No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings. →
On October 18, millions of us are rising again to show the world: America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people.
There’s an interview on Learn from Autistics about autism acceptance that threw me pretty early on with a baffling discussion of autism and racism.
It risks Autism being used as an excuse for what is, well, just rudeness or bullying (Example: apparently a video on social media showed a person using the N word. And the Twitter fuss was because he’d used his Autism as an excuse – as in, “Oh, I’m Autistic, I didn’t know, sorry.”). I had a wonderful trans friend who had a brilliant way of putting it; it’s a reason, not an excuse. Autism is a reason that I may have difficulty learning with particular methods, or that I have trouble in loud environments; it is not an excuse to use racist language. (Hopefully this makes sense!) It undermines me when I struggle with loud environments, or with learning; my issues with communication are not because I am shy, it is because I struggle with the physicality sometimes.
It’s certainly true that being autistic is not an excuse for being racist, but neither is it a reason for it. This is horrible framing. There’s nothing about being autistic that makes you racist. Being racist makes you racist.
Addenda
- I should note that I think the problem here is caused by mixing unrelated things together. When people talk about “reason, not excuse” it’s about things like having an upbringing that didn’t expose you to certain things, or exposed you to the wrong things. It can explain certain behavior but not excuse it. This kind of argument, in the context of race, can’t be extended just to “being autistic”.