Black Autistic Joy: or, Special Education Inside Out

• In Event: Investigating Intersectional Oppressions and Pathways of Resistance

Abstract

The purpose of this proposal is twofold. It seeks to offer both a critique of the continuing lack of Black sociality within clinical diagnoses and cultural representations of autism knowledge and to provide examples of Black Autistic Joy that counter this conspicuous absence. While a number of empirical studies confirm racialized disproportionality in autism diagnoses and delayed diagnoses for Black children in particular, the racializing assemblages of autism knowledge warrant continued critical attention as does the joyful resistance of Black autistics to a normalizing power that territorially habituates autism as the exclusive diagnostic property of whiteness.

Authors

• Benjamin Kearl, Purdue University - Fort Wayne
  Presenting Author

• Timotheus Gordon, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author