Culturally Sanctioned Stigma as Academic Bias

An article by Tyler Cowen Autism as Academic Paradigm is the sort of wonderfully rich article that makes up for the 400 shallow repeats that flow through the feeds. Fresh new ideas, unusual ways of looking at things, and above all questioning questioning questioning what are the filters that individuals and groups look through when they look at autism?

One main theme, the first introduced, is the insidiousness of culturally sanctioned stigma, and its effect on academic orientation and language.

Thinking back on history, maybe you've wondered how it was that American colleges and universities could ever have contributed to racist discourse. But Princeton and many other institutions kept out Jews, and "academic" defenses of slavery, segregation, and eugenics were commonplace until broader social changes rendered such views unacceptable.

The sad truth is that dehumanizing ideologies are still with us in the modern university, although they take very different forms. Prime examples include the unacceptable ways we sometimes talk and think about the autism spectrum.

This sort of culturally sanctioned stigma is exactly what is going on in the current drama of Psycho Donuts. This is exactly what is going on in the finer points of employment discrimination.

As a sampling of the "unacceptable ways," Cowen cites the Harvard study I cited way back in discussion of the barbarism of pricing people's lives. And also a book called (yes, ironically) The Ethics of Autism--I had read a review of this book a ways back and found aspects the book's content so appalling I was too disgusted to even write an outraged entry here. Appalling content that, as Cowen notes, "could be refuted by a few simple conversations with autistic people."

On the bright side, universities and academics tend to be the sources of paradigm shifts and cultural change. That Cowen is an academic who is thinking critically about the issue and engaging others to do the same is excellent. Critical thinking is always the first step toward change.