African-American Aspies and White Aspies

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Not every African-American has the same ignorant mentality. My mom may conveniently forgot sometimes that I have aspergers but she fully knows about my diagnosis. She fully supports me.

Yes...a ret*d AND annoying fixation on "being friendly" and "sociable" - sometimes to the point of ignoring things that really count.

They also tend to want to push themselves into other peoples' private matters without any regard for the underlying causes and then get angry when they can't get the outcome they desire. This results in episodes of bullying, labeling, and social ostracization which can cause the target to be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually scarred.

They also have a tendency towards self-righteousness and a sense of entitlement when it comes to trying to tell others what type of personality they should have.

If you say that you do not want to be in a relationship or get married, other black folk try to tell you that you're selfish. If you prefer to spend time alone or don't like striking up conversations with other African-Americans who are complete strangers then you're stuck-up and unfriendly. If you're quiet and shy, then you're strange in an number of ways and they make up things to say about you to assassinate your character.

Some of these folk develop lifelong resentments and allow them to flourish in the workplace. they expect the target to just take their abuse because - after all, they are right. they just don't know how to let African-Americans who are different from themselves just be.

I don't like the office gossip and backbiting and hatred such people are capable of. Therefore, I do not socialize with them. I do not like the fact that they will allow BS like this to trump providing an organized work environment that improves due to setting goals and striving to reach and exceed those benchmarks. I also detest the way they mistake being sociable for being professional.

Just because I'm black and the other person is, too, doesn't NOT mean that I have to allow them to be more familiar with me than I'm comfortable with.

It's hard when you've already been dealing with feelings and things you don't really understand within yourself - then you have to deal with the ignorance of people who have no idea what Asperger's or PDD-NOS or HFA or Autism are.



This is an ignorant statement. Asperger's/Autism/HFA/OCD/APD etc. - they're already there. To say that is a form of denial that can only cause the problems of the person who has it to continue or progress. Situations become exascerbated when the person uses drugs or drinks; doesn't get treatment and/or medication, and get access to necessary services.

When you try to explain what these different disorders and anomolies are, you get the whole, "I don't believe in that stuff" drivel. Some are so "religious" to the point of claiming that GOD can cure people of stuff like that if it DOES exist. Otherwise they think they know so much by makng smug statements like, "He just needs to stop being standoffish, selfish, insensitive, untalkative, etc."

Some of these folk need to get a clue about what they're talking about before making fools of themselves with such garBAge!

Last edited by Surreal on 02 Apr 2010, 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Being black, an Aspie, and undiagnosed until 2007, I was ostracized by my fellow students for being strange. I don't think of what happened as a race thing but as people being sh***y as usual.

I am a white woman. I have a 19 year old son with Asperger's and I work every day with a 15 year old boy with Autism, both are white also. WHat I have found is that, for the most part, African American people are more accepting of them. The 15 year old may be part of the reason for that. I have been with him since 4th grade and he has alway wanted to be "dark brown" . To him there are only two colors of people light brown and dark brown. (No black and white) He flirts with all the dark brown ladies he sees and he wants to be like every dark brown man. I'm not sure if he loves black people because they are so nice to him or if they are nice to him because he loves them so much.

Being Black, undiagnosed but suspected for a long time AND being in a religion that has an almost unnatural prediliction towards isolating from AND cowtowing to the "frozen faithful", as we call them, I find that being a Black Aspie for me is far harder in the Black community than the White. I dislike making a judgement call here but there it is.

My mom and I speak of this often as this is the main reason why we think so many of our specially qualified people DIDN'T get the treatment and support they needed. My Grandmother didn't and she was a schoolteacher in a WHITE suburb for 40+ years!! !! !!

The tide is turning but I fear we might be too late for many in the Black community. The virus of internal apathy amongst my people is so nacent at times that it sickens me and yet to hear them snicker at me because I'm going to live the best way I know how, I can only be but so angry. We kill our own best ideas mainly because we can't deal with the idea that some in our own community WILL be our biggest detractors.

The church has done mental health in the Black community NO FAVORS. None. So for me, even though I am religious and still church going, I smoke weed and do yoga along with the therapy I undergo and will be attending. I am not going to let my faith or my race stand in the way of my progress and if I have to make a nanothug or two uncomfortable in doing so, so be it.

Being black with Asperger's is even harder, because people often sterotype us minorities into a simple little box, and the black community is often poorly educated on mental health issues.

yes this is true.

I was treated badly through most of public school because I didn't/don't act "black" enough for them. I was the weird girl. I was the class joke.
So I would say yes.

I'm bi-racial and aspie. I look more black than white. Whites, both NT and Aspie, recoil. Aspie whites recoil even faster than the NT ones. It's a superficial thing regarding appearance only, at first. After time passes and conversation ensues, all NT's avoid me, both black and white. The aspies stick around, both black and white. Being that race is simply an adaption, and culture doesn't apply to aspies (at least the ones I know), in the end I am with my "own" people - neuro-typically speaking - my neurotribe.