Neurodivergence And Corporate Kool-Aid

A while ago I took part in an online panel as part of Neurodiversity Celebration week. It was a much better experience than I had expected, and I have been pleased to see the organisers take feedback about lack of Black speakers seriously. I am taking part in a similar event towards the end of this month.

Yesterday, I took part in an in-person panel in London as part of an event about ‘Neurodiversity at work’. Whether I’ll do something similar again is not yet clear… let me tell you about it.

I was contacted with plenty of time before the event, to take part in a panel on intersectionality (apparently the only subject conference organisers want me to talk about when it comes to Neurodiversity… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from this). When I asked if there were Black speakers on the panel, I was told that one Black speaker was confirmed, and that several more had been approached and the hope was that one more of them would confirm. Another question I asked was ‘what safeguarding do you you have in place by moderators in case of racism directed at panellists or attendees’? The answer was ‘we don’t have any, but it’s never been an issue, we’ve never had any racism…’. I then asked if they and the other folx chairing had any training in how to recognise racism and other isms and microaggressions. The answer was that the chair was an experienced DEI professional but that no, they themselves didn’t have this kind of training. Interesting that they had been so quick to tell me that no racism had ever happened at an event, but that they had no training on how to recognise racism... These responses are the norm for events run by folx racialised as white, I have had very similar exchanges before. Overall, the answers managed to reach my minimum viable ‘yes’, along with the fact that I would be compensated and my travel would be covered.

It was a long journey, a drive then a train then the tube. I had my loops (noise reducing earplugs) in and enough layers to stay warm in this coldest June I can remember. The reception was easy to find, the folx there helpful and kind. I slipped into the auditorium to hear the keynote going on.

Not a minute after the speech finished, I experienced a microaggression.

‘Where are you from?’ Asked the pale-skinned, male presenting person next to me.

My brain started generating all the possible meanings to this question and all the possible answers. While I know what folx racialised as white usually mean when they ask this, I was hopeful that due to the context of our meeting, they meant something else. I said…

‘Do you mean what company?’

He replied…

‘I mean, whatever, whichever…’

We then had a brief conversation. At the end, he said,

‘I thought you were Spanish.’

To which I said, ‘Oh, OK, so that’s what the ‘where are you from’ question was about.’

‘Yes’ he said, ‘I meant originally’.

‘No.’ I replied. ‘I’m Indian.’

At least you can count on Autistic folx (he told me he was Autistic) to be honest with you even when you are establishing whether or not their intention was rooted in colonial conditioning. I only answered the question to firmly claim my Indianness. Someone else then sat down next to him and launched into conversation, giving me the opportunity to slip away, as the disappointment and familiar feelings of otherness washed over me. I wasn’t a business owner, nor a speaker at the event, I was an exotic ‘something’.

I then saw the event organiser and asked about any tech prep for the panel, she revealed that there were now six people on the panel, as well as the chair. I had thought there were going to be four of us. The panel was only 30 minutes long, plus 15 minutes for questions. One of the last minute inclusions in this already full panel on intersectionality was a white, cis man. As I tried to process this information on top of the lingering feelings of ick from my previous interaction, I stimmed emphatically through making fists and then splaying my hands repeatedly as I walked into the crowded break space. What did I expect? Why had I agreed to this? WHY WAS I HERE?! Suddenly, a familiar face beamed at me and I felt my whole body relax. A friend, a sibling in liberatory work, appeared from the blur of people and we hugged and chatted and they put me at ease. I decided not to attend the next talk, so that I could regulate and check my notes.

I’d been asked to prepare a 2 minute introduction for myself, and expected to be asked to share this at the top of the panel. I was pleased that I would be able to contextualise why I was qualified to talk on the subject of neurodiversity at work, to share my more than a decade in HR, People & Culture and DEI, my degree in Neuroscience, my move into social justice and work at Mission Equality, why I founded Wautistic Wayfinder and how I help my clients. But when the panel got started, the chair launched straight into questions, without introductions. My brain could not let go of the intro, and I almost did it anyway when I was asked my first question. I managed to push it aside and answer, but it was gnawing at me the whole way through the panel. The chair was racialised as white, and for some reason, kept saying things like ‘staying on the theme of intersectionality’ and ‘another question on intersectionality’ to introduce his questions… on a panel about intersectionality and neurodivergence.

Aside from the pre-planned questions, there were questions submitted through an event app, and to my horror, questions were also taken on the spot from the audience. One of the safeguarding precautions I was told was in place, was that all questions were vetted. This seemed to be thrown out for absolutely no reason at all, as there were plenty of questions already, and we hadn’t even got through all of the planned questions when this wild card was tabled. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in trauma-dumping, racism, and people taking 5 minutes to ask a question. Hello, this is a room of Neurodivergent people! We are not known for our on-the-spot succinctness!

Attendees with raised hands had their genders assumed in order to point them out to the person with the mic. Without being given the opportunity to introduce myself, I hadn’t shared my pronouns, nor were they displayed on my event badge or the slides. The lights were so bright, one of my fellow panellists needed to put their sunglasses on. There were not enough breaks between sessions. To find out where the quiet space was, you had to go and speak to reception. Despite being organised with the involvement of Neurodivergent folx, the accessibility and safety measures fell extremely short. This makes sense really, as those who can stay employed in corporate jobs such that they are given the opportunities to organise and run these kinds of events are neuro-performing for survival. Perhaps so much so, that they can’t even access their own needs well enough to ensure an event about neurodivergence is accessible for the group it is supposedly about.

I felt entirely out of place. That is until the other late-confirmed speaker on the panel started talking about the school to prison pipeline for Black, neurodivergent children. About how we can’t forget how significant racism is in the experience of Black and brown neurodivergent people’s lives. About systemic injustice. The only panellist I knew, who had recommended me to the organisers, talked about a needs-based future, and was silently but animatedly supporting me and the other speaker who dared talk about systems of harm. In a room where the directive was very clearly to talk about how to make life a bit easier for Neurodivergent people while focusing on ROI (return on investment) and metrics and business cases and ‘staying neutral and unpolitical’ (direct quote from a slide), I wasn’t alone. After the panel, the speaker that made me feel in good company caught my eye (we are both Autistic- this is a big deal), and said, ‘you named white supremacy, I think we will get along…’ And with that sentence, two friends were made.

The thing is, I know this world. This corporate world. I didn’t go into this event without an understanding of what it was going to be. I am not ‘an online activist with only lived experience’, a type of person another speaker was sure to warn the room away from. And while their overall message wasn’t aligned with mine, they weren’t wrong about this. If one is going to work with corporate clients, they need to understand that landscape. They need to be able to relate to the people. They need to be able to regulate themselves and hold space and deal with the inevitable trauma and harm that they will encounter while still being able to hold boundaries and educate. It is, as this same speaker said, a skill. There were many other things said, by them and others, that were very much about being palatable. About not rocking the boat. About tinkering within the paradigm of colonial norms. And this is where we part ways.

I talked about how we need to break up with late-stage capitalism. I talked about how we need to dismantle colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy because they are the interlocking systems that created the isms we are trying to eradicate. I talked about accomplices instead of allies. I talked about unlearning colonial conditioning, about rejecting individualism and finding community, about designing a system based on needs and trust. I shared the moment I realised I wouldn’t make it if I continued to live my life within colonial confines. Many folx in that room won’t have connected with my words. Some of them will have felt uncomfortable, angry even. Some of them will have loved it, a couple of them told me so.

Will I do something like this again? Maybe. I still believe we need radical voices in these spaces, it’s just about the balance between impact, compensation and how much there will be to recover from. The organisers were given feedback by several panellists about all the things they need to address, I’ll be sharing mine in an email as well. Whether they take this on board will be the decider for me and perhaps others, if we are invited to future events. For now, my recovery is being supported by writing about my experience here, by being comforted by a friend when I was dysregulated, by making a new one through being myself.

And lastly, by the knowledge that some folx might have left a conference about ‘Neurodiversity at Work’ thinking,

‘How am I going to start dismantling systems of harm?’.

—AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• How are you finding the balance between surviving capitalism and dismantling it?

• Do you work in corporate DEI? Or HR? Or People and Culture? How can you break free of the confines of Capitalism/Colonial friendly initiatives? What influence do you have to move the conversation towards truly transformative and paradigm shifting work?

• What does a decolonised workplace look like? How can you move us toward this reality?

• What are your ‘bottom lines’ in terms of whether you will agree to be in a space? To take on a piece of work? How can you continue to apply a decolonial lens to this framework?