Thread by @mykola

OK for real, Neurodivergent Book Club, we are going to read From Margin to Center by bell hooks.

It's less than 200 pages, and it will inform our activism and advocacy in ways that we need.

Reply to this tweet if you are in and can get the book by Jan 1.

Paging #ActuallyAutistic friends, #ADHD and #Neurodiversesquad -- let's gather to read a short bell hooks book and grow together. Respond upthread to participate! :)

This group will move slowly to give people time to read and think. I am thinking a weekly chapter or X pages, I will have a reading schedule by the time we get started.

It's only 200 pages so shouldn't be a big lift.

Let me be more clear: Autism and our community and our culture on Twitter is overwhelmingly and problematically white.

Whiteness is a problem. We have to do the work to dismantle it so that we don't cause harm with it.

We can do some of that work by reading Black feminists.

Last time I tried this I framed it as White Autistic Book Club and people got upset. Ok, y'all weren't ready for that, couldn't get past the perceived Racism of the label.

So let's just call it a book club and if any PoC want to expose themselves to our bumbling they're welcome.

This is an IDEOLOGICALLY MOTIVATED EXERCISE I'm here to INDOCTRINATE AUTISTIC PEOPLE INTO WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL CRT and you can't STOP ME.

In other words: I'm not here to play false equivalences or to protect white feelings. I'm here to break down walls that have to go.

(More logistics: you don't have to read the book by Jan 1, you just have to get the book by Jan 1. If you can't get it by then I'm sorry but we will not be delaying -- however, feel free to read everything we say and draw your own conclusions.)

The STRUCTURE of this book club will be as follows:

1. There will be a weekly reading assignment.
2. You will compose a twitter thread that quote-tweets a prompt about that week's assignment.
3. We will comment on and share each others threads.

Why do it this way?

Because my goal with this isn't just to help a few Autistic people get better about Race -- the people self-selecting for this are already doing the work, by and large.

My goal is to saturate Autistic twitter with ideas it needs to be exposed to.

And we can do that our way.

(Note: if you feel attacked by any of what I have said, if “whiteness is a problem” or my CRT joke made you upset, you are especially and particularly welcome to join us. I understand why you’re upset and want to help you transcend that set of reactions.)

Let me be clear about something else: this is a non-hierarchical exercise. Our teacher is bell hooks, and I’m just another white guy.

If an Autistic person of color wants to run this group, I’m happy to cede what authority I have and let them drive.

But that’s work, for them.

Hmm. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe I should seek out a Black feminist scholar of bell hooks and pay them to lead this discussion?

Is that a thing that happens?

This. This is a space where we will mess up and have to take accountability.

That’s a part of the lesson - a huge part of unlearning whiteness is learning that you can make a mistake, OWN IT, and move on.

We are socialized to be terrified of any form of accountability.

https://twitter.com/jennscharf/status/1475521936373346306

(This is because white people have weaponized accountability against everyone else. When a white person has power and wants to hold someone accountable they often choose to cause harm, and justify it via accountability. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.)

Can I tell you what a gift it was when I realized I could stop excusing my mistakes and instead own them?

But: this is complicated by neurodiversity, when a lot of times people want to hold you accountable for what they heard, not what you said. Navigating that space is complex!