This is a good article that makes valid points. However, I would really like academics to cite the entire history of experimentation and harm to the Black body beyond the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. 1/

See: More than Tuskegee: Understanding Mistrust about Research Participation
Scharff, Mathews, Jackson, Hoffsuemmer, Martin, and Edwards 2/
Our community collectively witnesses racial disparities in health research and care and are collectively re-traumatized by them. As we speak, we see the contrast between #COVID19 outcomes like this 3/: https://t.co/qCMtPS1zPc
And #COVID19 outcomes like this 4/: https://t.co/9HZ0wrx9fr
Gaining the trust of our community requires more than racial parity in medical and research personnel and increasing opportunities for African American researchers. The misdiagnoses, the lack of support, and harm to Black autistic people and their families are lifelong. 5/
This is also a painful reminder that Tuskegee Institute built a factory to reproduce HeLa cells. the cells originating from Henrietta Lacks. So racial parity of researchers is not always a positive or safe thing. 6/
We are only now facing the horror of dead slaves used to train doctors. Experimented on in life and used in death 7/: https://t.co/y2gxlFMMWF
Let us not simplify the issue of Black community mistrust. 400 years of abuse and this continues today. In the history of autism, there are pages like the life of Blind Tom Wiggins, kept enslaved long after emancipation in order to enrich a yt woman by tricking his mother. 7/
Yes, racial parity and opportunities for Black researchers are needed. But the race of the researcher doesn't matter if #AutisticWhileBlack people are treated as dehumanized research subjects. 8/
An attitudinal change is required and that may take years. 9/

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