How Truly Inclusive Can A Tent Be?

Many of us are hurting today after the Nov. 8, 2016 presidential election. We are scared and concerned. And we are looking at both a country and an entire world that is clearly expressing pain, anger and fear. Just like in the US political scene, there are so many countries around the world that have fairly recently elected new, extremely conservative governments, or have adopted separatist, divisive, exclusionary policies aimed at keeping out the “other.”

People who voted like me are in shock and afraid for what this means for the future. But at the same time that I feel exhausted and scared, I am very aware that this feeling that I have right now is likely the exact same feeling that those who voted opposite to me felt in 2008 and 2012….like the world as we know it has come to an end, and that the person elected to the office of POTUS does not and cannot represent me or the values that I hold dear.

But here I am, someone who strives to be an advocate for welcoming diversity and embracing inclusion. Someone who advocates for people to accept each other despite their differences. Someone who explains that autism is just like a different culture, and the same way that I would not mistreat someone because they were from a different religion or race, I must strive to understand, embrace, and include people with autism. Someone who strives to reach out to someone different than me, because at the very least we share the same humanity.

Last week I wrote about how my 21 year old with autism has been triggered over the last number of weeks by the bullying of the Republican candidate – how this has brought him back to lots of pain and anxiety from the bullying he endured throughout his school years. I know that many of us with children with special needs have been hard put last night and today to explain to these young people just what happened here in America. How come the bully won? How come the “good guys” didn’t win?

It’s so easy, so human, to divide people, to make things into the good guys and the bad guys. The people who are right, and the people who are wrong. Etc etc….we have all just endured months of a blistering election with just that tenor – us and them, whichever side you fall on.

But life, and people, are far more nuanced, at least a lot of the time! We don’t actually fall neatly into such well-defined categories. And this is something that I have worked long and hard to share with my son. It is much easier for him to see the world in “either-or” absolutes. I am forever speaking with him about the concept of “not but, and.”

Last week I wrote about “social-interaction difficulties” as one of the top signs of autism. Another classic symptom is cognitive rigidity. Life is black or white; there is no gray, no nuance, no place in the middle. No “and.”

So in many ways, it seems to me that our world right now, while experiencing a true crisis in the rise of the number of children that have autism, is also experiencing and expressing behavior that would be termed “autistic” by any therapist observing from afar. Rigid, divisive, black-white thinking. Afraid of change. Afraid of anything different. Afraid of the unknown.

I do feel the need today to put my actions where my mouth is. The world is divided between the folks like me who think that it is okay to disagree, that we can live together side-by-side even if we don’t see eye-to-eye. And about 50% of our world seems to agree with me on that. Then there is the other roughly 50% who say, “No, it’s either my way or the highway.” It seems that the two sides are incompatible, because while I may be willing to live with you despite our disagreements, if you are hell bent on telling me that your way is the only way, there isn’t exactly any room for compromise is there?

Ah, but that is where the parents and teachers and therapists and family members of people with autism come in. We all know what black-white rigid thinking is. We all know about someone being afraid of the new and different. We all know how hard it is for someone with autism to accept unexpected, unwanted changes. We all know how much someone with autism needs to be heard and understood, requiring us to listen in a new way. And we all know that there are ways around all of this. We all have experience in working things out.

The people that elected Trump have families and concerns and desires and values, just like me. They clearly see things differently than I do. That’s okay. We can work things out. We can listen to you, though it may require us to listen in a new way. We have to. We all have to widen our tent and make it truly inclusive. Not just for folks with disabilities. For folks who disagree with me politically as well.

Here’s a song called “Prayers.” For the hard days.