Brown and Autistic: A frightening encounter with the police.

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Now here's the part from the article I don't understand:

"One, I was not fearful. I hadn’t done anything to invite this police response. Two, I’m clean-cut! Can’t they tell I’m from the military base? Three: I can clear up whatever confusion is happening here. I’ll tell them the truth. What I did not know is that ALL of these reasoning’s and reactions could get me killed."

Why don't I understand? Because I'm autistic and don't have the insight to comprehend these kind of social skills, situations, and perceptions.

So reading that part of the article is scary.

Great article and discussion, Buckholtz! Thanks for writing it and starting this conversation.

Sometimes I get a little depressed by the racist and sexist rants on WP, and it's really good to have such a direct recounting of what it has been like being you. Anyone reading your article with a open mind will get some sense of what your reality was like when those events occurred and how those experiences contributed to your understanding of what being brown and autistic means.

I think maybe many autistic people relieve things more intensely than many neurotypical people when they remember experiences like that. This might be part of the idea of perseveration as an autistic trait. Reading your bad classroom experience reminded me of some bad experiences I had in 1st grade, and it was like being there all over again. So unfair!

It scary to think what might have come next if the worker in the store hadn't remembered things more clearly than the manager. I'm glad she was there!

I particularly like your last paragraph. It may seem impossible to reach people who are busy reinforcing their beliefs in what they have been taught, but there are always people who question the dogmas they were raised with and who may be open to a journey from the things they were taught about "them" to seeing other people as they are. Your expression of these ideas may help let reality break through.

Forgive me if I'm wrong in assuming you'd like an explanation...

If Mike had actually violated the law, it would have made sense for him to expect the police to at least question or detain him, which would likely be naturally frightening. The old cliché, “I have nothing to fear because I have done nothing wrong" is a rational (though not always realistic!) conclusion to draw, assuming that those in charge will treat innocent people justly and respectfully.

Since he's "clean-cut" and in the military, he doesn't fit the stereotype of a grungy, undisciplined thug who may be treated suspiciously. For many reasons, some of them logical and some of them bigoted, cruel, and/or just plain foolish and naive, people are often judged on their appearance. In general, police don't jump to conclusions about someone who's well-groomed and merely walking down the street--in the eyes of some, they don't look desperate or dangerous enough to do harm (even though they're every bit as capable of it).

Telling the truth about what you've done is considered decent behavior and those of authority may treat you better if you don't lie. (A perfect, sad example, and timely example is the Olympic swimmers who trashed a bathroom in Rio and then LIED about it, saying that they were actually victims of a crime instead of being vandals. Their lies and the resulting confusion is considered AT LEAST as bad as the material damage they did, and IMO, rightly so.) Since Mike hadn’t committed any crime whatsoever, they and the store owner might have accepted the fact that they'd made a mistake and let him go freely on his way instead of treating him so badly. They might have even apologized for the misunderstanding and their flat-out wrong identification, but I bet they didn't.

Unfortunately, trusting the wrong people can be dangerous, especially when those people have the authority and/or the ability to do you harm, and the police have both, which makes a bad encounter with them potentially fatal—and in the minds of some, even justifiable, especially if your skin is brown! Of course, in a case like this, there wasn't anything else that Mike could have done to protect himself; indeed, that is scary.

Sonic, you're a really smart guy, but I think you are really bad at discerning people's intentions. Sure, you could be right, but what is the likelihood that a brown person would like to write about his experiences being brown and autistic, what with the public discussion on race going on in the US? Fairly high, I'd say.

If you want to draw people's attention to the way political parties are using value questions to distract from economic policy and things that have real impact on people's lives, start a thread about that. It's an interesting question, and it's something both the left and the right do. That said, the question of who has the right to go into which bathroom has minimal impact on people's lives, but the way a sizeable portion of the US population fears the police has a huge impact. Racism hurts everyone, both the people on the top and at the bottom of the pile, and this is a wound that's been festering for a long time. I'd say the timing of the discussion has a lot to do with the fact that people now have smartphones, and can document what they experience.

And, yes, one of the reasons people take your post as racism is that you are treating the OP like a child who doesn't know his own mind - much like black people have been treated for centuries. You are assuming a lot based on very little evidence.

Buckholtz, sorry if you don't want me fighting your battles for you - I just figured that people get exhausted repeating the same thing over and over again.

Its about time someone said it, especially considering the fact that cops are bothering black WOMEN now ...

This isn't a new thing. What's new is that someone is capturing it on video so that others are seeing it.

Thank you so much for posting this, this is the frontpage article I've been waiting to see. It's always been apparent to me that the autistic community (which is statistically mostly white and male) has a bad habit of turning a blind eye to the experiences of autistic women and minorities.

An encounter with police can be very dangerous for an autistic person (and especially for a non-white), because the person may have bizarre body language cues, which police will read as "aggression" or "guilt." Police have killed plenty of innocent autistic people. This is absolutely an autism issue.

So true! I am white and female, so not among the demographic that cops seem the most concerned about being "troublemakers"--but I am almost always by myself when I am out of my house and I tend to go out at night, especially in the summertime, because it's cooler then and it is much easier on my sensory issues (there are less people, less light, less traffic noise and less noise in general) and because of this I have been stopped by police on numerous occasions and every single time I have been terrified because I know I'm going to struggle looking them in the eye and I know that is something they are trained to be suspicious of, and I know that my fear and nervousness is going to show which is also going to make them suspicious of me, and because I have known far too many instances in my life of people with authority over me abusing that authority so I already don't trust authority figures. I have absolutely no criminal record (never even so much as a parking ticket) so whenever they ask for my name and information and look me up and see I have no record they let me go, but the time I have to stand there waiting for them to realise I am not a "troublemaker" feels endless. A couple of times I have mentioned that I am autistic and that is why I go out at night and why I am by myself most of the time--but I wonder if that is the right idea, to try to explain, or if I should just keep that to myself because once it seemed to make the cop understand and the other time it made the cop look at me like I was out of my mind and like he had no idea what I was talking about.

The last time it happened I was out on my bike quite late at night and I (very unluckily) came across a gathering of provincial police cars who immediately swooped in on me with lights blazing. I'm not sure why they were there on the edge of town (looking for someone on the run would be my guess, because usually you don't encounter provincial police within the city limits of a decent sized city like I live in because we have our own city police) and I didn't ask, but that was the most terrifying of all my police encounters to date. My heart was pounding the entire time and I was so nervous my eyes wouldn't stop watering (which I know looked really bad). They left me alone too once they looked up my name and I explained that I was out exercising at night by myself specifically because I don't like being observed when I work out but I also like to work out outdoors so doing it at night since I am a night owl anyway makes the most sense to me, plus I had my bike light (it's the law if you ride at night) and they could tell by my attire and the fact that all I had on me were my house keys and a water bottle and my iPod that I was obviously exercising. Still, being surrounded by cop cars with all their lights flashing and a dozen or so police officers was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me. I have never felt more powerless and alone than I did at that time.

Wow sounds like quite a stressful experience...I mean it is a given those of us on the spectrum can come off as being a little 'off' which can bring negative judgements/assumptions from others and doesn't help with dealing with police. But with how the police racially profile people I can imagine it's even worse for people of minority ethnicity. I myself am part Native American, but I look more white so I myself have never faced any racism for that, but I have certainly observed and noticed it towards others with more apparent native features. I mean the thought, 'if I didn't look white they'd target me as well.' can't come from nowhere. Anyways I do think it is an important issue you bring up, but not entirely suprised people are ready to try and shut it out and criticize you for posting this...seems yet another issue that people much of the time find things easier to brush under the rug than really think about and consider.

Hi KimD,

Thanks for your explanation. What I get out of it is basically in your last paragraph, that it can be a mistake to be too trusting of people simply because they're authority figures (whom you've been trained since childhood to trust).

A while back I remember seeing a video where these cops targeted a Hispanic couple, I think they started being aggresive with the guy and it freaked out the woman so she was screaming for them to stop and then at one point she ended up on the ground and one of the police kicked her...she was pregnant.

Can't remember the full context but either way I don't see the cops having done that to a white yuppie couple for instance even if they had committed some petty crime.

Statistics show that white people get killed the most by cops in the US, it's just not newsworthy and doesn't fit the race baiting narrative. I could go into more detail and dig up cases where white people have been murdered or attacked because they are white to counter the person who said there's no such thing as racism towards white people. People have been coerced by the media and Co to be obsessed with labels.

I hope they sued the $#!+ out of those cops

Thank you for sharing your story. I hope you're feeling better. I wish that racism would just disappear once and for all.

Racism isnt something we are born with it is something we are taught! Society needs to change its perspectives, but when society are like a herd of sheep it hard to swing that mentality around. Discrimination happens in all areas including those on the spectrum, it isnt subject just to the color of your skin... I really hate that we are still living in an age where people view others through race or religion, we should be past that as a species... But we still act like infants!