Thread by @mykola

A solid critique of the work I am trying to do with the #wasNotNeurotypical hashtag.

I don’t mean to say eugenics is bad because of exceptional individuals; I’m trying to say that diversity gives rise to new forms of creativity.

The racial critique is spot on too.

https://twitter.com/tavi_wolf/status/1434539817778483200

We all know that the autistic community has a Whiteness problem.

One way to address that would be to identify Autistic people of color not only now but in history.

One person I’m reasonably confident I can claim was both Black and Autistic was Beethoven, who #wasNotNeurotypical

But like. That’s not great, Beethoven is well-known.

Why don’t I know many other geniuses of color from past ages?

Why is Beethoven’s Blackness not common knowledge?

I guess what I’d really like to ask twitter is: who are the non-white artists, writers, composers and thinkers of history that you feel comfortable describing as Autistic, or at least as not neurotypical?

Please RT into #BlackTwitter and #ActuallyAutistic twitter.

This is a really good thread on this. It makes the point: it doesn’t matter if Beethoven was Black. What matters is that there were plenty of his contemporaries who were, and who you’ve never heard of.

This is it.

https://twitter.com/kira_thurman/status/1273665093419651072

And here my contribution to this discourse: I bet a lot of those Black composers, artists, writers and thinkers neither you nor I have ever heard of were not neurotypical.