Why Being #AutisticWhileBlack Matters: An Intersectional Inquiry Into the Movement and Neurodiversity of Black Life

• In Event: Understanding Intersectional Lines of Inequities and Diverse Pathways of Resistance

Abstract

Numerous sources note racial disparities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses, which invites inquiries that interrogate how this label relates to the movement of Black children in schools and Black life in society. As a conceptual-theoretical inquiry into how ASD knowledge keeps being autistic and being Black ontologically separate, this paper is critical of how ASD diagnoses codify neurotypical ways of being that discount the neurodiversity of Black life. Using performance theorist Erin Manning (2016, 2019), this paper argues that the fugitivity of Black life is a neurodiverse, counter-orientation made noticeable when moving too much results in arrested motility. As such, it is important to interrogate how ASD acquires the shape of the bodies that inhabit its diagnostic space.

Author

• Benjamin Kearl, Purdue University Fort Wayne