability to understand people's emotions."

He hopes the study will dispel any misconceptions that by controlling testosterone-for example, using medications to block it in pregnant women-it might be possible to prevent autism. "If there's no relationship, then we shouldn't give people false hope."
*Correction, 4 September, 11:35 a.m.: This story has been updated to reflect Amos Nadler's status, the date of the original study, and the experimental setup of the current one.

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Study challenges idea that autism is caused by an overly masculine brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Of the many proposed triggers for autism, one of the most controversial is the " extreme male brain" hypothesis. The idea posits that exposure to excess testosterone in the womb wires both men and women to have a hypermasculine view of the world, prioritizing stereotypically male behaviors like building machines over stereotypically female behaviors like empathizing with a friend.

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'The Lost Girls: How Women with Autism Are Hurt by Sexist Science' (Maddy O, 2019)

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'The Lost Girls: How Women with Autism Are Hurt by Sexist Science' (Maddy O, 2019)

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Sometimes cold, hard facts aren't as objective as they should be.

No news isn't always good news. Photo by Arvin Chingcuangco on Unsplash

We'd like to think that in today's world, gender bias in science is all but eradicated. Science is objective, after all, it's cold hard facts - what could be sexist about data? But it turns out to be a whole lot more complicated than that...

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The Lost Girls: How Women With Autism Are Hurt by Sexist Science

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Sometimes cold, hard facts aren't as objective as they should be. We'd like to think that in today's world, gender bias in science is all but eradicated. Science is objective, after all, it's cold hard facts - what could be sexist about data? But it turns out to be a whole lot more complicated than that...

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'What White Looks Like: African American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question' (ed. George Yancy, 2004)

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'What White Looks Like: African American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question' (ed. George Yancy, 2004)

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Charles Mills (p25-54)

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In the burgeoning field of whiteness studies, What White Looks Like is the first volume in which the subject is addressed by African-American philosophers. George Yancy has brought together a group of thinkers who address the problematic issue of whiteness as a category requiring serious analysis. What does white look like when viewed through philosophical training and African-American experience? In this volume, Robert Birt asks if whites can 'live whiteness authentically'. Janine Jones examines what it means to be a "goodwill white." Joy James tells of beating her 'addiction' to white supremacy, while Arnold Farr writes on making whiteness visible in Western philosophy. What White Looks Like brings a badly needed critique and philosophically sophisticated perspective to a central issue of contemporary society.

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What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the burgeoning field of whiteness studies, What White Looks Like is the first volume in which the subject is addressed by African-American philosophers. George Yancy has brought together a group of thinkers who address the problematic issue of whiteness as a category requiring serious analysis.

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Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. "[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware."-The New York Times In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change.

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'Autistic Campaigners’ Anger Over Spectrum 10K Protest Lock-Out And 'Scare Tactics' (Disability News Service, 2021)

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'Autistic Campaigners’ Anger Over Spectrum 10K Protest Lock-Out And 'Scare Tactics' (Disability News Service, 2021)

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Autistic campaigners protested for hours outside the research centre at the centre of a £3 million study that they believe could be used for the purposes of eugenics.
They were forced to protest outside the entrance, beside a main road, after managers locked the main gate.

Protesters ( pictured) who spoke outside the main gates warned that the Spectrum 10K study "could potentially be used to eradicate us" and was treating autistic people like "lab rats".

There was also anger among many of the activists after Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, who is heading the research, warned them in advance that police officers and police dogs would be present during the protest.

He had told one of the organisers that the University of Cambridge and NHS, which have offices in the building where his research centre is based "have had to take advice from the police to protect their property, staff and patients in the event that a protester decides to do something unlawful".

Emma Dalmayne, chief executive of the autistic-led group Autistic Inclusive Meets, who helped organise the action, said the warning that police would attend had been a "deliberate scare tactic".

"He was hoping, I believe, to put people off protesting."

Baron-Cohen later apologised to her for "providing inaccurate information" and "any distress this has caused" after he admitted that there were "no plans for police, or police dogs" to be present and that he had "misunderstood the situation".

Dalmayne, who is hoping to meet Baron-Cohen later this month, said she was "sadly not surprised" that they had been locked out - with a "brand new chain" - because "they lock us out of everything".

Protesters were forced to use the facilities of a local golf club that allowed them to use their facilities and accessible toilet.

The efforts of autistic campaigners - particularly those from the #StopSpectrum10K campaign - had already persuaded Baron-Cohen's team to pause work on the high-profile study, which was aiming to collect DNA samples from 10,000 autistic people across the UK.

The Spectrum 10K project would be the largest study of autism in the UK, and the researchers say they want to examine how biological and environmental factors impact on the wellbeing of autistic people.

They say the project will "not look for a cure for autism and does not aim to eradicate autism", but campaigners say there are "enormous" concerns about the research and its undertones of eugenics, and have warned autistic people not to take part.

The study is led by researchers at Baron-Cohen's Autism Research Centre (ARC) at the University of Cambridge, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, based near Cambridge, and the University of California Los Angeles.

One of those who spoke at the protest was Priscilla Eyles, who told fellow protesters: "They try to pretend... this is something that's going to help us, and it's just the absolute opposite of that, it's like doublespeak, it's like Orwellian doublespeak.

"We are not lab rats, we're human beings."

She added: "How is this going to help people who are going through mental health crisis because no-one will give them a job, or because they think they're being disruptive at school? How is this going to help?

"They've locked the gate, they don't even want to speak to us and yet [they claim] they're friends to autistic people. How?"

Dalmayne said: "To all the parents that think you're helping, you will have been told that you're helping your child but actually when you're asked for your child's DNA ask if that money could not be better spent on support, on EHCPs (education health and care plans)."

She pointed to the locked gate and said: "We've got all of these people out here, all autistic, no-one's here to speak to us.

"Literally, they've locked us out completely. And that's how it is in reality, we are locked out of any research or anything about us and it shouldn't be like that, there should be nothing about us without us."

Another speaker, Lizzie, said: "I just want to appeal to any of the parents out there who think Spectrum 10K is going to help their children.

"What we need is that three million invested in CAMHS, in support services, and in things to help people that are already alive - autistics and future autistic children that are going to be born - to support their needs and to help us communicate effectively, get the mental health support we need, and the access to services, so that they don't have to go through the trauma that so many autistic people have already gone through.

"This study is not going to do that. Giving your child's DNA is not going to do that."

Nicky Vere-Compton warned that the research could eventually be used to encourage parents to abort unborn babies that had a genetic link to autism.

She said: "We have already seen what happened when they found a DNA link for Down's.

"They used that as an opportunity to have conversations with the parents of unborn Down's babies, saying, 'Would you like to abort your child?'

"And as a consequence, less Down's babies are being born now.

"If they find the DNA link for autism, which they won't, because I don't believe it exists, but if I'm wrong and they do, what will happen is that every doctor will be speaking to the parent of an unborn autistic and saying, 'Would you like to abort your baby?'

"The level of ignorance about the autistic neurotype means that more parents than not will say, 'Oh no, I don't want an autistic child' and there will be less of us being born.

"There is no argument that this is not eugenics."

Cos Michael, who held a placard saying, 'embrace don't erase', said: "Whenever the government want to know about autism, whenever they are developing policy, whenever there's a big international conference, Simon Baron-Cohen is the go-to expert, he is the keynote speaker who everybody who is not autistic goes to.

"If he is at their conference, if he is round their policy-making table, they are satisfied they have ticked the box.

"As an autistic person, I just want everybody there to know that when they employ Simon Baron-Cohen, he does not speak for us.

"He has never asked us what our priorities are, he has never asked us about how to improve our welfare and our lives. He is not for us."

A statement read out on behalf of the London Autism Group Charity said that it supports only "ethical" research that is not linked to eugenics and which respects and is led by autistic people, and which will improve the lives of autistic people.

The statement added: "Therefore, we stand alongside our autistic allies and fully support the campaign to boycott Spectrum 10K, which fails in this regard. We call for its permanent cancellation."

David Gray-Hammond, who read out the statement, added: "On a personal note, I think most of us were lost for words when we saw this research come out... it's yet another attack on the autistic community.

"Yet again, people are trying to find out what causes autism, rather than actually support the ones that are already here.

"Because we are here, we are human beings, we exist and we deserve support, and instead £3 million is being poured into research which could potentially be used to eradicate us.

"We have a right to exist."

Dalmayne told Disability News Service (DNS) afterwards that the protest showed the researchers that "autistic people are not going to be ignored".

She said: "Shutting a gate and putting a padlock on it is not going to shut us out of the discussion.

"We will be part of it whether they like it or not.

"It's going to affect future generations of autistics for ever, the outcome of this research.

"It would be negligent of us not to stand up and say something."

Baron-Cohen agreed that he had mistakenly told Dalmayne that police and security dogs would be present when she had asked if they would be, and when he realised this was wrong "contacted the campaign group as soon as possible to inform them and to apologise for any distress this may have cause".

He told DNS: "My first email to the protest leader was in no way intended to discourage autistic people from attending the protest, or to cause them any distress.

"My team and I support the right of anyone to hold a peaceful protest."

He said: "The Autism Research Centre team shares a private building and site with other clinical and research teams... and access is by appointment only, subject to visiting restrictions during the pandemic.

"We only occupy part of the building, which is unable to host a large group of protestors.

"The site is not open to the public and was closed on Friday to maintain safety and security.

"The campaign group did not ask permission to visit the site and organised the protest without involving us in their arrangements or requesting a meeting first.

"We are pleased to now be in touch with the campaign group leaders and have offered them a meeting to discuss their concerns."

He said he had phoned the golf club across the road "to make them aware that this peaceful protest was happening and to ask if they could let the protesters use their café and toilets.

"The manager of the golf club was happy to agree. I immediately emailed this information to the leader of the protest to explain they could use the golf club café and toilets, and to shelter if it rained.

"I gather that golf club staff brought the protesters free drinks and refreshments, which I think was a lovely gesture of local community support for autistic people and their families, and we are very grateful to the golf club."*

He said the Spectrum 10K project "aims to understand the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to autism and the health conditions experienced by autistic people", and that his team "acknowledge that more work still needs to be done to address concerns expressed by some members of the autism community, including this protest group".

He said that "both eugenics and the development of a prenatal test for autism run counter to our values and that this is not why the research is being done" and that the research was "being done purely to deepen our understanding of the genetic causes of autism and of the genetic links between autism and health conditions (such as epilepsy and gastrointestinal pain) that are more common in autism".

He added: "But given the history of eugenics in the field of disabilities, we take the protestors' concerns very seriously and want to address them meaningfully.

"This is why we have launched a wider consultation with the autism community, to listen, better understand, and discuss their concerns.

"The consultation is expected to run well into 2022.

"Our research team has been discussing this project with an advisory group, made up of autistic people and their families, for two-and-a-half years, and we have paused the study to expand on this dialogue with a much larger group of autistic people and their families as part of the consultation.

"After the consultation we will continue to include an expanded autism community advisory panel in the research.

"We are looking forward to meeting with the campaign team in a few weeks' time, to discuss the project with them, alongside the consultation we are co-designing with autistic people and their families.

"An organised meeting will give us an opportunity to listen to their concerns, and to share and respect different viewpoints in a constructive way."

He added: "I hope that we can work together via the consultation process to make changes to our study to improve it and put in place any additional safeguarding required.

"We also look forward to clarifying misunderstandings about the aims of the study and explaining that our team would never want to do research that could cause harm to autistic people."
*Dalmayne said: "As lovely as the golf club were, we paid for our coffee and muffins, [but] they were kind enough to donate some water." A note from the editor: Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations. Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009. Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS...

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Autistic campaigners' anger over Spectrum 10K protest lock-out and 'scare tactics'

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Autistic campaigners protested for hours outside the research centre at the centre of a £3 million study that they believe could be used for the purposes of eugenics. They were forced to protest outside the entrance, beside a main road, after managers locked the main gate.

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'My Family, the Holocaust and Me' (Robert Rinder, 2020)

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'My Family, the Holocaust and Me' (Robert Rinder, 2020)

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Available: BBC iPlayer, Box of Broadcasts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000pbwk/my-family-the-holocaust-and-me

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Jewish families discover what happened to their relatives during the Holocaust.

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'"They Didn't Care Elderly People Would Die" - Truth They Don’t Want You to Hear | Nadia Whittome MP' (Double Down News, 2020)

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'"They Didn't Care Elderly People Would Die" - Truth They Don’t Want You to Hear | Nadia Whittome MP' (Double Down News, 2020)

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"They Didn't Care Elderly People Would Die" - Truth They Don’t Want You to Hear | Nadia Whittome MP

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This dynamic study of the history of the idea of race traces the concept from its prehistory across 400 years to its current status. Brian Niro introduces key theorists and philosophers and a wide variety of literary and theoretical concepts, taking the central view that the notion of race is a fluid concept that has altered consistently since its inception in Western ideology.Starting with Greek philosophy, Niro moves effortlessly through such diverse writers as Shakespeare, Voltaire, Kant, Mary Shelly, Darwin, Fanon and Achebe in order to explore the representation of race in its various guises. Many contemporary discussions of race are intricate and limited in their scope to current doctrine, but by using a series of close readings of often-studied texts, Niro helps to demonstrate key ideas and make complex theories understandable.

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This dynamic study of the history of the idea of race traces the concept from its prehistory across 400 years to its current status.

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'Eugen Fischer's Hair Colour Gauge' (University College London)

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'Eugen Fischer's Hair Colour Gauge' (University College London)

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This object is a selection of 30 different colours and textures of synthetic hair in a tin box and, until some Museum Studies students looked into it more deeply, that was all we knew. Their research uncovered that the hair gauge was designed by the German scientist Eugen Fischer and used by him to…

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'Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity' (Steve Silberman, 2015)

# data[].attributes.subject
'Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity' (Steve Silberman, 2015)

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"A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently. What is autism: a devastating developmental disorder, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more--and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. WIRED reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years. Going back to the earliest days of autism research and chronicling the brave and lonely journey of autistic people and their families through the decades, Silberman provides long-sought solutions to the autism puzzle, while mapping out a path for our society toward a more humane world in which people with learning differences and those who love them have access to the resources they need to live happier, healthier, more secure, and more meaningful lives. Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger's syndrome, whose "little professors" were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences"--

"A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently"--

Abstract: "A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently. What is autism: a devastating developmental disorder, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more--and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. WIRED reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years. Going back to the earliest days of autism research and chronicling the brave and lonely journey of autistic people and their families through the decades, Silberman provides long-sought solutions to the autism puzzle, while mapping out a path for our society toward a more humane world in which people with learning differences and those who love them have access to the resources they need to live happier, healthier, more secure, and more meaningful lives. Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger's syndrome, whose "little professors" were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences"--
"A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently"

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Neurotribes : the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity

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"A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently. What is autism: a devastating developmental disorder, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius?

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'Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place' (Nirmal Puwar, 2004)

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'Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place' (Nirmal Puwar, 2004)

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Women and minorities are increasingly entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not. How are positions of authority racialized and gendered? How do people manage their femininity and/or blackness while in a predominantly white male context? How do spaces become naturalized or normalized, and what does it mean when they are disrupted? Engaging with a range of material from a variety of institutions, Space Invaders is a timely contribution to wide-reaching debates on race, gender and space. It is the first book to articulate the full complexity of diversity in organizations.

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Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place

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Women and minorities are increasingly entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not.

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'Forgotten Victims: Blacks in the Holocaust' (Robert Kesting, 1992)

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'Forgotten Victims: Blacks in the Holocaust' (Robert Kesting, 1992)

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Forgotten Victims: Blacks in the Holocaust | Robert W. Kesting | download

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Forgotten Victims: Blacks in the Holocaust | Robert W. Kesting | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Eugenics: Science's Greatest Scandal' (Angela Saini and Adam Pearson, 2020)

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'Eugenics: Science's Greatest Scandal' (Angela Saini and Adam Pearson, 2020)

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Available: Box of Broadcasts; YouTube (possibly).

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BBC Four - Eugenics: Science's Greatest Scandal

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Angela Saini and Adam Pearson explore the origins and legacy of eugenics in Britain.

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'Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation' (Peter Kitson and Colleagues, 1999)

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'Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation' (Peter Kitson and Colleagues, 1999)

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'Race: A Philosophical Introduction' (Paul C Taylor, 2013)

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'Race: A Philosophical Introduction' (Paul C Taylor, 2013)

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Race: A Philosophical Introduction | Paul C. Taylor | download

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Race: A Philosophical Introduction | Paul C. Taylor | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story' (Angela Saini, 2017)

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'Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story' (Angela Saini, 2017)

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What science has gotten so shamefully wrong about women, and the fight, by both female and male scientists, to rewrite what we thought we knew

For hundreds of years it was common sense: women were the inferior sex. Their bodies were weaker, their minds feebler, their role subservient. No less a scientist than Charles Darwin asserted that women were at a lower stage of evolution, and for decades, scientists-most of them male, of course-claimed to find evidence to support this.

Whether looking at intelligence or emotion, cognition or behavior, science has continued to tell us that men and women are fundamentally different. Biologists claim that women are better suited to raising families or are, more gently, uniquely empathetic. Men, on the other hand, continue to be described as excelling at tasks that require logic, spatial reasoning, and motor skills. But a huge wave of research is now revealing an alternative version of what we thought we knew. The new woman revealed by this scientific data is as strong, strategic, and smart as anyone else.

In Inferior, acclaimed science writer Angela Saini weaves together a fascinating-and sorely necessary-new science of women. As Saini takes readers on a journey to uncover science's failure to understand women, she finds that we're still living with the legacy of an establishment that's just beginning to recover from centuries of entrenched exclusion and prejudice. Sexist assumptions are stubbornly persistent: even in recent years, researchers have insisted that women are choosy and monogamous while men are naturally promiscuous, or that the way men's and women's brains are wired confirms long-discredited gender stereotypes.

As Saini reveals, however, groundbreaking research is finally rediscovering women's bodies and minds. Inferior investigates the gender wars in biology, psychology, and anthropology, and delves into cutting-edge scientific studies to uncover a fascinating new portrait of women's brains, bodies, and role in human evolution.

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Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story

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What science has gotten so shamefully wrong about women, and the fight, by both female and male scientists, to rewrite what we thought we knew For hundreds of years it was common sense: women were the inferior sex. Their bodies were weaker, their minds feebler, their role subservient.

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'Superior: The Return of Race Science' (Angela Saini, 2019

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'Superior: The Return of Race Science' (Angela Saini, 2019

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For millennia, dominant societies have had the habit of believing their own people to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural, as well as cultural. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning.

In the twenty-first century, we like to believe that we have moved beyond scientific racism, that most people accept race as a social construct, not a biological one. But race science is experiencing a revival, fuelled by the misuse of science by certain political groups.

Even well-intentioned scientists, through their use of racial categories in genetics and medicine, betray their suspicion that race has some basis in biology.

In truth, it is no more real than it was hundreds of years ago, when our racial hierarchies were devised by those in power.

In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini explores the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science.

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For millennia, dominant societies have had the habit of believing their own people to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural, as well as cultural. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning.

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'The Emerging Theory and Pedagogy of Black Women's Studies' (Patricia Hill Collins, 1986)

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'The Emerging Theory and Pedagogy of Black Women's Studies' (Patricia Hill Collins, 1986)

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The emerging theory and pedagogy of black women's studies

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The emerging theory and pedagogy of black women's studies | Patricia Hill Collins | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment' (Patricia Hill Collins, 1999)

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'Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment' (Patricia Hill Collins, 1999)

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Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment | Patricia Hill Collins | download

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Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment | Patricia Hill Collins | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice' (Bonnie Thornton Dill and Colleagues, 2009)

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'Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice' (Bonnie Thornton Dill and Colleagues, 2009)

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Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice

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Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice | Bonnie Thorton Dill, Ruth Enid Zambrana, Patricia Hill Collins | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Intersectionality' (Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Blige, 2020)

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'Intersectionality' (Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Blige, 2020)

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Intersectionality | Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge | download

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Intersectionality | Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory' (Patricia Hill Collins, 2019)

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'Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory' (Patricia Hill Collins, 2019)

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In Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analytical tools for those wishing to develop intersectionality's capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersectionality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full potential as a critical social theory. She contends that for intersectionality to fully realize its power, its practitioners must critically reflect on its assumptions, epistemologies, and methods. She places intersectionality in dialog with several theoretical traditions-from the Frankfurt school to black feminist thought-to sharpen its definition and foreground its singular critical purchase, thereby providing a capacious interrogation into intersectionality's potential to reshape the world.

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Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory

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In Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analytical tools for those wishing to develop intersectionality's capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersectionality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full potential as a critical social theory.