Are Black Women Allowed To Be Autistic?

My earliest memory of feeling “different” was when I was four years old. I was in preschool. The preschool offered day care and childcare services, too. My caretaker's name was Ms. Ruby. At preschool, the other three and four year olds were always really excited about playtime. My go-to activity was the see-saw. It was a yellow plastic contraption that I was already too big to really enjoy. But I tried anyway.

My other favorite activity was staying inside to help Ms. Ruby with the infants. In fact, when I think about preschool, I remember the see-saw just as vividly as I remember sitting and holding small babies, helping with throwing away diapers, and grabbing pacifiers and bottles for Ms. Ruby. I remember that the other kids often ran out of the door to get to the playground. Meanwhile, I often hung back, doing my best to be useful to Ms. Ruby who, in my young opinion, worked way too hard.

This behavior continued into elementary school. In afterschool care, I spent hours helping organize and re-organize the snack cabinets and supplies with my caretakers. When the playground manager, named Virginia, took her daily walks around the yard, I went with her. Rather than cleave to kids my age, I was drawn to the adults in the space who seemed so much more interesting to me.

By adolescence, I came to accept that I was weird, quirky, unique, and “eccentric.” My obsessions with books and “white people stuff” (especially comic books and Dungeons and Dragons), math and science, drawing, video games, and gadgets became hallmarks of my personality. I thought I was just nerdy. I understood words on the page much more than I understood speaking to actual people. I would spend hours drawing or working to develop my own language. I would take apart my mother’s appliances just to see what was inside them. I would practice rules over and over in my mind, seeking to memorize them. I was a lonely kid who never understood other kids.

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As an adult with late-diagnosed ADHD and autism, I attribute these behaviors to uneven developmental processes. As a child, I was able to hyper-focus on tedious tasks. I had an extensive vocabulary. I loved rigid rules. However, in adulthood, I have navigated neurological differences including sensory issues and challenges with executive function. While I know to associate these experiences with AuDHD now, I lived for 40 years confused, agitated, overwhelmed, hyper-stimulated, and isolated.

Between November 2025 and May 2026, I began a series of tests to identify how my brain functions. I was inclined to get a professional analysis of my neurological functions after my youngest child was diagnosed with ADHD. As the doctors rattled off all of the traits he had that aligned with the condition, my face became hot because I shared nearly all the same characteristics. It was a strange sensation that left me confused but it also offered immense clarity and started me on my own journey toward diagnosis.

While this may seem like a linear, relatively unchallenging process, it was precisely the opposite.

In my teens and twenties, I struggled to make and keep friends. I first noticed that I struggled with understanding social cues at school and at church. People would call me angry and aggressive when I was sitting completely quietly. Every facial expression or utterance I made was hyper-analyzed and interrogated in ways that left me feeling unsafe, situationally aware, and paranoid that I was always going to be the problem. I was constantly worried that people didn’t like me. Whenever I was faced with interacting with other people, I was left feeling drained. Thinking back on it, I credit my 6’4” frame, unambiguously Black skin and features, and high intellect with these attributions. It was the intersections of being a big Black girl with a command over language and the experience of never knowing the right “time and place” to be myself that left me worried that I would never really feel safe anywhere.

As early as 2020, I had an inkling that I may be on the autism spectrum but nearly no one would take me seriously. Because I hold a PhD and have many accolades to my name, folks assumed I couldn’t have autism. This is a common misconception as folks fail to understand that autism is a neurological occurrence. And, it often concurs with high intellect.

To satiate my hunger to understand myself, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole after discovering a Black woman who was navigating a late-life autism diagnosis. She, like me, noticed it in her children before she noticed it in herself. That fact stuck with me because I couldn’t shake the idea that, maybe, when you are a Black woman, you are not actually allowed to be autistic. Folks will assign every emotion and intention to our bodies before they accept that, maybe, our brains simply function differently.

As a Black woman, and even as a Black girl, I was expected to be better, smarter, more capable, and the like. I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes. If I did, I was swiftly and fervently punished. While other children and adults around me slacked off, I always felt as though I was held to a higher, more stringent standard. I couldn’t just get good grades. I had to bring home a 4.0 or higher. I couldn’t just play basketball, I had to win championships. Worse yet, if I asked a question, I was disruptive. If I disagreed, I was angry. If I pushed back, I was aggressive.

I was so confounded by these assumptions about my mental and emotional state growing up that I would go home, sit in my mirror and say, “are you angry?” while practicing facial expressions that made me look more cheerful.

Sometimes, I would vow to simply be silent in front of others to prevent misunderstandings but that didn’t work either. The body terror of never being heard or believed shaped every facet of my childhood and early adult life. I developed stomach troubles, debilitating anxiety, social dysphoria, and self-policing strategies that essentially became my identity.

I really didn’t know who I was because I was working so hard to be exactly who everyone else decided I should be.

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Now, I am grieving. I am grieving all the days and nights I spent crying and punishing myself for not understanding how to be human in this world. A world that tells Black girls and women that our intellect, voices, and bodies belong to everyone else. I am mourning for the younger versions of me who yearned to be in community with others but feared being repeatedly cast out, demonized, bullied, or excluded.

I don’t have any regrets about how I have navigated my life. At this time, I am precisely who I want to be: a deeply grounded, introspective, empathetic, loving, kind, and generous person who subscribes to no rules about my gender or abilities. I am a powerful connector who sees the best in people even when it sometimes works to my own detriment. I am a bleeding heart socialist and organizer who fundamentally believes in the inherent worth of all Black people. I love myself more than I have ever loved myself before.

And, even in that revelation and reintegration with myself, I am tender. I am worn. I am (still) sometimes afraid that I will never get to be my true self. I remain unsure that I even know who I am fully because being a Black woman who is autistic feels like a constant performance in a roleplay scenario where no one has given me the script. I often forget my lines even after I have rehearsed them. I fail to remember my cues. I don’t know where my mark is or which light I should be standing under. The director never gives me notes or feedback. And, the stage up here feels dark.

I am a Black queer, trans, disabled autistic woman. And, while I know who I am, I am still finding out who I am meant to be. Everyday, I struggle to find myself, to locate those parts that feel lost and submerged. I keep getting closer. So, I have to just keep going.