Sojourner Truth, Booker Wright, and The Question of Who Controls the Narratives of Disabled Black People

Image of Sojourner Truth, an African American woman
in a white bonnet and shawl and dark gown, seated in a
chair beneath the image, the words read "I sell the shadow to
support the substance, Sojourner Truth. circa 1870,
By Randall Studio - https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.79.220,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77744170

I have been thinking about the conflicting, debated, censored, and sparse information about the life of Sojourner Truth.

I read the arguments in the debate about whether an illiterate disabled woman of color can have agency in what is said and written about her lived experience.

That got me to thinking about Booker Wright.

The story of Booker Wright, like the story of Sojourner Truth, has a central question: whose voice actually dictates the lived experience narratives of oppressed minorities when the very language and media used to tell such stories is completely controlled by the systems that oppress them?

Booker Wright was a Black waiter in a "white's only" restaurant in Greenwood, Mississippi. He was, in fact, the most popular waiter there. He was considered a "good Negro." He knew the hidden curriculum of Jim Crow well and his customers saw him as a "happy Negro."

It was 1965, and a documentary filmmaker for NBC was in Greenwood working on the white man's view of the Civil Rights movement. He heard that Booker Wright sang the menu, Mistral Show fashion, and he thought that an interesting oddity, so he decided to film it. When the camera rolled, the journalist got a surprise. After he was done reciting the menu, Booker realized he had a chance to speak about what life was truly like for him in the South and he did.

 That decision cost him his job, his business, his safety, and his life.

Booker Wright was a restaurant owner. His place was considered a safe space for Black families in segregated Mississippi. After his interview aired, his restaurant was destroyed. Booker Wright was pistol-whipped and hospitalized. Eventually, he was murdered.

His interview is considered the pivotal point of that documentary. It made the documentary a success for journalist Frank DeFelitta, but DeFelitta regretted publishing the interview because of the retaliation and harm Wright suffered as a result. DeFelitta claims he asked Wright whether he was certain he was okay with keeping the entire interview in the documentary. DeFelitta had a sense of what that might cost Wright, but he chose to air it anyway.

Yet, this interview was the only time Booker Wright was able to speak his truth in his own voice to the largest audience that might ever hear it. He thought of the better life he wanted for his children and their children and he did what was right knowing it would probably cost him his life.

Sojourner Truth, like Booker Wright, was trapped in the limitations of the times she lived in, despite "breaking barriers" by suing in court to gain her son's freedom, despite speaking at a women's rights convention before women had the right to vote. Everything she did, even as an emancipated woman, was informed by the limits society placed on her by keeping her enslaved, disabled by violence, illiterate, and limiting what any woman could do without a man's consent or protection.

Sojourner Truth's life story was whitewashed of any mention of sexual assault, despite historical evidence that her daughter Diana may have been the product of a rape by John Dumont. In the 136 years since Sojourner Truth's death, the systemic use of her narrative as a symbol stripped of many brutal realities of who she was have left us with yet another gap in American disability rights history. Sojourner Truth continues to exist as niche black civil rights and feminist icon, stripped of the disabilities that made her a complex, three-dimensional historical figure. To do what she did, when she did it makes the complete image of who she was something of critical historical importance. Sojourner Truth took her moment and spoke truth to power. Her example was there when Booker Wright saw his chance and made his decision to risk all and speak out.

Sojourner Truth was a radical activist. But the question of who controlled the narrative of her life experience as an emancipated activist can be answered by how strong her voice was in written versions of her speeches and the autobiographical book written on her behalf. There is a strong record of her active participation in Marius Robinson’s June 21, 1851 transcription of her speech at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851, for The Anti-Slavery Bugle. The 'Ain't I A Woman' version done by Frances Gage appearing in the April 23, 1863 issue of the New York Independent, is considered inaccurate. There is no record of Sojourner Truth's agency or participation in rewriting this version of the speech she gave. There does seem to be evidence in notes that she was an active participant in the drafts of her life story.

Truth's ability to gain a platform to speak her truth came at a cost. The resentment of southern white suffragettes and the demands of abolitionists who realized her story could be weaponized by ensuring the language appealed to illusions of what whites expected blacks to sound like. This was done to drive their cause forward.

Despite all this, Sojourner Truth, like Booker Wright, had her moment to speak her truth. No amount of rewriting and whitewashing has erased that event. It sits indelibly in both Black and Disability justice history as a triumph of the spirit. As does Mr. Wright's decision to speak outside the lexicon of his oppressors. In this era of fear and hatred, remembering the courage of all disabled people means the difference between courage and doom.


References:

Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (Norton, 1996), p. 19, and Margaret Washington, "Sojourner Truth's America" (Illinois, 2009), 51–52

Compare the two versions of Sojourner Truth's speech at The Sojourner Truth Project's page:https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches

PBS Interview about Booker Wright Documentary co-produced by his granddaughter and directed by Raymond De Felitta, son of the journalist who produced they original the original documentary. https://youtu.be/RxwLe7HapIA

Random Thoughts at The Intersection of Race, White Privilege, and Disability Rights Advocacy

Black letters on a white field read "No one is asking you
to apologize for being privileged; people want you to
stop using your privilege in ways that require an apology."
Ilana Alazzeh

I've spent the weekend thinking about Ted Landsmark, Danuta Danielsson, Edward Crawford, the miseducation of KKK children, the dominant and at times toxic culture in disability rights activism, and what happens when marginalized people intersect with white privilege. Occasionally I think in pictures. So let me share the people I'm discussing in the way they came to mind as their lives intersected with mine.

In 1976, when I was 15 years old, Stanley Forman took a photograph during the fight to desegregate Boston schools that won a Pulitzer Prize the following year. That day Ted Landsmark became the victim of white protesters like teenager Joseph Rakes, who tried to assault the civil rights attorney with a flagpole bearing the American flag.

Pulitzer Prize winning photo "The Soiling of Old Glory" ©Stanley Forman

Mr. Landsmark later assured investigators that Rakes was not trying to spear him but was in fact swinging the flagpole in the photograph from side to side trying to hit him with it. This simple statement on Mr. Landsmark's part may have saved Mr. Rakes from paying the price for his hatred his entire adult life. Anti-bussing protesters beat Mr. Landsmark severely that day. He was fortunate to have escaped permanent injury.  Rakes was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. It may or may not surprise readers to know his jail sentence was suspended.

The snapshot of the violent Boston anti-bussing protests punctuated by incidents like the assault on Ted Landsmark  emphasizes that poor or working class white people become conciously aware of their privilege only when they view it as being under threat, at which point they lash out to preserve it.

The majority of violent white anti-bussing protesters were considered "good hard working people of faith" who became aware that their children had the privilege of attending segregated public schools and fought violently to retain said privilege only when they were ordered to adhere to federal law requiring they include Black students in their schools. This historical event counters the common misconception that white privilege is a false construct because a white person who is working class or poor has no inherent privilege in society.

These events took place in Boston over 20 years after Brown v Board of Ed of Topeka, Kansas, in Massachusetts, not in Alabama or Mississippi. This should also emphasize that racism is not limited to one geographic area, disparities and crises driven by the racial divide are in fact equal; just expressed differently in the other areas of the country.

In April of 1985, when I was in and out of hospitals with my asthmatic 2 year old daughter wondering if a move to Europe from Turkey was the best thing for my little one, Danuta Danielsson witnessed a demonstration in Växjö, Sweden and, unable to control her outrage at seeing the nazi-skinhead marchers supporting the Nordic Reich Party she rushed out, hitting one with her handbag. She was 38 at the time. Ms. Danielsson was of Polish Jewish origin, and her mother had been placed in a concentration camp during World War II. 

Woman hits Neo-Nazi with handbag, ©Hans Runesson

Ms. Danielsson was not arrested or charged for her actions. Attempts to install a sculptural depiction of this photograph were rejected by local Swedish politicians of the Centre Party for fear it might promote violence.

I and most people at the time empathized with Danuta Danielsson and grasped why she would strike out at someone young and ignorant enough to brazenly march in support of an anti semitic political party despite knowing the barbarity and scope of the holocaust. No charges were filed against her.  She actively avoided the press or any notoriety for this act or the photograph that immortalized it.

Can we all accept that this act did not deserve to be labeled an act of violence?

1. Ms. Danielsson appeared to react spontaneously upon being triggered by those marching.
2. Doesn't the circumstance of her being a traumatized member of a marginalized minority that was the target of genocide by those who established the philosophy being supported by the target of her attack, justify her behavior?
3.  Should survivors of atrocities and their families be made helpless witnesses to the power of  those born with white privilege who were never targets of mass genocide, using that privilege to legally impose and promote white supremacist political views that justified the mass murder of millions of innocent people? 

Whatever the intent of this party and those in it, they are cogs in a greater wheel that abuses white privilege to drive discrimination by perpetuation of beliefs we know are untrue. These negative constructs are constantly retaught to white children, and they grow up, regardless of anything else that might make them divergent from their peers, with this persistent and ingrained parasite of hate that invades them and propagates such that it is passed on to their children and grandchildren effortlessly.

“White power structures often persist independently of the good or bad intentions of White individuals.”  

 - Dr. Katherine Tyler

Last August, 13 years after coming back home and witnessing an increasing polarization of the country along racial lines, I was still reeling from the increasing shootings of Black people and trying to follow the nationwide protests online when photographer Robert Cohen's picture of 25 year old Edward Crawford, the "flag and chips man" of Ferguson, Missouri went viral on social media. Mr. Crawford was caught in the middle of lobbing a tear gas can shot at the children of protesters back at police while not disturbing his bag of chips. Initially this photo was misrepresented by some media outlets as a Black protestor throwing a molotov cocktail.

Edward Crawford, 'whose bag of chips read "the flavor of America's heartland"
throwing a flaming tear gas canister duringFerguson protests @Robert Cohen

I always wonder what white people who are clueless of the impact their own white privilege has on their lives, thought when they first saw this photograph. Because I know that it was probably not what I was thinking. When all these events were unfolding I wondered how those of us trying to fight hate enabled by the abuse of white privilege could overcome the miseducation of white people who refuse to acknowledge their own privilege. How could we explain topics like structural racism to people who don't acknowledge their own complicity in this abusive cycle? How can we show academics and graduate students in fields like disability studies who don't really care how the misuse of white privilege influences their work, the way they view and present facts can cause harm?

Ignoring this bias infuses content with constructs that perpetuate and preserve the prejudices that impose the greatest disparities in how disabled POC in general and disabled Black people in particular receive a free and appropriate education, therapies, state supports, and critical health care. When white privilege is misused to justify deliberately ignoring how content promotes racism,  disabled Black children are misrepresented, research is driven and founded on stereotypes, and disabled Black children are denied the cognitive, physical, and emotional fitness needed to survive and self advocate in society and this continues mistaken beliefs like, for example, the fallacy that Black autistics express autism more severely and have greater challenges because of their race. In fact how autism presents has a great deal less to do with race and a great deal more to do with delays in diagnosing autism and the resulting disparities in all the services and accommodations needed to support Autistic children of color in general and Autistic Black children in particular.

Worse, this lack of willingness to understand terms that don't mean what most presume they mean attaches a stigma to them that distances white people from trying to change. Wrong headed ideas based on modern stereotypes, like the concept that being a political liberal, dating outside one's race, having Black friends and colleagues, or being highly educated exempts a white activist from thoughtlessly perpetuating structural discrimination is dangerously flawed. This attitudinal erasure keeps regenerating a mentality that views Black people as less than rather than equal, a collective 'problem' to be dealt with and Black disabled people as a 'greater societal burden' than white disabled people.

 Child of Klansman meets Black State Trooper
 photo by Todd Robertson, credit Southern Poverty Law Center

I have hit a wall of insensitivity and erasure on how to explain this to my own colleagues. I can't constantly be in the position of appealing to activists and academicians who are supposed to care about my son and his peers as much as they care about white disabled people. I felt it was possible to present things to reasonable people and have them first be willing to look in the mirror and  then analyze where they may need to make changes in how they present disabled people of color in essays on social media. That requires that people respect Black disabled activists first, respect marginalized activists' topic expertise, and have a willingness to accept the world as it truly is not only for them but for disabled people of diverse races and cultures about whom they may be ignorant. I did not think that was such an impossible thing to ask.

It turns out it is.

Like everything in the conversation of structural racism, telling authors and bloggers that their misuse of white privilege is fostering presumptions that are negatively impacting their content is apparently highly inflammatory.  The term 'white privilege' makes everyone squirm. They don't want to be labeled someone whose white privilege has gone wrong in their academic work or online content generation. So they do what many do when confronted by someone with an inconvenient truth online: they mass their followers and begin a flame war.  All manner of gaslighting and other unpleasantness will ensue. But the actual concern, that something in any given content may perpetuate structural racism or denigrate Black disabled people ends up derailed and dismissed.

This is my fault too, because I let other white colleagues who truly want increased diversity in the disability rights community convince me that if I tried to educate, activists would listen and this was simply not true.

Understanding that I have wasted four years of my life thinking I could explain and colleagues would read and listen is tough. But it is also good to divest myself of this fruitless pursuit without bitterness and with the realization that it is not the job of the marginalized person to constantly teach to the privileged group. It is time to focus on things that might just truly make transformative change for my own people, my son, and his peers.

The presumption that writing would give me a voice that might be heard was not completely accurate. Blogging gives me a voice. But those who need to change do not heed it and that means this path to trying to change minds is failing.The disadvantage of heeding those who speak out about not inadvertently perpetuating racism in disability rights activism is that no one can gain anything but a clear conscience from listening to such voices. There is no academic, fiscal, or professional profit in presenting information in a manner which isn't offensive. It is just the right thing to do.

A friend and colleague who does great things offline told me he could not do what I do online. He said no matter what I write to try and reach people, they will resent, react, troll, and insult me. I am beginning to agree with him and am exploring ways reinvest the limited time I have for activism accordingly.

 Online blogging will probably continue, but with no expectation or hope of impact, and with no presumption that persons with white privilege who are academicians or disability rights activists who need to change will heed or respect voices like mine. It will simply be an exercise in expressing my thoughts and leaving them for my son, in the hope that he may someday understand the words I've written. He should know that his mother tried to do something to make the world a safer and more just place for him, even if she failed.

Of all the labels I carry, the one I am proudest of, my race, is going to continue to be the most marginalized. No outward displays of superficial willingness at equality or diversity will change the bias and disparities inherent in the disability rights conversation until those who dominate it are willing to see how the abuse of white privilege impacts their work and act to correct harmful things perpetuated by this without the presumption that white privilege or even racist actions are stigmatizing permanent labels meant to ruin their reputations. The lives of Black disabled people hang in the balance of understanding that the road to healing the racial divide in our community is to first accept when things like white privilege abuse driven structural racism are identified, even when what is exposed is internal.

Peace


Resources and References

About Artist Ilanah Alazzeh
https://about.me/ilanatree

Brown v Board of Education
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=87

"The Soiling of Old Glory"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soiling_of_Old_Glory

The Photography of Hans Runesson
www.hansrunesson.se/

A Woman Hitting a Neo-Nazi With Her Handbag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_Hitting_a_Neo-Nazi_With_Her_Handbag

 About The Iconic Ferguson, Missouri Protest Photo
http://www.fastcompany.com/3034842/innovation-agents/3-things-that-turned-this-photograph-into-a-ferguson-icon

About Dr. Katherine Tyler
http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/sociology/staff/tyler/
http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/sociology/staff/tyler/publications/

References: Towards a Bibliography of Critical Whiteness Studies
http://nathanrtodd.netfirms.com/documents/Spanierman_Todd_Neville(2006)Whiteness_Bib.pdf

A moment of hate free interaction: Klan baby meets Black State Trooper
http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/199985/how-kkk-rally-image-found-new-life-20-years-after-it-was-published/

I Can't Breathe

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.” 

― Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 @National Archives Documents

I can't get that quote out of my head. It is clanging in there like a brick dropped in a steel drum. Here I am, marinating in the pain of human rights lost and the clear and present danger to people of my race in the United States, the country that tries to dictate right and wrong to the world. This pain is deep, and old. Nightmares of the harms done to me and mine haunted my dreams last night. The illusion of justice we convinced ourselves we had was a veneer that has been dissolved away.  Events are proceeding as if there is no need to hide the fact we've lived with for over 100 years: justice is not for those Americans who are Black and poor. The right to be safely taken into custody and tried by a jury of one's peers if one is suspected of committing a crime is not for people of color. It is as if institutionalized shooting is the new way of lynching. Being shot to death can happen to seven year old Aiyana Stanley Jones, sleeping on a couch in what passed for her home.  It can be done out of malice to Ronald Madison, 40 and autistic. Anyone can be the next potential victim.  It could happen to Oprah Winfrey as she learned when her fame and $2.9 billion net worth failed to keep her from being treated like the rest of us when entering a store to buy a purse. You can't buy your way out of this legacy with money, or education, athleticism, or winning the office of the President of the United States.  Each day for the rest of our lives, we will be reminded that we are Black, and if we don't agree that Black is less,  if we don't look away when the dominant culture dictates that the Black body be the beast of burden of society then we will be made to stand by helplessly while our people are shot. The murders are here to tear at our hearts and remind us that we have no voice in this society. July 2, 1964 makes no difference today. The Civil Rights Act is so much paper and photo op. This effort, for which so many continue to die, is failing. All men are created equal as long as those men are not Black and poor.

What do I say to my boy today? We are already harassed when we try and take walks and try to go out and see our world together. A gray haired Black woman walking unsteadily down a sidewalk with a large, hispanic looking male leaning on her for support. Will they shoot us today? Will he look threatening? What if he's having a meltdown? What do I tell him if they hurt him? That 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice?' Because I have been waiting for it to bend in that direction since 1965. It just is not bending.

The Scottsboro Boys, with attorney Samuel Leibowitz,
under guard by the state militia, 1932. Image is of 9 Black teens in
 a cage with two white Alabama militia men and their attorney,
 who was white. 

I must again change how we interact with the world. Because our world differs from the world of the autism families who continue to dominate the autism conversation. Our world  is now less safe.

What the grand jury ruling in the Eric Garner murder means is body cameras on police will not change an outcome that is only a surprise to people who aren't black or brown. A camera on a body is only as good as the person wearing it. It can easily be shut off, or disregarded as evidence in grand jury hearings and trials. There is no route to accountability if accountability is simply a modern rerun of the way things were done in Alabama, when the Scottsboro boys were rounded up and tried for a crime that never happened because white boys were caught hoboing on a train, and wanted to get out of trouble. That happened 80 years ago. Has anything in the justice system changed? Not really. Even seeing injustice with our own eyes is not enough. Our eyes, the gaslighting voice of authority says, deceive us. Only things we can't comprehend matter. The weight of our words as witnesses are light. We are dismissed. Only power and privilege matter. So what do I do now? Where do I go from here? It isn't just a question I'm asking myself as an activist who has hit the insurmountable wall of institutionalized racism this entire year. It is a question I am asking as the mother of a nonspeaking autistic son in an American horror story of police in public schools, the resurgence of hate groups and those groups being given national media coverage to spew hate on us. People with power who see my son, with his budding mustache and older look, larger than his peers and neurdivergent, as a threat where he is not one. They see him and are afraid. The worst atrocities in our lifetime have been the byproducts of fear. Unnecessary fear based on ignorance, the hate that fear generates, and the devastating consequences to our people. Atrocities, forgiven under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.

I am rethinking my entire way of living and wondering, terrified,  what I can do to keep him from being another Neli Latson, in solitary confinement for the new crime of wanting to end his life because of the horrible circumstances that brought him from going to the library to the iron grip of a system that doesn't care that he has no understanding of what he did wrong. The law says if he does not understand what he did, he is not fit to be tried. But if you find yourself in Neli's situation, you'd better not be Black in Virginia.

See when I say justice for Michael Brown, what I am saying is that a man should not be shot repeatedly for jaywalking, in the same country where, as a person said on social media, a white male with bright orange hair walks into a theatre, throws tear gas and fires an assault rife, kills 12, wounds 70 victims and is taken alive. When I say justice for Eric Garner, I mean a man who died before our eyes crushed in an illegal chokehold for selling untaxed cigarettes should not have died in a country where Cliven Bundy, a rancher who owes more than $1 million to the federal government for late grazing and trespassing fees, which he has been accruing since the 1990's and refusing to pay, can simply not pay, and armed white people can plant themselves on federal land and scream "State's rights!". Cliven Bundy, the bigot, who later said awful things about my people, is free, his cattle grazing on federal land, and will never be arrested for anything.

I am not anti police and will challenge anyone to tries to slap that label on me. Having been fortunate enough to know outstanding law enforcement officers, seeing those who abuse that power makes me angry. This abuse of power denigrates all police officers who do their jobs and perform in an outstanding manner each day of their careers. Each time, in an attempt to protect police officers in general, someone abusing power is allowed to get away with it a huge canyon divide opens between law enforcement and our community. No amount of talk can repair what doing the right thing can.

There is a hashtag sign people are carrying in the streets, an echo of Eric Garner's dying words. It is a summary of my trying to collect myself, my disgust at organizations that should have done more before now and did not, the rampant racism within disability rights organizations that has me reeling this year,  my own attempts to cease hugging my neurodivergent son and husband in shock wondering when this nightmare will end.


The hashtag sign says simply I can't breathe.

Making Neli Latson Matter: The Invisible Intersected Black Members of The Autism Community

I have been haunted by the case of Reginald "Neli" Latson, a victim of racism and ableism for four

Neli Latson in 2010

years.  His case has taken a grisly turn. He attempted to take his own life, barricading himself in a room of the group halfway house where his abuse had become intolerable. He is now locked in what is in essence solitary confinement (he was taken out of straight solitary and is now in isolation with suicide monitoring) in a Virginia prison.

Solitary Confinement is torture.

According to the definition of torture under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340–2340A :

1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from
     (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
     (B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
    (C) the threat of imminent death; or
    (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality;

Any research into the effects of solitary confinement on any human being will quickly make it clear that solitary confinement, regardless of the reason it is being done, is torture.

If you are anyone who is Black in America, you know the sequence of events that results in arrests for Black males. There is no rise in social class, no degree of education, no party affiliation that can save your sons, spouses, fathers, friends, from this. It is part of the racism that we live with. It is the fear we carry. You cannot train a human being to not abuse power. You cannot foresee the hate in a person's heart. You cannot tell if a man is a bigot if you are white. Your race is not the one such a person holds in enmity.  Not three days ago I was asked to describe disparities in the way healthcare was delivered to my son when I was with him. When I described an incident, the interviewer said "are you sure it was racism?" Probably the worst thing you can ask someone like me, who lives with racism everyday, is if I am sure it was racism. In the past, when I was a younger and more patient person, I would insist that people who asked me that question simply come to a mall with me and lag behind me as I walked through stores and watch my interactions and what was done when I entered shops. The shame they felt as they watched security guards and staff follow me from aisle to aisle to insure I wasn't stealing anything was enough. Yes I am sure it was racism.

Reginald Neli Latson

Tell me how do I explain to such a person that the problem with Neli Latson is not simply "autism causing him to act out"?  How will they understand that there is a world in which the color of one's skin is enough to get an arrest record whether one commits a crime or not? How to hammer home that all of this combined with a bigot who called 911 as a "concerned citizen" saw a black man in a hoodie waiting for the public library to open and decided to lie and say they saw a gun doomed Neli before he ever encountered that school resource officer? Because I've tried. And they just can't leave the world they live in long enough to understand this one.

Their world is comfortable and safe. They don't have to do anything but mumble words of sympathy because they are so confident it won't happen to their autistic child. Why should it? They are sure their social position, income, and race keeps their children safe. They forget something very important. Neli Latson would not have come to this horrible pass had he not also been autistic. This disaster is the intersection of autism, ableism and racism colliding with the school to prison pipeline. See everyone who is poor in Black America prepares their son for that moment. They teach them the social cues and red flags. They tell them to have a way to make that phone call and an understanding that they will be harassed by police at some point.  But autism parents are told they need to teach compliance and concrete ideas about police to their autistic children. It gives autism parents a false sense of security about their teens encountering police.

 Every autism parent who  secretly thinks a police training course,  safety movie,  who they know,  their race or wealth will keep this from happening to their child can think again. Ableism is as obvious in this case as racism. Neli was a popular student,  well known in the area and that is why he was able to walk to the library alone without prior incident. But the person who called 911 that day was tired of seeing the Black autistic kid waiting for the library to open. Black and neurodivergent was just too different for tolerance. The fact that to this day, the caller's identity is hidden is very damning.

Neli did not understand the intersection of racism and abuse of power. He understood the rules of police engagement and was taught that everyone had rights under the law. That of course does not leave room for how to react when racism places a black body in jeopardy. No one told him that Black males are routinely harassed by police and if the officer doesn't like the look of them, they will arrest them on any excuse. Neli wasn't taught what to do if the police should continue to escalate or try to incite an act that might result in an arrest. He was not told to remain passive even if insulted, beaten or arrested even if he had done nothing wrong. He reacted as he did in high school wrestling matches when set upon. This reaction destroyed his life.

For four years, I have felt like I've been in a nightmare where I scream and people see my mouth move but no sound is heard. No matter what I did or do, no one sees or hears Neli.  Neli's former attorney was ignorant of autism so the defense was a disaster as it in fact supported the case that autism makes Neli dangerous.  The Washington Post at one point flipped its initial  and recent balanced coverage of the case to support this incorrect perspective of the "dark side of autism" complete with parent interviews.  The presentation of the unfortunate defense case opened the way to a 25 year sentence. Autism organizations used Neli's case as a cautionary tale of the evils of not using  early intervention where "therapy" means compliance training through ABA and then promoted their own first responder training materials.

I have been unable to make all of this injustice felt to organizations, advocates, and activists. They don't get that arrests for no reason, stop and frisks, and any number of incidents are regular issues that those who are Black and poor learn to prepare for, but when one is Black and neurodivergent, may not be able to process, even with parental help. Add to this something else well known in services circles and you have Neli's recipe for disaster. Parents are told the dirty little secret to getting a rapid placement for your autistic adult child who has aged out of the education support system in times when no available placements exist is to document proof that the young adult is a danger to himself and others. "Call the police", they tell parents. Have documented proof they need immediate placement and social services will have to step in.

I have been unable to stem that tide. Parents do this never thinking that in their rush to get this large autistic adult off their hands they may be setting that person up for a lifetime of suffering. In the end that is what happened to Neli. He ended up having a prior incident, as happens with many young autistic males growing up, where police were called and should not have been called. Then the catastrophic encounter with a school resource officer when all he wanted was to go to the library. He was Black. He was wearing a hoodie. He did not know the script for reacting to racism in an authority figure who could incarcerate him. He does not know what is happening to him now.

As I have written before, great demands are placed on those of us who are Black activists for content, supporting presentations, speaking out about racism, intersectionality and ethnicity by organizations and groups, but when our disabled loved ones are in desperate need of help they are silent and absent. Neli needs help now. If I have been a good ally to cross disability causes and other marginalized groups I expect that when one of us is the victim of injustice allies will step up for them. If they don't that tells me that they won't be there for my family either. When we activists of color step away from organizations, communities and groups where others feel we are underrepresented, those stakeholders should look in the mirror. Neli Latson could be my son or anyone's son. Not helping him is akin to turning your back on all Black disabled children, adults, and their families.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network decided to step up and try to help Neli. You can read about their efforts here. They are one of the very few autism or disability rights organizations that seems to give a damn. So many disability rights advocacy organizations are filled with attorneys who won't touch this. Shame on them! They have no right to call themselves advocates of the disabled if they turn their noses up at defending Neli. It makes them part of the systemic erasure of intersected Black disabled males who are victims of a criminal justice industrial complex they cannot avoid or be free from without help. What do these people do? I see them hobnobbing with congressmen and senators. In the meantime God knows how many Neli's are deteriorating in prisons across this country. Isn't it time disability rights advocacy organizations and advocates join with organizations like Solitary Watch and add  ending solitary confinement, humane conditions and therapeutic supports for neurodivergent prisoners to their diversity related national agendas? Shouldn't their attorneys be fighting for this? No organization can insist they represent us or our children unless they address this urgently. 

Anyone who isn't making an effort to help Neli does not speak for of Black disabled people or their families. That is my position. Wonder why I don't respect your organization? That is why.  When you make Neli and so many others like him matter, you'll matter to me. Otherwise, lose my email address and don't put your hand out for my money every December and my voice, support, and content year round.

#FreeNeli