Speaker 1: A few years ago, John and I were talking to
Speaker 1: Donald Triplett's brother Oliver about his family's roots at Forest, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Grandfather t. R. Mccravy was born in Tait County, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty six, and he grew up on a
Speaker 1: farm in really abject poverty, but had a mind for
Speaker 1: banking and was working in a small bank in Sanatobia,
Speaker 1: and there met Major Mill SAPs, who was a big
Speaker 1: philanthropist an entrepreneur in Jackson, and they hit it off
Speaker 1: real well, even though the major was thirty three years
Speaker 1: older than my granddaddy, and he made a proposition to
Speaker 1: him that if he would put up some of his
Speaker 1: money that he had matched in several other business associates
Speaker 1: to form a bank in Forest, Mississippi, which my granddaddy
Speaker 1: jumped into opportunity, so it was incorporated down here in
Speaker 1: March of nineteen hundred. The Cravyes now that is Mary's
Speaker 1: side of the family, and Mary again is Donald Triplet's mother.
Speaker 1: Beamon Triplet Donald's dad, and of course Oliver. His dad
Speaker 1: also came from a prominent family. His father served as
Speaker 1: the mayor of Forrest from and Beamon Triplet Donald and
Speaker 1: Oliver's dad became an immense presence in town. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just that yea law school graduates were hard to
Speaker 1: find in small town Mississippi. He was one of those guys.
Speaker 1: I never saw a photo of him when he didn't
Speaker 1: have a tie, and he had a very Atticus Finch
Speaker 1: quality about him. I think that's said Salter. He's a
Speaker 1: journalist and a historian and actually kind of a local
Speaker 1: legend himself. Don's father was one of the pillars of
Speaker 1: the community, a highly respected, very well educated, well traveled
Speaker 1: individual whose counsel outside of a legal representation, but whose
Speaker 1: counsel on many things was He was a longtime Sunday
Speaker 1: school teacher and had a great deal of knowledge of
Speaker 1: the Bible, which was respected. Beaman and Mary Triplet had
Speaker 1: money and they had tremendous influence around the town of
Speaker 1: Forest for more than fifty years. They were kind of
Speaker 1: a fixture in the Scott County Times society pages. They
Speaker 1: held key leadership positions and things like the Rotary Club
Speaker 1: and the Girl Scouts and the Garden Club and the
Speaker 1: local Methodist Church, where they also both sang in the choir.
Speaker 1: They helped run the pta, the public library and the
Speaker 1: town legislative committee. Beamon traveled all around the South as
Speaker 1: a delegate for the Mississippi State Bar. He was friendly
Speaker 1: with and respected by the mayor and the judges, and
Speaker 1: the police, and the local clergy and the publisher of
Speaker 1: the local newspaper. Pretty much everybody in town new and
Speaker 1: respected Beamon. Triplet. Here's Sid Salter again. In general society
Speaker 1: in America, people remember where they were when Kennedy was
Speaker 1: a Last nighted and nine eleven and all these things.
Speaker 1: In this community, one of the flaminal events was when
Speaker 1: Mr Bayman was killed in a auto accident, because it
Speaker 1: was such a shock and such an impact on the community.
Speaker 1: So I think all of that kind of contributed to
Speaker 1: the fact that there was a protective failing for Don.
Speaker 1: But you know, your father's reputation only gets you so far.
Speaker 1: Forest was not actually the scene of much of the
Speaker 1: physical violence that Mississippi as a state became infamous for
Speaker 1: during the Civil Rights struggle, you know, the lynchings and
Speaker 1: all of that. At the same time, it can't be
Speaker 1: entirely exonerated of its past as a place with separate
Speaker 1: water fountains and separate schools and certain assumptions about who
Speaker 1: counted and who didn't. And that's interesting because Donald came
Speaker 1: of age in an era when there was not a
Speaker 1: lot of tolerance for people who were different or who
Speaker 1: were judged to be in some way inferior. Of course,
Speaker 1: the most egregious example of that was the Jim Crow
Speaker 1: system that ruled the South during Donald's childhood there and
Speaker 1: well into his adulthood. The whole discussion begs the question
Speaker 1: of had Don's family not had the bank if there
Speaker 1: had not been the respect for Mr William and Triplet
Speaker 1: that the community had, would Don's life have turned out
Speaker 1: the slime white? So it's also got to be said
Speaker 1: that one challenge Donald never faced as a person with
Speaker 1: autism was being a black person with autism. Because autism
Speaker 1: and race they have their own tangled history. For I
Speaker 1: heard podcasts I'm John Dunbent and I'm Karen Zucker. This
Speaker 1: is Autism's First Child, and I heart original podcast episode four.
Speaker 1: See the Forest. Forest, Mississippi is located in the middle
Speaker 1: of the state. It's about forty five minutes east of Jackson,
Speaker 1: the capital. Here's it. Particularly in the forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: you had the burgeoning Mississippi poultry industry. The largest cash
Speaker 1: crop in Mississippi is poultry and eggs. It gave rise
Speaker 1: to one point like five poultry processing companies and vertical integrators,
Speaker 1: and so you had this huge segment of people who
Speaker 1: worked in the poultry plants, either on the kill line
Speaker 1: or in cut up. But it's cold, difficult work, even
Speaker 1: with automation. So you had that. You had a clock factory,
Speaker 1: sunbeam clock factory here for a portion of that time.
Speaker 1: The building later was taken over by Hughes Aircraft and
Speaker 1: now Raytheon. But it was a blue collar, pretty heavy
Speaker 1: agri business town. But let's back up for a moment
Speaker 1: to talk about how we met. Said so, after we
Speaker 1: confirmed that Donald was the child referred to as case
Speaker 1: number one in the early medical literature about autism, we
Speaker 1: reached out to Sid Palter because some of our research
Speaker 1: told us that he was a close friend of the family,
Speaker 1: and we had a long conversation with him. We asked
Speaker 1: if you'd introduce us to Donald, and said agreed, but
Speaker 1: first said something quite revealing. He said, if we hurt
Speaker 1: Don in any way, he would make sure we'd pay
Speaker 1: for it. And you remember the email he wrote to
Speaker 1: us when we said we were going to treat Donald, Well,
Speaker 1: I've got it right here. He said, if you are
Speaker 1: not as good as your word, I will use every
Speaker 1: means available to me to expose that fact. And I
Speaker 1: will make it my mission in life to discredit what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Wow, and Sid wasn't the only person in
Speaker 1: Forest we heard that kind of thing from. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it came from a kind of love for Donald. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a desire to protect him. And yes, it
Speaker 1: was love and it was community white. I came to
Speaker 1: Forest in Night three as a very young publisher of
Speaker 1: the Scott County Times, the local newspaper. Don was by
Speaker 1: that time pretty well ensconced in his role at Bank
Speaker 1: of Forest, and as I came to know the town
Speaker 1: and the townspeople, Don was one of the characters that
Speaker 1: I met. Donald made a powerful impression on said he'd
Speaker 1: never met anyone quite like him. Well, as a writer,
Speaker 1: I think what I see in Don is the absolute
Speaker 1: lack of nuance. Don experiences things at face value, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't appear to attempt to assign motives or to
Speaker 1: judge the depth of one's relationship. He just accepts things
Speaker 1: at face value. Both with his contributions to it and
Speaker 1: what he receives from others. And that is remarkable quality
Speaker 1: because I think all of us go through life, even
Speaker 1: with exchanges as benign as an encounter with a store clerk.
Speaker 1: We all go, you know, and we think about am
Speaker 1: I being treated well? Am I not being treated well?
Speaker 1: Are they talking down to me? That didn't experience the
Speaker 1: world in that way? Said was just the starting point.
Speaker 1: In Forest, we met a community full of people who
Speaker 1: considered Donald a friend. Like Celeste Slay, you can't help
Speaker 1: but like him, love him. He grew up here, he
Speaker 1: went to school here. I mean, everybody loved him because
Speaker 1: he was special, because he was different. My wife was
Speaker 1: in the hospital twice, two three times. One nurse was
Speaker 1: from Sebastopol, Mississippi, about twenty miles from Forest. I mentioned on,
Speaker 1: oh we know, we loved on. Another nurse was from Lake,
Speaker 1: miss All we loved on. He's a most famous personage.
Speaker 1: And he said, I've known him all my life and
Speaker 1: we're so proud to have him. That is Reverend Brister Ware,
Speaker 1: who has known Donald since they were in college together.
Speaker 1: Many of the people we met in Forest have known
Speaker 1: Donald for decades. Here is c. Leslie again, I don't
Speaker 1: remember not knowing Don. He's always been a member of
Speaker 1: the Force Presbyterian Church, and so was I. I remember
Speaker 1: when I was little, he always gave the Sunday school report,
Speaker 1: and he would tell how many people came to Sunday
Speaker 1: school and how many people were in church, and he
Speaker 1: would tell how much offering was given it during the
Speaker 1: Sunday school hour. So I remember that as a child,
Speaker 1: he was just a permanent picture, you know, he was
Speaker 1: just always around. We never thought he was unusual. I
Speaker 1: mean we we knew it was a little different for
Speaker 1: a man with autism. Life in a small community in
Speaker 1: Mississippi had a lot of advantages. It was predictable, it
Speaker 1: was tranquil, it was safe. Anyone living there could be
Speaker 1: confident that one day would be very much like the next.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew everyone else. After graduating high school in ninety three,
Speaker 1: Donald packed his bags for East Central Community College. The
Speaker 1: school was about forty minutes from Forrest, and Don would
Speaker 1: not be the only new student from Forest going there. However,
Speaker 1: remember John Rushing, the teenage football star who looked after
Speaker 1: Don in high school. We met him in the last episode. Well,
Speaker 1: he was headed to East Central and a football scholarship
Speaker 1: hero in his trying to protect him and the most
Speaker 1: tripping usually so he called me and was going off Google,
Speaker 1: which you already knew, and yes we would I like
Speaker 1: to ride up there with the year We glad to.
Speaker 1: So he took us up there. At some point you
Speaker 1: are specific to say I want you to do this.
Speaker 1: He should I know he will look out for Dawn.
Speaker 1: I ward glad to do it. Don you followed me
Speaker 1: around if were We went on camp which hours that
Speaker 1: were fine with me, you know me. But Donald got
Speaker 1: along so well at East Central that, in fact, he
Speaker 1: never needed John's help. Donald really threw himself into the
Speaker 1: college experience. He joined a dozen clubs. He found a
Speaker 1: whole new community there. Once again, Donald's grades were mediocre
Speaker 1: and it took him three years to graduate instead of
Speaker 1: the two years it usually takes to finish junior college.
Speaker 1: But he thive socially. In fact, we found an old
Speaker 1: news clipping from that shows donalds with a handful of
Speaker 1: other students the headline class favorites. A few months after
Speaker 1: he got his associate's degree in liberal Arts at the Central,
Speaker 1: Donald enrolled at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Donald, as usual,
Speaker 1: moved along at Millsaps College at his own pace. It
Speaker 1: took him three years to graduate instead of two, but
Speaker 1: he got his diploma, and he went back to Forest,
Speaker 1: moved back into his parents house, and took up residence
Speaker 1: in the same bedroom he grew up in. When we returned,
Speaker 1: Donald enters the workforce. It's not totally clear what role
Speaker 1: Donald's family connections might have played in his admissions to
Speaker 1: Millsap's College, since his family was so well connected there.
Speaker 1: It is clear, however, that his name had everything to
Speaker 1: do with his getting and keeping a job after he graduated.
Speaker 1: Donald's family they had plenty of money. He didn't need
Speaker 1: to work, but he took a job at the bank
Speaker 1: in nine. That job was part of the life that
Speaker 1: Marion Beeman were determined Donald be able to live. He
Speaker 1: just brightens her day. I mean he comes to the
Speaker 1: bank every day at two o'clock, you know, makes his round.
Speaker 1: He has a special name for everybody, minus Celeste, your
Speaker 1: celest He's always called me that Hey Shelby, Welby, Hey,
Speaker 1: not the cat Hey, rc hey kh Hey all right,
Speaker 1: Hey big Dabby, all right, good to see you too, Hey,
Speaker 1: Tricky Nick all right, Hey, Jan with a plan. Alright,
Speaker 1: I got somebody famine me this time. He's good at
Speaker 1: telling jokes, you know, he makes a little funny remarks.
Speaker 1: You say, Hey, selest, I don't care what Denise says
Speaker 1: about you. You know, I like you anyway. Hey, Denise Darling,
Speaker 1: are you all right? You're all right, Denisia, I don't
Speaker 1: care what Jan said about you. Yeah, it had to
Speaker 1: be good. This, which Donald's family owned, was part of
Speaker 1: the fabric of the community. In nineteen twenty seven, the
Speaker 1: greatest natural disaster yet to hit the United States happened
Speaker 1: in the Great Flood of seven, and within six months
Speaker 1: one fourth of all the land in Mississippi was sold
Speaker 1: for taxes, and so nineteen seven, the stock market crash
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, the beginning of the dust Bowl
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty, all of these economic forces came about.
Speaker 1: The bank survived all of that and was an anchor
Speaker 1: in the community. I think the combination of the bank
Speaker 1: of the respect that his family had earned went a
Speaker 1: long way toward the community realizing that here's this family
Speaker 1: with a great deal of stature in the community who
Speaker 1: have a son that's causing them a great deal of struggle,
Speaker 1: and you don't keep secrets in small towns. There was
Speaker 1: general knowledge that they had gone to Baltimore and had
Speaker 1: sought extraordinary help for him, and in the initial stages
Speaker 1: it didn't appear to be going very well, and they
Speaker 1: were having to make hard decisions, and I think the
Speaker 1: community respected that. I actually moved here in December of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, hired by Bill mccravy, who would have
Speaker 1: been Don's uncle, that would be Don's mother's brother, and
Speaker 1: actually hired to come in as chief executive officer at
Speaker 1: the time just you know, everybody falls in love with
Speaker 1: Don almost immediately. He's just such a genuine guy. And
Speaker 1: you know, the longer we were together, the more we
Speaker 1: understood each other and relate, And you know, he was
Speaker 1: always DT and I was always g W. You know,
Speaker 1: that was basically it. That's Gene Walker. He was hired
Speaker 1: to run the Bank of Forest and at that time
Speaker 1: Don was happing out in bookkeeping, doing statements and collecting
Speaker 1: the mail and those type things. But that was my
Speaker 1: first association with Don. Donald's uncle, who of course was
Speaker 1: one of the bank's owners, had a special request for
Speaker 1: Gene early on. He kind of explained Don's situation, and
Speaker 1: he made the statement to me, Jean, I always will
Speaker 1: appreciate you if you'll have a place for Don, and
Speaker 1: you know always did. And the customers accepted him, the
Speaker 1: community obviously accepted him, and just um he's I have
Speaker 1: always considered him an asset to the bank. So what
Speaker 1: that granted to Donald was a job he could never
Speaker 1: be fired from, a job for life. One of Donald's
Speaker 1: first jobs was as a teller, and when people came
Speaker 1: into the bank, he'd greet them by their account number.
Speaker 1: He'd say, Hi, three two one, your balance is four
Speaker 1: d and seventy six dollars. So that job didn't really
Speaker 1: turn out that well, but the gift was that Donald
Speaker 1: was allowed to make mistakes until he found the job
Speaker 1: that was the right fit. And that goes a long
Speaker 1: way to really accommodating the challenges that a person's disability
Speaker 1: might present in the workplace. And being accommodated in the
Speaker 1: workplace is still really rare for people on the spectrum,
Speaker 1: but Donald shows us how good it can be for
Speaker 1: everybody when the effort is made. He did his job
Speaker 1: at the bank, he found a whole new community there.
Speaker 1: They gave him friendship, and he gave it back. We
Speaker 1: talked with a lot of people who were in school
Speaker 1: with Donald back in the nineteen thirties and forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: all the way through to college, and the thing that
Speaker 1: everybody told us when we would ask stories about Donald,
Speaker 1: they would always say, you know, he's kind of a genius.
Speaker 1: And that was the idea that really stuck to Donald.
Speaker 1: I think the mistake people mike when they first encounter
Speaker 1: Don is that there's some impairment of his intelligence. That's
Speaker 1: absolutely not the case. But in conversation, he's going to
Speaker 1: come at almost everything from the side. He doesn't discuss feelings,
Speaker 1: not gonna be a lot of eye contact. You get
Speaker 1: short snippets of very direct, sometimes brutally honest answers. But
Speaker 1: it's just how he processes information. We saw this happening
Speaker 1: in a conversation with Donald's one afternoon when Karen asked
Speaker 1: him about his father's death. Do you remember remember the
Speaker 1: day that your dad was in the car accident? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: that was in How was your m She was all right,
Speaker 1: she accepted that tragedy. Do you remember, Don, what your
Speaker 1: dad was like? Yeah, I's right, I remember, I totally was.
Speaker 1: She had white hair, was about five eight. What about
Speaker 1: your mom? She was two anchies shorter, two or three
Speaker 1: inches shorter. Her hair turn great too, just like Key.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me anything else about her? No. One
Speaker 1: thing we always wondered about was far Ast being this
Speaker 1: really amazing exemplar of acceptance and tolerance during Donald's youth.
Speaker 1: Yet at the same time, in race terms, it practiced
Speaker 1: Jim Crow segregation. Sid told us a story about that,
Speaker 1: and I guess one story that best illustrates how ason
Speaker 1: civil rights transpired here. Probably the most famous African American
Speaker 1: citizen of Forest was a blues singer named Alfred Big
Speaker 1: Boy Crudup. Just for the record, Big Boy cred Up
Speaker 1: recorded under a few different names. His given name was
Speaker 1: actually Arthur. There's a marker at that intersection now that
Speaker 1: outlines his life. But also very near that marker, Forest
Speaker 1: had a really nice city pool, and travelers would invariably
Speaker 1: north southeast west they would see that beautiful pool. Probably
Speaker 1: the most pronounced demonstration of civil rights strife was the
Speaker 1: decision that the city made when Supreme Court decisions began
Speaker 1: to steer the use of public accommodations to open use
Speaker 1: and fairness to both races. Far Us did what a
Speaker 1: number of towns in Mississippi did. They simply got to
Speaker 1: back oh and filled in the pool. And so you
Speaker 1: went from having this nice pool that they would rather
Speaker 1: cover up and not have access to than to integrate
Speaker 1: the use of the poop. How do we reconcile again,
Speaker 1: going back to Jim earlier, I reconcile, you know, lovely
Speaker 1: women that we've interviewed, seeing we were a small spe
Speaker 1: of town. We're just nice to each other. That's why
Speaker 1: we were nice to Donald. While at the same time
Speaker 1: the community had separate drinking counting's what's our way to
Speaker 1: drop that? Well, as I say, I grew up, you know,
Speaker 1: County Northeast, in Cheby County, which had some real racial atrocities.
Speaker 1: But I am of an age that I remember separate
Speaker 1: drinking fountains, separate waiting rooms in the doctor's offices. I
Speaker 1: remember every my twin sister and I, every white kid
Speaker 1: would be seen by the doctor. Even if you had
Speaker 1: a SnO a full and you had an African American
Speaker 1: child that was sicker, there was still that pecking order.
Speaker 1: So yeah, with a story like that, we find this
Speaker 1: seeming anomaly of acceptance and intolerance side by side in
Speaker 1: this little community back in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: And yes, that tells us that things would have been
Speaker 1: very different for Donald's growing up there. Instead of being
Speaker 1: a white boy with autism, he had been a black
Speaker 1: boy with autism. Race has been tangled up with autism
Speaker 1: for a long time, and not just in Forest, and
Speaker 1: not just in Mississippi, and not just in the South.
Speaker 1: After the break, we'll hear how differently children of color
Speaker 1: with autism retreated compared with white children with autism, disparities
Speaker 1: which continue today. A lot has changed since Donna was
Speaker 1: a child, but there's no doubt that a black kid
Speaker 1: with autism growing up when Donald was young would have
Speaker 1: had nothing like his advantages, especially when it came to
Speaker 1: getting diagnosed in the first place. And let's be very
Speaker 1: clear about this, it's not just the South. For black children,
Speaker 1: getting diagnosed with autism has always been a challenge. When
Speaker 1: Karen and I started looking at old documentaries about autism
Speaker 1: from the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, we noticed that
Speaker 1: almost all of the kids in these movies were white.
Speaker 1: And that's partly because for a long time psychiatry had
Speaker 1: this idea that autistic children were only born to parents
Speaker 1: who were highly educated, and that belief was seen to
Speaker 1: rule out the possibility of an autism diagnosis for black
Speaker 1: children because their parents didn't have access to higher education.
Speaker 1: Total logical fallacy, but it ruled. I think something to
Speaker 1: be considered about Donald Triplett is that he's in a
Speaker 1: homogeneous space for him, not meaning that black people don't
Speaker 1: exist in the same town, but meaning that his social
Speaker 1: circle was predominantly and he came from a family of
Speaker 1: a certain class, which means that the family had means
Speaker 1: an access and power. That's Stephanie parks. She studies anthropology
Speaker 1: and teaches it to undergraduates. We can never talk about
Speaker 1: race without class, and for Donald Triplett, that meant that
Speaker 1: his parents were able to shape a group of people
Speaker 1: by saying, look at our very wealthy, powerful family, who
Speaker 1: is doing whiteness extremely well, and we accept this child
Speaker 1: as he's perfectly beautifully made. We were surprised to learn
Speaker 1: that she talks about Donald in her lectures using the
Speaker 1: stories we've written about him. Stephanie, we want to note
Speaker 1: is African American. Now, a lot of this is personal
Speaker 1: for Stephanie, and the story she tells her personal experience
Speaker 1: is how hard it was to get her concerns about
Speaker 1: her son listened to. So we always have to be
Speaker 1: careful about generalizing from any one person's experience. But what
Speaker 1: Stephanie was encountering fit a pattern that held for decades,
Speaker 1: where it was far more difficult for black and Latino
Speaker 1: children in the US to get a diagnosis of autism
Speaker 1: than it was for white children. Very recently, as in
Speaker 1: within the last year, that gap closed dramatically, and eventually
Speaker 1: Stephanie's son, del did get a diagnosis when he was three,
Speaker 1: but she kept going with her work trying to understand
Speaker 1: what's been driving this disparity. My academic work stems directly
Speaker 1: from my own experience being a mother of a child
Speaker 1: with autism. I used to sit in our clinic during
Speaker 1: my son's therapies and wonder why we were one of
Speaker 1: the only black families there, and that started a question
Speaker 1: that necessitated answers for me, and that meant taking my
Speaker 1: degree all the way to u c l A To
Speaker 1: get a PhD to answer it. I have always been
Speaker 1: interested in language and how we think about the world,
Speaker 1: but once my child was diagnosed. I started to understand
Speaker 1: that there were things happening in the clinic that seemed
Speaker 1: outside of our cultural norms as Black Americans, and that
Speaker 1: kind of set me on my path to think about
Speaker 1: how do clinics and hospitals function in a way that
Speaker 1: creates health care disparities. Is that about Black Americans cultural
Speaker 1: ideas about medicine, or is that about the way in
Speaker 1: which biomedical clinics themselves work. There's a little bit of
Speaker 1: push and pull. I would say that a lot of
Speaker 1: the healthcare inequity is based on race and racism within biomedicine.
Speaker 1: And when Black American families have experienced this since the
Speaker 1: beginning of our time here on this continent, it also
Speaker 1: means that we have our own ideologies that exist as
Speaker 1: well about our safety and our well being in those spaces.
Speaker 1: And I knew entering into medical space that those would
Speaker 1: be very, very important. But when I began on my research,
Speaker 1: I was thoroughly shocked by how incredibly insidious racism is
Speaker 1: in these situations. I asked Stephanie about some of the
Speaker 1: situations she's referring to, and she said that in many instances,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily overt what are some of the examples
Speaker 1: of things that you saw. I was watching a clinic
Speaker 1: in a major metropolitan area, and I think that's important
Speaker 1: because we often stereotype these areas as being more diverse.
Speaker 1: But in this particular observation, I watched several families go
Speaker 1: through an autism diagnostic process and one of the black
Speaker 1: parents was asked about disciplinary practices. She explained to the
Speaker 1: clinician how her child was doing things that had scared her.
Speaker 1: He would get a weapon so he would understand not
Speaker 1: to do them again, And the clinicians became very concerned
Speaker 1: and decided that this parents response was concerning and they
Speaker 1: wanted to call Child protect of Services. But the next appointment,
Speaker 1: we had a white family come in and the child
Speaker 1: expressed having been hit by their parents in response to
Speaker 1: being naughty. In the situation of the white family, the
Speaker 1: clinicians framed her as being emotionally unavailable and needed help
Speaker 1: with resources such as respite care. You know, somebody to
Speaker 1: come in and give her a break and take care
Speaker 1: of the child while mom caught a break and refreshed
Speaker 1: herself the child, the white child using the words panking,
Speaker 1: the black mother using the word whoopen. There are two
Speaker 1: similar words, but ideologies about race, how we understand how
Speaker 1: people talk right makes a difference. And white clinicians looking
Speaker 1: at a black mother using the word whoopen necessitates a
Speaker 1: call to child protective services, but a child white child
Speaker 1: expressing having been spanked does not. And that's a problem. Literally,
Speaker 1: back to back, back to back APPOINTMENTSIA, So that was
Speaker 1: one appoint It got to a point where Stephanie was
Speaker 1: seeing a therapist right after these sessions just so she
Speaker 1: could leave her fear and frustration in a safe place,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't take that home and then be an
Speaker 1: effective parent. I saw too much and it was really
Speaker 1: it scared me to my core when I saw it.
Speaker 1: Stephanie shared a particularly powerful story about an experience she
Speaker 1: had with her son del my son was modeling an
Speaker 1: autism diagnostic process for a group of graduate students that
Speaker 1: I happened to be a part of, and the clinician
Speaker 1: happened to ask him what he liked, and my son
Speaker 1: responded by saying, I like big butts and I cannot lie,
Speaker 1: which is if you're unfamiliar or a popular rap lyric
Speaker 1: that every eleven year old in the country probably knows
Speaker 1: and laughs at well, the clinician laughed, and they went
Speaker 1: on into the room. And once they got into the room,
Speaker 1: the clinician began reading a story. And if you're familiar
Speaker 1: with this particular test, there's a book that they bring
Speaker 1: out that has no words. The idea is that the
Speaker 1: clinician and the child being assessed are supposed to go
Speaker 1: through the pages and create a story together. And in
Speaker 1: the book, the sun is setting, and the clinician says
Speaker 1: the sun is setting, and my son sings, yes, it's
Speaker 1: going down for real, which is another popular lyric, especially
Speaker 1: at that point in time. But the clinician finally does
Speaker 1: something that's quite interesting. He code switches into black language
Speaker 1: and says, oh, I'm the best hip hop dancer ever
Speaker 1: dropped the mic and Dell just looks at him like
Speaker 1: he's a little funny. I know. His intention was to
Speaker 1: try and build a bridge between him and Dell in
Speaker 1: any way possible, to be able to gain access, to
Speaker 1: make del comfortable and to have a conversation. Right. And
Speaker 1: when we get to scoring the actual test, the clinician
Speaker 1: references the fact that Dell has used these rap lyrics
Speaker 1: and he calls them inappropriate, disruptive, and ecolec and ecolelic
Speaker 1: being a feature of autism that some people have where
Speaker 1: they echo back certain things, and it's true that happens.
Speaker 1: But if the clinician new Black culture better, he would
Speaker 1: have identified this as kind of one of our linguistic
Speaker 1: ways of being. So for us, what del was doing
Speaker 1: looked wonderful, like he was being culturally appropriate, which is
Speaker 1: what we want for him. But for the clinician, what
Speaker 1: it translated to was a different autism score. Not problematic
Speaker 1: for Dell in particular given the way autism affects him,
Speaker 1: but for Black kids in particular, who bear the brunt
Speaker 1: of this massive autism inequity that we're facing, that kind
Speaker 1: of scoring process leads to something that could turn out
Speaker 1: to look like, oh, he has a d h D
Speaker 1: or another disorder that's not autism. Clinical diagnosis is important
Speaker 1: not only in understanding how to approach the treatment and
Speaker 1: service as a child will receive, but without it, a
Speaker 1: child with autism will not have access to the many
Speaker 1: resources that are critical for them to be successful in
Speaker 1: the world. When kids are miss or underdiagnosed, and black
Speaker 1: kids significantly more misdiagnosed, meaning a label that precludes them
Speaker 1: from getting access to services medical or educational. Black children
Speaker 1: make up I believe of our special education students, we
Speaker 1: don't make up of the population. So what I'm telling
Speaker 1: you we are missing underdiagnosed. We are also overdiagnosed with
Speaker 1: things like learning disability and then placed into special education
Speaker 1: when instead maybe it's not learning disability, maybe it is autism,
Speaker 1: and maybe they need different supports to help them succeed
Speaker 1: in these spaces. Right, a correct diagnosis has the potential
Speaker 1: to completely change the outcome of a person's life. But
Speaker 1: for a correct diagnosis, the trajectory of a child changes
Speaker 1: immediately once you're placed in a classroom with your typically
Speaker 1: developing peers, in a community of support, surrounded by the
Speaker 1: correct services. And what you found is that the experience
Speaker 1: that black families have in a clinical setting isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: dependent on socioeconomic factors either. Okay, So in my particular study,
Speaker 1: I'm an anthropologist, and I study quite small, and so
Speaker 1: my master's degree work is a collection about twenty families.
Speaker 1: They all have a bachelor's degree or above. They are
Speaker 1: all two parent households with the exception of one. They
Speaker 1: are many military families. They basically meet all of the
Speaker 1: things that Black people have been told that if you
Speaker 1: do these things, you will have access to the American
Speaker 1: pie and the American dream will be yours to write.
Speaker 1: They've done everything they can to get there, their kids
Speaker 1: were still misdiagnosed, and one of the things that I
Speaker 1: aimed to challenge was this idea of just class. And
Speaker 1: so for my work, what I have found is that
Speaker 1: family's biggest identifier for if they're going to have trouble
Speaker 1: in a clinic, if they're going to fall into inequity,
Speaker 1: is if they show up in their black If you
Speaker 1: are a black person and you walk into a hospital,
Speaker 1: that's it. It doesn't matter how beautifully you think you
Speaker 1: speak English, or what degree you have, or how much
Speaker 1: money you have, how nice your home is, nothing matters.
Speaker 1: At this point, Stephanie says, what they're encountering systemic racism.
Speaker 1: They encounter racism pure and simple. And again this we
Speaker 1: have to start thinking about racism quite differently. I know
Speaker 1: that we often think about racism in really big ways,
Speaker 1: like we think about it in terms of like you
Speaker 1: know again, like the KKK or these big stereotypes. But
Speaker 1: the truth is that racism is incredibly powerful because it
Speaker 1: exists in these tiny, tiny space, and these families are
Speaker 1: encountering this, and while a significant number of the clinicians
Speaker 1: doing the assessments and diagnoses are white, Stephanie feels there's
Speaker 1: more to it. Stephanie says, the inherent biases that come
Speaker 1: with the experiences she's describing aren't always so obvious in
Speaker 1: the way that many people might think about racist behavior.
Speaker 1: I would also say that I have never walked into
Speaker 1: a clinic or watched a family get treatment, or made
Speaker 1: an observation where I saw a clinician do anything other
Speaker 1: than the moral appropriate what they believe to be the
Speaker 1: moral appropriate thing. But we do have to work incredibly
Speaker 1: hard about pulling apart race in these spaces, and that's
Speaker 1: going to take a lot of work and a lot
Speaker 1: of reflectivity on part of the clinician. You know, of course,
Speaker 1: none of this relates to the life that Donald lived,
Speaker 1: and that's that's sort of the point of telling this story.
Speaker 1: And we have found when we speak with people who
Speaker 1: know a lot about autism, a lot about its history,
Speaker 1: about diagnoses, about the science behind it, that the reality
Speaker 1: that Stephanie's talking about it still comes as a surprise
Speaker 1: to them. On the next episode of Autism's First Child,
Speaker 1: Donald Triplett travels the world. If you're enjoying Autism's First Child,
Speaker 1: help us spread the word with the rating on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Autism's First Child.
Speaker 1: It's a production of School of Humans and I Heart
Speaker 1: Podcasts based on our book and our documentary film. In
Speaker 1: a different key, I'm John don Vent, I'm Karen Zucker.
Speaker 1: The podcast is produced by Alexander Ritchie, written by Alex French,
Speaker 1: senior staff writer at I Heeart Originals. Story editor is
Speaker 1: Matt Riddle. Editing an Assembly by Kareem ben Yago. Original
Speaker 1: score composed and mixed by Alice McCoy, Scoring, mixing and
Speaker 1: mastering by Ryan Peoples. Special thanks to Sid Salter, cir
Speaker 1: Less Slay, Reverend Rister Ware, Gene Walker, Stephanie Parks and
Speaker 1: all the people of Forest, and to Ray Connley, Ernie Injurdout,
Speaker 1: and Will Pearson. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 1: Elsie Crowley, and Jason English. School of Humans