Autism was never the threat. The narrative was.
Autistic "masking" or "camouflaging" refers to adopting superficial non-autistic behavior. This behavior may be self-imposed or taught through therapies such as applied behavior analysis. Masking behavior in autism may make diagnosis more difficult, and it is correlated with an increased risk of death by suicide. (Credit: MissLunaRose12 via Wikimedia Commons)
Author’s note: The writer of this piece is autistic, diagnosed in the early 2000s, and has spent many years learning from others in the autistic community. While not a medical professional, their understanding is shaped by lived experience, conversations with other autistic people, and close engagement with the history and culture of autism. This piece reflects one perspective, not that of the whole community.
When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was named to a senior health role in Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, his record on autism wasn’t just known – it was infamous. For more than 15 years, he pushed the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, dismissed neurodiversity as “a fraud,” and called autistic children “damaged.”
But his April 16 remarks as Health and Human Services Secretary, around the findings of a CDC autism study no less, hit differently. He called most autistic kids severely impaired, claimed autism was preventable, and said most autistic people would never contribute. This wasn’t just rhetoric, it carried federal weight. And it wasn’t just a speech. It was the latest installment of a narrative built over decades – one in which autism is treated not as difference, but as disaster.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at his hearing to be Secretary of Health and Human Services on Jan. 30, 2025. (Credit: U.S. Senate Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions via Wikimedia Commons)
For decades, public understanding of autism has been shaped more by fear than fact, more by institutions than by autistic people themselves. To understand how we got here – and what real change requires – we need to start with what autism actually is.
Autism isn’t a straight line from “mild” to “severe.” It’s a neurological difference – a map of how brains process, perceive, and interact with the world. Some autistic people are nonverbal, others argue cases in court. Some need daily living support, others just need workplaces that follow through – whether it’s quiet space, clear instructions, or honoring accommodations after they’re told about a disability.
Traits like sensory sensitivity or deep focus shift with context. What’s disabling in one space might not be in another. Autism isn’t a defect, it’s a difference – and it’s always been here.
Some researchers have speculated that figures like Emily Dickinson, Mozart, and Einstein showed traits we’d now recognize as autistic. We may never know for sure, but neurodivergence isn’t new. It’s only newly visible.
The framing of Kennedy’s speech doesn’t just mislead – it dehumanizes. The conference was riddled with falsehoods, misinformation, and outright lies. The research is clear: Autism has complex genetic and neurological roots. What’s changed isn’t autism, it’s awareness. That’s not crisis. That’s visibility.
It’s not the first time a neurological difference has been treated as “other.”
Left-handedness was once pathologized. As recently as the 1970s, children were beaten, institutionalized or forced to switch hands. Today, 10% of people are left-handed, and it’s a normalized trait as opposed to a punishable offense.
Granted, autism and left-handedness are vastly different in complexity, impact, and support needs. But the comparison reveals something deeper: how society treats what it doesn’t understand. What gets pathologized is often not about harm – it’s about deviation from what’s considered normal.
Autism affects at least 3.2% of Americans.** It’s rooted in the brain’s wiring. The rise in diagnoses, according to the CDC and others, comes from greater awareness, broader criteria, and better access – not a true surge in cases. But unlike left-handedness, autism is still treated as a threat, tragedy or error. Not because of the science, but because of the framing.
This article was published to shed light on misconceptions about autism and people with autism, from the pen of a writer with autism. Below are some frequently asked questions.
Autism FAQs
If autism is not a disease, then what is it?
Autism, which is also known as “autism spectrum disorder,” is recognized as a neurodevelopmental disorder by the American Psychological Association (APA). However, within the autism community and in growing cultural and scientific discourse, autism – and the wide variety of conditions connected to it – is increasingly understood as a form of neurodivergence: a natural difference in brain wiring. Someone who is “neurotypical” is considered to have a brain that develops and functions in ways society expects or deems standard. By contrast, someone who is neurodivergent – such as an autistic person – may think, process, communicate, or experience the world differently. These differences aren’t inherently wrong or broken; they’re simply variations of human cognition. Autism, in this view, isn’t a defect to be cured – it’s a form of diversity to be understood, supported, and respected.
What colors represent autism awareness/acceptance, and which can be considered acceptable/offensive to autistic individuals?
Public perception is that blue is the official color for autism awareness. However, within the autistic community, the color blue is often rejected. Blue was chosen based on the outdated and biased belief that autism primarily affects boys – a misconception rooted in diagnostic frameworks that overlooked girls, nonbinary individuals, and people of color.
In contrast, many autistic people and advocates embrace either the rainbow infinity symbol or the color gold. The rainbow represents the full spectrum of autistic experiences – diverse, vibrant and nonlinear. Gold is embraced because the chemical symbol for gold is “Au,” which aligns with “autistic.” It also represents value, pride and visibility. In recent years, April has increasingly shifted from “Autism Awareness Month” to “Autism Acceptance Month” among autistic-led groups, with these newer symbols reflecting a move away from fear-based narratives toward affirmation and inclusion.
What symbols are most often used in association with autism? Why are some more accepted than others by the autistic community?
The most commonly associated symbols with autism in mainstream culture are the puzzle piece and, more recently, the butterfly – sometimes shown together. These were popularized by major organizations like Autism Speaks. However, many in the autistic community reject these symbols in favor of the infinity symbol. The infinity symbol represents the infinite diversity and complexity of the autism spectrum, and is widely embraced for its emphasis on neurodiversity, pride, and inclusion rather than pathology.
Why is there such a backlash against the “puzzle piece” design associated with autism?
The puzzle piece has long been criticized for suggesting that autistic people are “incomplete,” “broken,” a mystery to be solved, or missing pieces to make them whole. It frames autism as a problem to fix rather than a natural variation in human neurology. For many autistic individuals, the symbol reinforces stigma and exclusion rather than understanding or acceptance.
John Oliver already nailed the fact check. What matters is that Kennedy didn’t invent this narrative, he echoed it. For decades, fear-based myths have been amplified by medicine, media and one of the world’s loudest autism organizations.
Hours after Kennedy’s speech, Autism Speaks called his remarks “damaging” and affirmed autism isn’t preventable. Some applauded. But for those of us raised under their messaging, it rang hollow. To many of us, it didn’t feel like a stand – it felt like cleanup.
From 2005 to 2014, Autism Speaks spent at least 66% of its program budget on research, mostly chasing causation: genes, prenatal “flags” and neurological “risks.” Services were minimal. The lion’s share of funding went to research, with minimal support for autistic-led groups.
History of discrimination
Autism has always been politicized. Who gets diagnosed, or supported, has never been neutral. And for decades, that story wasn’t told by autistic people. It was shaped by systems built on pathology, power, and control.
The erasure of autistic people – especially people of color – spans continents, decades and institutions, from Nazi clinics to U.S. psychiatric wards, from media framing to nonprofit leadership. What looked like autism in one child was labeled defiance in another.
The dehumanization didn’t start with Kennedy.
Hans Asperger was long praised for shielding “gifted” and “high-functioning” children under the Nazis. He referred “low functioning” autistic individuals to the gas chambers, particularly to a eugenics program that murdered more than 200,000 disabled people.
Autism wasn’t yet a diagnosis, but its traits were recognizable, and targeted. Labels didn’t protect out of compassion. They reflected a system that prioritized usefulness, not humanity.
In the U.S., psychiatrist Leo Kanner blamed autism on cold, distant “refrigerator” mothers. The theory was debunked decades later by psychologist Bernard Rimland. Yet, Rimland later championed the same vaccine myths and detox treatments, such as chelation, now promoted by Kennedy.
Families were shamed. Children were institutionalized. By the 1960s, more than 200,000 children with developmental disabilities were confined in U.S. institutions. Since its opening in 1971, at least six people have died and hundreds more have been injured at the Judge Rotenberg Center, just outside of Boston. The Center still electroshocks disabled students. One boy, Andre McCollins, was shocked 31 times in seven hours for refusing to take off his coat. His screams were caught on video and played in court.
As of 2016, 87% of its students were children of color – mostly Black and Latine. Many were nonverbal, some as young as 9 years old. Despite a citation for human rights violations by Amnesty International, the Center is still publicly funded and open today.
In the 1990s, a group of parents launched Cure Autism Now, investing millions into gene mapping, DNA banks and prenatal risk research. The goal was prevention, not support. When Autism Speaks absorbed the group in 2006, they didn’t change direction, they accelerated it. Autism was still framed as a crisis to stop. Their campaigns declared a national emergency and funneled money into early detection tools: biomarkers, genetic screening, prenatal “flags.”
When autism is cast as a threat, autistic people become collateral. That framing doesn’t just shape budgets, it also shapes public understanding, and hits marginalized people the hardest.
Diagnosis for some, disposability for others
Close your eyes. When I say “autism,” what do you picture? A white man. Maybe nonspeaking. Brilliant at math. Counting cards in Vegas. But our default image of autism didn’t come from data, it’s Hollywood.
Dustin Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance in 1988’s Rain Man centered around a rare savant, and became a default cultural image. Fewer than 1 in 10 autistic people have savant traits. Yet, the portrayal stuck and warped public perception.
The mold became narrow, racialized and classed. White, verbal, cisgender boys were diagnosed. Others were overlooked. Black kids were labeled “aggressive.” Latine kids, “delayed.” Girls, “shy” or “quirky.”
Autistic traits were filtered through bias. And if your doctor didn’t know what to look for, or your family couldn’t afford a private evaluation, you disappeared.
Black kids in the U.S. are far more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD or conduct disorder before autism is even considered. A 2024 study found Black boys were significantly less likely to be referred for special education, unless their teacher was also Black. Black autistic youth got handcuffs, not help.
The issue wasn’t behavior. It was perception. White educators were more likely to read neurodivergent traits as defiance, not difference. That misreading didn’t just delay diagnosis, it rerouted – and sometimes ended – lives.
In 2024, 15-year-old Ryan Gainer was shot dead by police during a meltdown. He was unarmed. Two days before Kennedy’s speech, 17-year-old Victor Perez, who was nonverbal and had cerebral palsy, was taken off life support after being shot nine times by Idaho police behind a chain link fence.
And five months before George Floyd’s murder, 16-year-old Eric Parsa died after Louisiana deputies pinned him face-down for more than nine minutes. He’d had a meltdown, a physiological stress response. He needed support. He got force.
The parallels to George Floyd were chilling. The prone position, the pleas.
But Eric’s story barely made headlines. No marches. No media flood. His family reached a $1.25 million settlement with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department. But his name remains unfamiliar – not because he mattered less, but because disabled Brown and Black lives are treated as less visible. (In a final twist, his obituary asked for donations to Autism Speaks.)
This isn’t a false equivalence. It’s a shared rot. When meltdowns are seen as menace, and communication barriers met with force, the outcome isn’t an accident.
Eric Parsa. Victor Perez. Ryan Gainer. Many more. These weren’t isolated cases. They were symptoms of a system trained to see difference as danger, and erase it. But the future of autism justice isn’t coming from groups like Autism Speaks. It’s being built from the ground up.
The Autistic People of Color Fund, the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network, and Sins Invalid redistribute power, treating autistic survival as the foundation, not the footnote.
These aren’t diversity initiatives, they’re structural rewrites. And they’re not waiting for Autism Speaks to pass the mic. They’re building their own sound systems.
In Los Angeles, that future is already taking shape. Parenting Black Children centers Black families. Their advocacy, workshops, and system navigation rewire how care is delivered.
Nationally, Autism in Black adds clinical depth and cultural clarity. Their coaching, training, and annual conference model real advocacy: lived, accountable, and built for repair.
And younger organizations like Black Neurodiversity are shaping what comes next. Their digital tools and workshops promise inclusion and demand power.
From Prime time to the White House
The media machine has greatly contributed to the misperceptions around the autism community. Specifically, Autism Speaks has had an outsized platform compared to the vast majority of autism organizations that came before, in large part because co-founder Bob Wright was the CEO of NBCUniversal at the time of its founding in 2005. He greenlit “The Apprentice,” reviving Donald Trump’s public image, and later brought him into autism politics. In a 2012 episode of “Fox and Friends,” Trump credited “some great friends, Bob and Suzanne Wright.” In 2017, fulfilling a promise to Suzanne before her death, Trump lit the White House blue for the first time on World Autism Awareness Day – a gesture previous administrations had declined.
In a 2013 public letter to Washington legislators, co-founder Suzanne Wright wrote, “These families are not living. They are existing. Breathing – yes. Eating – yes. Sleeping – maybe. Working – most definitely – 24/7. This is autism.”
She blamed autism for destroying families. The backlash was immediate. John Elder Robison, one of Autism Speaks’s few autistic advisors, resigned in protest. The letter was eventually scrubbed from their site. But the community, including myself, never forgot.
Katie Wright, Bob and Suzanne’s daughter and mother of the child Autism Speaks was founded for, is still amplifying Kennedy’s vaccine rhetoric in 2025. She’s backed his claims for years, long after the science was settled.
In 2009, Autism Speaks released “I Am Autism,” co-produced by Suzanne and directed by Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón. A disembodied voice – autism personified – declared, “I know where you live… I will make sure your marriage fails.” It aired at fundraisers, local Autism Speaks chapters – even the United Nations. The group later called it a “regret.” But regret isn’t change, and it doesn’t undo harm.
Autism Speaks didn’t invent anti-vaccine rhetoric, but they did give it a platform. In 2008, a decade after Andrew Wakefield’s study which gave birth to the “vaccines cause autism” myth and four years after the study was retracted, the group’s Chief Science Officer said, “We believe vaccines are safe… That being said, there could be sub-groups who respond poorly.”
They dropped the language of “cure,” but kept the same framework. In 2022, they spent more than $12 million on research, mostly early detection and genetic screening.
Representation without power is just optics
Most clinicians are trained to recognize autism in white, verbal boys, not multilingual kids, nonbinary teens, or Black girls who’ve learned to mask their traits.
Autism Speaks promotes campaigns like Workplace Inclusion Now. But they’ve never opposed Section 14(c), the federal law allowing disabled people to be paid below minimum wage. As of 2025, more than 40,000 people remain employed under these certificates. Some earn less than $1 an hour. When the Department of Labor moved to end subminimum wage provisions in 2024, major disability groups showed up. Autism Speaks did not.
Their board remains dominated by donors and executives. Only one of 29 current board members openly identifies as autistic and has full voting power.
This isn’t just about one organization. It’s about the scaffolding behind it: donor pipelines, media reach, policy access and a narrative decades in the making.
We need structural change; audits, board overhauls, funding shifts. We need corporate partners to stop sponsoring puzzle-piece platitudes and start demanding receipts.
Inclusion isn’t a poster in April. It’s policy, pay, representation and infrastructure…with autistic people leading the charge. Autism Speaks doesn’t need rebranding – it needs accountability.
Kennedy’s speech wasn’t a one-off. It was the next chapter in a script Autism Speaks and others helped write and amplify.
And if they’re allowed to pivot without accountability, the archive rewrites itself. This isn’t about tone. It’s about the transfer of narrative, resources, and control. And if you’re not ready to do that? Step aside. We’re already building without you.
**(This statistic was calculated from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate on the prevalence rate of U.S. autistic children 1 in 31. However, this estimate does not take into account diagnosed or undiagnosed autistic adults, or undiagnosed children.)
