A Short Essay on ABA and Race

From someone who is Black, Autistic, and once in ABA.

I use far too many words for y’all to say that I am a proponent of ABA.

Honestly, ABA is “abusive” because it has spread its blanket of coverage onto you. I have stated this before and I will say it again. We witnessed this phenomenon with the overturning of Roe. Black and Brown bodies have maintained that the extreme governance of our bodies was wrong, hurtful, dehumanizing and this fell from the ears of those whose lives were not touched by the restricting hand of your laws, your mindsets, and your mistreatment.

We saw abortion rights with Black and Brown bodies serving as the heartbeat of these movements be pushed aside and ignored in favor of uplifting fictional dystopian literature and media that was based upon the real lives of Black and Brown bodies. We saw that you would rather relate to fictional narratives based on our real life experiences and that of our ancestors because in those fictional worlds, whiteness was centered.

Our bodies have always been governed. From the womb to the tomb. And even in death they run us through.

Harm that came, harm that still comes to our bodies you did not care, still do not care, to see…until it touches your own. Where were you when we lay dead in the streets? Where were you when they made up illnesses and conditions they assigned to us designed to control and demean us? Where were you when they created “science” that deemed us inferior, in need to control and heavy handed measures of dominance? Where were you when we were locked in institutions and prisons? Where were you when these bodies of ours are policed more heavily than yours? You were silent when they lay their hands on us? When they demand so much from us? When they write laws that unfairly rule us? When they deny rights to us that come so freely to you?

You see, we know compliance. We are taught young. By this world. By our parents. We know what it’s like to have bodies that aren’t ever really your own.

And this is before you add in neurotype.

Our system is not broken, working as it was always intended to work. Power flowing upward. Skin like mine being cast as criminal, unintelligent, wild and out of control, in need of strict measures to keep us in line.

The assignment of disability to our bodies and the creation of disability through our mistreatment.

Y’all didn’t see us.

And the fact that we have to keep telling y’all means you still don’t.

You think ableism stands apart from racism. They are linked. Ism bedfellows. One will not exist without the other. Capitalism cannot exist without racism. One cannot deny that how much wealth Slavery garnered for both America and Europe. One cannot deny the economic systems built upon a foundation of racism and the racial inequities that we still see today.

One cannot separate the origins of racism from capitalism nor capitalism from racism. Bodies that serve to produce. Bodies that serve to benefit the collective…only the collective is a certain group. But not us. Benefits didn’t flow downward, always up. Bottom up. Power is maintained because it comes from another.

Capitalism.

Draining our bodies, exhausting our minds, injecting trauma in our bones…that we will pass down to future generations. Racism maintained capitalism. Capitalism maintained racism. A lifeforce for one another’s sustainability.

Ableism does not exist apart from racism.