A few days after former President Donald Trump won reelection, Morénike Giwa Onaiwu’s fourteen-year-old son asked his mom: Was there a way to erase the fact that he’s autistic from his medical records?
“It was like a knife to my soul,” said Giwa Onaiwu, a Black autistic writer and advocate in Houston. “From the time that they were young, I didn’t want them to grow up with any stigma about who they are. I knew the world that they were gonna face. So I’ve always tried to tell them, your skin is beautiful. Your brain is beautiful. They’ve never been ashamed to tell anyone that [they were autistic].”
While erasing the teen’s diagnosis isn’t possible and Giwa Onaiwu isn’t sure where their teenager soaked up this shame, they’re also not surprised at the question. They, like many autistic people, worry that the United States is primed to return to an era of autism misinformation with the potential ascension of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into public office.
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