Justice For Kayleb Moon Robinson #AliveWhileBlack and Autistic

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Something frightening is happening to autistic Black young men and boys in Virginia. So frightening that I have decided to suspend autism month related activities as a result.

11 year old Autistic Student Kayleb Moon Robinson
Credit: Charlie Archambault for the Center for Public Integrity 

Clearly the case of Reginald Latson was not just a random case. Now, Virginia has convicted an 11 year old autistic boy of a felony for a school infraction. The police officer arresting him piled on extra charges like assaulting a police officer because he "resisted". So now an 11 year old special needs student has a felony conviction.

 Linkhome Middle School staff and administration should be the subject of an Office of Civil Rights complaint for the clear ableism and discrimination of Kayleb based upon the combination of his race and disability, traumatizing him, and causing this catastrophe by sending a police officer to handcuff and arrest him for kicking a waste basket. His IEP should have called for a crisis plan and positive behavioral supports. Upsets and meltdowns in school DO NOT require police intervention. 

The aggressive way Virginia prosecutes and criminalizes black autistic  students needs national attention. Everyone may know the case of Neli Latson but do you know the case of Brian Thompson?

NBC 4's Legendary Pat Collins don's his own outfit to interview
Brian Thompson, who went on to graduate from High School credit NBCWashington

In September of 2011, Brian Thompson, an autistic student at Colonial Forge High School, ran down the sidelines at a school football game wearing a banana costume. He was handcuffed, arrested, and suspended from school. The entire student body protested, some wearing “free Banana Man” T-shirts to class in protest. School officials confiscated the shirts. The injustice of this affair was so blatant that the outcry resulted in his reinstatement in school. Brian does not realize how close he came to being Neli Latson.

Virginia’s attempt to correct human rights violations against disabled people who should not be in its prison system must begin with a serious audit of its school practices when it comes to black autistic male students. Something is terribly wrong with the entire State’s institutional understanding of what autism is, and how to educate and manage autistic children of color.

Virginia and other States have to stop destroying children’s lives in the name of discipline. This is pattern propagating throughout the country. I am waiting for all autism organizations to pause in our “raising awareness” and take a position here. This is the war we should be fighting to save our children's lives. Clearly "raising awareness" has failed in Virginia. Autism and Disability Rights Organizations. NAACP and Civil Rights Organizations. Do Not Remain Silent!

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

#JusticeForKayleb. #AliveWhileBlack and #Autistic. 

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.

On Disparity in Education: Equality is Not Justice

There was a meme making the rounds of all the social networking communities a while ago. The meme was entitled "Equality Doesn't Mean Justice". This is a derivation of a meme by professor Craig Froehle. Let me post it here to save time:

Image is a two frame caricature the first is of a tall man a man middle height and a very short man all standing on boxes of equal size trying to look over a fence at a baseball game. The tall man and shorter man are able to see but the smallest man is not. The caption below the first frame reads "This is equality". In the next frame the shortest man is now able to see the game because he is standing on two boxes, and the shorter man is standing on one. The tall man needs no box and is still able to see the game. The caption under this frame reads "This is justice". 

It is very difficult to explain this distinction to any professional who has no understanding that my son's race, gender, perceived socioeconomic status and his degree of disability combine to leave him vulnerable to the same negative stereotypical  biases that have caused harm to him in the past. What is seen as equal is presumed to be just. My son needs three boxes to reach the justice of a free and appropriate education. He cannot be presumed to be treated fairly because his treatment is equal to another child of equal pathology who has no intersectional factors increasing risk of unjust placement and maltreatment in the classroom.

Appropriate education was meant to achieve equality with average students in public schools. But this approach is rarely just, particularly for students who must overcome misdiagnoses of emotional and behavioral disorders often placed upon them automatically. Their race and gender are used to presume that rather than educational supports they require behavioral management. Exclusively with males who are Black, the attitude with special education professionals is always an entrenched demand about controlling the pupil, and this is based on a systemic type of racism that assumes that if a person is poor, male, and Black, their behavior will become aggressive eventually.  So every action is viewed through the lens of  the racist legacy of a history of violence. The same action by a non-Black student might not be viewed in that light at all. A self fulfilling prophecy for nonspeaking autistic males, who are hypersensitive to fear in others and will react by mirroring the fear they sense in classroom staff and trying to defend themselves against whatever may come at them. Add to that administration by risk management and fear of responsibility for some imagined outcome if some child is not locked away from their peers and you have a recipe for discrimination that is an infinite loop until a student ages out of the school system. A 'good' student will then have learned to comply with rigid routine, the primary rule for living in an institution. They will learn helplessness, not self advocacy. The 'bad' student will have increasing force used against them until some catastrophic event occurs.

Sadly I realize that if my son and most of his peers did not carry these labels, what would be the primary focus of any educational roadmap would be what is just. How does one counter a mentality based on historical fear of large males of color combined with a historical fear of neurodivergent individuals? Professionals are often not even aware of the fear and bigotry driving their decisions and responses. If told "this response is ableist" or "that opinion is actually a racist assumption rather than a professional observation" they will use their credentials to balk and react with hostility. "Parent" will be used as a derogatory word. One's credibility as a parent will come into question.

In the distant past threats were made to us during meetings in an attempt to instill a fear of reprisal to our son or us should we complain or demand justice.

 Yet now my son's future, as well as that of his intersected peers, is in their hands. How can we navigate this booby-trapped environment?

I am trying to base communication on facts and focus on quantifiable observations and assessments. This is the best I can do. I have no control over the bigotries, fears, and disdain of those who might work with my son going forward except to be on the lookout for red flags in those people and how my son reacts in their presence. I have had the honor of getting to know my son well for three years. I trust him. He does not need to speak to let me know someone is mistreating him. I can only return him to being the lead protagonist in his own life and stand by him as he overcomes obstacles himself. But when you know this institutionalized ableist racism exists, and it looms over your child's world decimating the quality of life he might achieve it hurts. Beyond the injustice of it all, it is an exercise in standing by helplessly hoping your child can survive his education. It is frightening.

As we arrive with our son closer to end of our four year battle for his right to be educated, I want justice. I cannot accept less. My son deserves justice. I want him to have his right to an untainted free and appropriate education. I do not know how, under the present system he can achieve this goal. But he deserves to be back in command of his own life story in safety and peace.

Wish us luck. We really need it.

On Murder of Jordan Davis By Michael Dunn

Apparently no one reads what I write.

 Let me explain. Recently, deeply wounded by the verdict in the trial of Michael Dunn for the murder of Jordan Davis, I posted a status on my facebook page.

I said in part: "I get daily demands as an activist. That I be a good ally to other causes. That I contribute my intellectual property, my loyalty, my time, my son's time, my family's time effort and money. Even now. Even now I'm being asked, even pressured to support things. That shows a deep lack of caring and understanding for what just happened."

I presumed, foolishly, that my colleagues might understand that this might not be an appropriate time to demand my intellectual property, my loyalty, my time, etc. It might be a good time to be an ally and go to their respective organizations and ask that they release a statement supporting justice for Jordan Davis and dismay at the human rights record in Florida when it comes to Black children. It might be a good time to mention what each social justice organization has done to fight hate crimes directed at one race. It is not a good time to ask me for even more as an activist while ignoring that there is a pattern of violence going on that perpetrators are not being held accountable for. Activists cannot make demands of me as their ally and fellow activist and do nothing about the clear and present injustice to my people before them. Yet organizations in disability rights advocacy, who want to serve and be increasingly inclusive of minority members, are silent. I will defend my son's right to self determination. But I must now wonder how I can possibly work for organizations that are not reaching out to our social justice organizations and asking how they can show a united front against this deadly trend. Because this trend, when intersected with my son's nonspeaking autism, means an even higher chance that he will become the next Stephon Watts or Jordan Davis. So this issue is something that directly affects the Black members of any disabled population and should therefore be addressed by the disability rights community in general and all autism nonprofits in particular.

What is it about facing the truth that racism is alive and well in our nation today that makes everyone who is not a person of color squirm? How many more murders will go unpunished before we look at our national reflection in the moral mirror and deal with the festering canker of discrimination oozing hatred in every corner of our country? When racist people wish to commit a hate crime these days, they have more sense than to grab Black boys off the street and lynch them. Today's mob lynching is creating any excuse to shoot them, then turning yourself in and getting away with it. Make no mistake, what happened to Jordan Davis and his three young friends was a deliberate hate crime. Swallow that bitter pill. Choke that down, and ask what can be done to turn the tide of hate.

We cannot deflect the issue of violence directed at the male members of one race by making it something else. This is not a matter of gun control. Guns are the instruments of violence alone. It is not the abuse of the Stand Your Ground law. Quite clearly approaching a car and trying to incite a reason to shoot at the teenaged passengers in it is not standing one's ground. Arguing about the volume of music in a public gas station is not standing your ground. So this is not about whether a person has a right to defend their home or personal safety by using deadly force against trespassers. This is about racism. Bigotry against Blacks in general and young Black males in particular. So please, don't begin the standard talking points on gun control and stand your ground statutes. It adds insult to tragedy.

Dear disability rights nonprofits, activists, and everyone else. Have you reached out to your Black constituents? Have you publicly expressed your outrage? Are you silent now? Because if you are, you are sending a message that Black lives are irrelevant.  You are erasing my son's life and my life as well.

Do not then wonder why Black activists are not more involved with your causes.