cstroud

Cayla Stroud’s Final Examination

Intersection of Autism and Race

In Morenike Giwa- Onaiwu’s Autistics of Color: We exist We Matter someone asked her the question, “Autism is Autism right? Does race really matter?” Her argument was that the impression was becoming seemingly apparent that disability, in particular Autism, was overlooked and seen as a collective experience, not interested with the intersection of race, gender, or sexuality. Furthermore that the discussion of race as it pertains to autism is silenced. It is of great importance that we are to examine the lives affected by both the impact of race and disability matters. Moreover, when one is asked to “simplify” themselves or experiences it is an attempt to invalidate one’s identity and voice.

I’d like to start by breaking down the frequent statement that was made by Giwa-Onaiwu’s friends, colleagues, neighbors and people who care about her have asked, “Autism is Autism right? Does race really matter?” (Giwa-Onaiwu x). First Autism is not just Autism, there is a spectrum. As John Sinclair stated in “Don’t Mourn For Us”, “Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; as it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence”. Which speaks to the notion that the Autism spectrum has a broad set of experiences, that each individual experiences differently. With this being said it is best to ask someone, how he/she prefers to be addressed, as Autistic people are capable of communicating and understanding. As DJ Savarese mentions in his piece “Communicate with me” where he describes his subjective experience with Autism and how people can freely talk to him. It is also important to see Autistic people as whole, with an identity, and not disconnecting their identity from themselves. As Autism is commonly believed to be a disease in which, if it were to be reversable a person would then be a different, “normal” person. As John Sinclair writes, Autism is not a “shell” that a person is trapped inside and there is no “normal” person hidden behind Autism. To rid someone of disability is ultimately a way to dehumanize, erase, and diminish that individual.

To further break down the statement, “Autism is Autism right? Does race really matter?” Not everyone’s experiences as it pertains to race is the same. As Onaiwu’ spoke about her experience from childhood,

“I remember helplessly trying to explain to my biracial cousin why I didn’t ‘have it easier’ than her merely because I was monoracial … Her assumption was that I was ‘luckier’ than her because I looked ‘black’… because I ‘looked apart’. I was supposed to automatically understand and be fluent in all these random aspects of life attributed to black American culture” (Giwa-Onaiwu xiv).

As Giwa-Onaiwu suggested the particular contention with how a person is viewed within a particular minority. Also, how her white counterparts would deem her credible to know every aspect of African American culture even though she did not and was, but in the African American community she was considered “not black enough” because of her speech and mannerisms. Employing that she was supposed to inherently eat a certain way, dress a certain way, and act a certain way in order to be seen as black. When the real reality is, there is no singular way to be any race and experiences are different from individual to individual.

In addition, she is also Autistic, as she felt there was no place of belonging, others understanding her, or accepting her. It was as she said, she was in a minority group within a minority group within a minority group. Explaining that her experience with her race and disability was just another barrier for her to find her place in society. Which is why the intersect of Autism and race have everything to do with one another.

It is an ableist view of disability to think that disability is no way intertwined with race, furthermore as Giwa-Onaiwu explained it is an obscure reality of their own intrinsic privilege with regard to race and ability (Gina-Onaiwu xi). That once an individual ignores those factors you are then not focusing on the subtitle differences that a person faces within a minority group, within a minority group, within a minority group. As Onaiwu stated, “We –those of us who exist at the intersection of disability and race aren’t treated as if we are real” (Gina-Onaiwu xii). She explains that the factors that affect those who are at the intersection of race and disability are paid little concern to. It is a grave injustice to separate the very aspects of someones lived experiences, while one can experience them simultaneously.

As E. Ashkenazy offers ways to address these issues and bring them to the forefront she offers the most valuable source of advice to “Listen to and welcome the stories and insights that autistic people of color have to share with us” (Ashkenazy xxxviii). Because not all Autistics share the same shared experiences and nor do people of color. Because in this way, it is a way to shed light on culture, home lives, family, and the lived experiences of who people are at the intersection of disability and race and not base broad and ignorant assumptions on others. In addition, as Ashkenazy emphasizes it is our social responsibility to ask people how they identify, instead of assuming and getting to know people instead of clumping them into one category (Ashkenazy xxxix). It is being able to slow down and think about the stereotypes and misunderstanding that we are perpetuating, because it can lead to insightful and meaningful conversation embracing the mixed and intricacies of autistic people of color.

Works Cited

Brown, Lydia X. Z., and Morénike Giwa-Onaiwu. “Autistics of Color: We Exist…We Matter.” All the Weight of Our Dreams: on Living Racialized Autism, DragonBee Press, 2017, pp. X-xxii.

Sinclair, Jim. “Don’t Mourn for Us..” Autonomy, the Critical Journal of Interdisciplinary Autism Studies [Online], 1.1 (2012): n. pag. Web. 2 May. 2019

Savarese, DJ. “Communicate with Me.” Disability Studies Quarterly, 2010, dsq-sds.org/article/view/1051/1237.

Word count: 1006

I Pledge, on my honor.

Cayla Stroud’s MPP, “A Black Mother’s Understanding”

A Black Mother’s Understanding (Poetry)Download

For these poems I tried to emulate Rebecca Foust’s “A Mothers Understanding”. I enjoyed how through her poems she let us through her journey of being a mother to a child with Asperger’s syndrome. Foust’s connection to her son’s journey related to the relational model as it catered to the thoughts and feelings of a mother with a child that has a disability, with the focus on how it affects her personally. I thought that doing an assortment of poems catered to the feelings of a mother that had a child with quadriplegia, intellectual disabilities and confined to a wheelchair. I wanted the poems to reflect societal feelings, admiration, sadness, agony, pain, all in one. Putting a twist on the poems that Foust had done in “A Mother’s Understanding” by pairing the experiences to that of a black mother. It was important to me that the experiences of disability were not solely based on the traditional white American’s narrative of disability, but rather a rendition of disability that can be shown through the lens of intersexual, feminist, and a cultural viewpoint, essentially a black feminist disability narrative. I wanted the reader to grasp the understanding of how disability functions within different cultural expressions and the stereotypes that follow. Furthermore, how blackness is barred, in a western, ablest, patriarchal society from the weakness and visibility of disability.

word count (discussion): 226

word count (with poem explanations): 1191

I pledge my honor, Cayla Stroud.

Cayla’s SRR to “What you Mourn” and “Disability in Theory”

In the poem, entitled What you mourn by Sheila Black, we see a woman that contemplates the year that her legs were straightened and how unhappy she was with her new able body. The writer allows for a different perspective on disability than how it is usually depicted within literature. The speaker is not upset that she is not able bodied like usually seen, but rather that she explains show she would have nested and embraced her disabled body before it was”fixed”. It is clear that what the speaker mourns is the disabled body that she once inhabited. Black expresses the love for her disabled body and twists the narrative of the socially constructed body.

The speaker is told that she will now “walk straight on her wedding day” (lines 3-4), implying that disability is in juxtaposition with normalcy and even happiness. Furthermore, that when a body is physically impaired it needs to be “fixed” for the purpose of getting closer to “normal” as possible. Highlighting Siebers’ assertion that social constructed attitudes of an institution determine the greater biological representation of the body’s reality (Siebers 173). He explains that we are over critical of the body and its symbolic nature to be, do, and representation within society. Siebers’ also quotes Thomson as she points out the discourse of disability as it is “the unothortox made flesh, refusing to be normalized, neutralized or homogenized” (Siebers 174). Furthermore, the poem exemplifies the importance of the idealized body as it relates to our sense of self and identity.

The reader also calls upon the contention of “naming” as it relates to the identity of any disabled persons. “Crippled they called us when I was young later the word disabled and then differently abled, but those names all given by outsiders, none of whom could imagine that the crooked body they spoke of …” (lines 17-19). Black is employing the controversial nature to which individuals are usually providing labels for the people that should be labeling themselves. The speaker connects her experience within her “old” body to that of a “beloved imperfect home country” (line 23- 27). Demonstrating that she noticed the difficulty and discourses that she had faced within her disabled body, but she embraced it anyway, even though she was forced out of it. Ironically, the speaker also expresses the exile she feels within her old body and the imprisonment that she feels within her new body (lines 11-13). One can imply that the author was trying to have the reader grasp the societal pressure of having a “normal”and able body.

In both Black and Siebers’ writings we see the significance of the body, to which disability transforms ideals about identity, language, social and political understandings. Both Black and Siebers explain the detrimental ways in which society overtly project normative values unto persons with disabilities and how these subtle structures can often exclude them. In addition, further abdicating the basic thoughts and assumptions that surround a disabled bodies experiences.

Word Count: 506

I Pledge, Cayla Stroud.