No, we're not all "a little neurodivergent"
This is a lecturing edition of Dispatches. You have been forewarned.1
The Americans with Disabilities Act reads, in part “[T]he continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous.” One might question whether we live in a free society or whether it truly provides opportunities to all, but it is very much the case that people with disabilities “encounter… discrimination [that relegates them to] lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities.”
Tom Harkin, one of the authors of the ADA, used to be one of my Senators. Here he is at the DNC in 2016 doing a little thing with sign language that might make you cry.
I am concerned here primarily with people with mental disabilities rather than those with physical disabilities, not because the latter are less important but because I have less knowledge of them.
“Oh, we’re all a little bit neurodivergent!” someone said recently at a gathering I attended wherein people were discussing a program specifically aimed at neurodivergent people. I lost my temper a bit, and what follows is what I wish I had said—and had time to say—at the time.
If by neurodivergent you mean kooky, quirky, distracted, perpetually late, or some other fairly common personality trait, I would ask you to ask yourself if that trait has left you with the inability to function on an equal basis with the general population. Has it relegated you to lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities? Perhaps you believe you might have gotten into a better college if you weren’t so easily distracted from your schoolwork. Perhaps you believe you’d have a better job if you weren’t such a kook. Perhaps you are right. But did you get to go to college? Do you have a job that supports you? Are you, for that matter, alive?
People with serious mental illnesses are second only to Black people when it comes to being killed by police (with some overlap in those datasets).2 Similarly, Black students and those in special education are far more likely to experience restraint, seclusion, suspension, and expulsion than their peers, as well as the many negative outcomes correlated strongly with such discipline, including dropping out of school and entrance into the juvenile justice system.
Neurodivergence (in my understanding) covers a wide range of diagnoses and conditions, although it’s often read simply as code for autism. I cannot speak for autistic people (many of whom prefer “autistic person” rather than “person with autism,” contrary to the preferences of many people with mental illnesses). But I can speak from my own experience.
I am what you might call “a little bit” or “somewhat” neurodivergent in that I have largely treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. But I am lucky: the provisions in place to accommodate those disorders have been available to me, as have the doctors and therapists who can treat me. I have the doctors who could get me leaves of absence from school and FMLA time from work, and I have had the money to do so (FMLA leave, as you know, is unpaid time off from work—those who are fortunate enough to qualify for it also use it for maternity leave).
Others are not so fortunate. I’ve often heard people say “I’m a little OCD about how I arrange my mugs or fold my sheets.” I used to say such things too until I encountered people who suffered from OCD in a way far beyond our typical vision of someone turning light switches off and on or checking one last time to make sure the stovetop is off. Their OCD consisted of, say, an obsession with the existence of child pornography and a compulsion to check constantly to see if it existed—combined, of course, with a terrible anxiety of being found out and labeled a pervert or a sex offender, yet unable to keep themselves away from the obsessions and compulsions that their mind produced against their will.
Such people have a difficult time getting jobs, and when they do, they have a hard time holding on to them. They have a difficult time renting apartments and staying in them, and, of course, unless they have the connections I do, they have an extremely hard time finding and keeping medical and care and insurance.
I’m offended by “we’re all a little bit neurodivergent” because it minimizes the real suffering, the real exclusion, and the real life consequences for those neurodivergent poeple who experience outright discrimination in education, employment, housing, and, well, life. Discrimination isn’t a joke—it’s a force that alters real people’s real lives, and that relegates them to “lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities.”
Lecture over. For today.
Also I got bored of looking up references at some point, probably because I have a cold. You can Google, ask your local librarian, pester me about it, or take my word for it.
There are also some variations from year to year, if you want to quibble.