The One Big Problem With Elon Musk’s Autism Announcement - Slate

Over the weekend, Elon Musk used the occasion of his Saturday Night Live opening monologue to announce that he has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.

Musk claimed to be making history as “the first person with Asperger’s to host—or at least the first to admit it.” At Newsweek, opinion contributor Peter Fox described it as a “small but significant milestone in the history of neurodiversity.” There aren’t that many openly autistic writers out there, and we tend to know each other, so I want to be clear that I respect Peter Fox deeply.

The Asperger/Autism Network, a small New England nonprofit, told TMZ that traffic to its website more than doubled after Musk made his announcement, and at CNN Business, Alexis Benveniste praised Musk, saying that his disclosure “opened up a larger conversation about business leadership and the autism spectrum.” Comedian Jeremy McLellan, who is also on the spectrum, sarcastically joked, “inspiring moment of progress for everyone on the spectrum who is also a billionaire,” followed by a heart emoji.* Either way, Musk is hardly representative of the community at large.

Meanwhile, most autistic people live in poverty.

In the most recent data out of the United Kingdom, less than 22 percent of autistic people had any kind of employment.

Police departments do training after training, but autistic people keep getting killed anyway.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk spent the past year spreading COVID misinformation, donating fake ventilators to hospitals, and forcing Tesla workers to go back to their factory jobs despite the risk to their health, resulting in 450 employees becoming infected.

Musk certainly seems to want that.

So what has Elon Musk done to help his supposed peers on the spectrum?

For reference, Elon Musk has long made promises about self-driving cars with little basis in reality.

I can’t speak for all autistic people, but I feel confident saying that most want the same things I want: safety, housing, meaningful employment, friendship, independence.

“Musk may not be the ideal role model for the autistic community and its urgent needs,” Peter Fox writes, “but with so few public figures to look up to, the significance of his announcement can’t be dismissed either.” Elon Musk is not a role model.