Today, we come together again on the basis of another concerning thing a member of the Trump administration has said or done. In a press conference last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that people with autism “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” There are a number of dimensions we should consider when looking at these comments. 

First, I find myself deeply concerned about the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ lack of a fundamental understanding of autism. The “autism spectrum” is a widely understood concept, meaning that people have different experiences with autism from requiring daily support to living completely independently. To place all individuals in the same category is not only incorrect, but it’s immature. I would like to believe that RFK Jr. knows it’s not true, but it is also diminishing to think that a public official would knowingly spread lies to disparage one specific group of people.

Similarly, RFK Jr.’s words enforce a stigma that dehumanizes people with autism. It creates a one-size-fits-all category and offers a regressive perspective on the capabilities of those living with autism. In reality, the experiences of people with autism are incredibly diverse and offer a wide variety of perspectives within the narrative surrounding neurodivergence. Diluting this down to a narrative representing only a fraction of those living with autism is misinformative in that it publicly stigmatizes autism. 

Lastly, the role of the Secretary of Health and Human Services is to “take action to prepare for and respond to public health and medical emergencies.” Why he feels the need to address his own perceptions of autism in a conference is confusing and has highly negative implications; it is simply not within his responsibility to make false statements about a large group of people. 

All in all, the words of a public official are highly influential to society at large. Being blind to these implications and their aftermath is a failure to effectively do one’s job. It reinforces and legitimizes a stigma that is discriminatory, directly putting a large percentage of people in danger simply through his words. I feel frustrated to see RFK Jr.’s lack of hesitation in the language he uses, and I urge people to continue to take in the misinformation he provides with high levels of scrutiny. We cannot simply absorb and accept the things that he says because he is a public figure, because it is clear that he knows less than most of the American population.