autistic community battles for inclusive rhetoric ignore growing income inequality

  Community inclusion and/or equal access to realistic job opportunities shouldn't be equal access to economic failures and (criminalized) poverty.  Poverty is criminalized in many ways.  A few ways are loitering and trespassing law enforcement, blocking public sidewalks with one's worldly possessions and (enforced) bans on camping on public lands/parks that are located in or near (rich) neighborhoods where the majority of the population earns above the median income for the local jurisdiction.


  Public lands/parks in poor 

(defined as the population of the neighborhood within a larger local jurisdiction earns below the annual median income)

 neighborhoods become 'dumping grounds' for criminal commercial trash haulers (environmental racism in law enforcement) and homeless people who avoid shelters with less law enforcement unless the temperature drops below freezing.

  Equal access and community inclusion should lift all peoples', disabled or not, economic 'boats.'

Self-advocacy 'memes' of 'all have their own issues,' 'all autistics are both high and low functioning situationally' and 'neurelitism'

(latter meme circulated on web sites hosted on domains of

 markfoster.net , rockermouse.com and http://fight.neurelitism.com/)

 are flawed ways to organize 'autistic community.'   All 3 memes effectively ration existing public funds (taxes), not demand more, money to help mostly autistics ('severely disabled' autistics with 'intense needs' formerly referred to as 'low functioning') pay the costs (of independent living services) allowing individual community inclusion to perform what the ADA defines as "Major Life Activities."


  "Grading people' is, apparently, acceptable if people are 'severely disabled,' have 'intense needs' formerly called 'low functioning,' are tangibly helped by being found eligible for publicly and privately (nonprofit funded and delivered) independent living services.  

The meme of "Grading People" is by Drew Goldsmith the DeeDeeMom youtube channel owner

https://www.youtube.com/user/DeedeeMom 

and son of Morton Ann Gernsbacher a communication scientist (GernsbacherLab.org) at a college in WI.


  The discussion of 'grading people' in the autistic community was repeated here

 http://www.autreat.com/aut10presentations.html#Grading


In case the content is taken down here is a copy-paste of the description of the presentation when I accessed the link in late January 2017. 


The Ethical, Scientific, and Societal Implications of Grading Autistic People .

Amanda Baggs
Drew Morton Goldsmith
Morton Ann Gernsbacher

This workshop will critically evaluate the common tendency to grade autistic people” as low versus high functioning. One of the presenters (Goldsmith) will present the ethical history of grading people, including the use of terms popular at the turn the 20th century: low-, medium-, and high-grade normals, morons, imbeciles, and idiots. Another presenter (Gernsbacher) will review the contemporary scientific evidence, or lack thereof, for distinctions between so-called "low-functioning autistics" and "high-functioning autistics." And the third presenter will discuss the sociological basis of labeling autistic people as low- or high-functioning. Together, we hope to challenge clinicians', parents', non-autistic people's and autistic people's all-too-common tendency to grade autistic people.

Amanda Baggs is a 29-year-old autistic person who has been referred to by others as both low and high functioning (usually low) but rejects both labels.

Drew Morton Goldsmith is a 13-year-old autistic person who has also been referred to by others as both low and high functioning but rejects both labels.

Morton Ann Gernsbacher is a 54-year-old non-autistic person who rejects referring to other people as low or high functioning.



  Autistics who are 'graded' 'not severely disabled' or their needs are 'graded' 'not intense,' formerly called 'high functioning' by denials of eligibility to receive publicly and privately funded and delivered independent living services are shamed out of seeking said services by the promulgation of the 'presumed competence,' 'neurelitism' and 'grading people' memes.   

  Also contributing to the shaming out of seeking services is the 'autistic community building' meme even if the 'community' for one or more autistics is a homeless shelter or jail/prison or other institutional living setting. 

   Equal access to realistic opportunities, in communities that a person with a disability chooses to live in, should not be equal access to economic failure and (criminalized) poverty.  Equal access should lift the 'economic boats' of all people whether they live with disabilities or not.