Autism Can’t Immunize Hate

I don’t know how many times or in how many ways I need to say it, but autism is neither your excuse nor your shield. The latest to attempt this misdirection is Kanye, of all people, who this week claimed to be “slightly autistic”.

Finally, West, now going by the name Ye, used autism as an explanation for why he cannot express hate: “There’s two things that I can’t do: I can’t accept hate and I can’t hate. Have you ever known an autistic person that hates? That’s the reason.”

This, of course, is not just nonsense but dangerously such. Whether or not Kanye’s anti-Semitism is heartfelt or performative mostly is irrelevant: his statements clearly are hateful. Autistic people, whether or not Kanye is one, of course can hate. Autism and prejudice aren’t somehow mutually exclusive, as we know full well from incidents like Nick Star-Street calling the cops on Black women drinking near his apartment complex’s pool.

No matter how many Aspie Supremecists sometimes make this argument, autism doesn’t make someone morally or ethically better than anyone else.

What we tend to be is rigid and inflexible, and if we also happen to be moral we tend to express that morality stridently. That same rigidity will come to bear in an autistic person who hates: they will tend toward hating stridently.

So, maybe Kanye is “slightly autistic” after all.