A Tribute to Steve Silberman
A Tribute to Steve Silberman
A good person, and a friend to many
The world lost a wonderful person a few days ago, on August 29th. I am proud to have called Steve a friend.
In tribute to Steve, I have combined thoughts about his passing with some lightly edited previous writings.
I start with a couple of bullet points from my November 23, 2023 post on Disability Rights.
I had many discussions, both in person and via email, with Steve Silberman, in the years he was writing his brilliant book NeuroTribes (2015). I believe it is the best book ever written about autism, and I used it as a text in presenting my Berkshire OLLI course on autism in 2017. I’m proud to say he included my name in his Acknowledgements section.
I served as Board President at Autism Connections, which, among other things, is the Autism Resource Center for the western four counties of Massachusetts.
This picture ^ of us was taken at an Autism Connections conference, as noted in the caption. As President, and the only autistic person on the Board, during planning for the conference I was asked for a recommendation for a speaker. I had watched Steve’s struggles for several years, and his determination to make his book the best possible story of autism. As a result, he had won the Samuel Johnson prize for the best non-fiction book published in the English language in 2015, and had emerged from poverty, eating rice and beans, to worldwide acclaim. A cascade of speaking invitations followed.
It was my hope that Steve could make himself available on the date of our conference. The staff of Autism Connections began their inquiries, only to hit a roadblock. His agent quoted a fee that was far outside our budget. So I intervened, and contacted Steve directly. I explained to him that the conference was a fundraiser that helped us provide services to autistic people and their families. He very graciously lowered his fee to be within our budget. He had a heart of gold, and helping others was more important to him than maximizing his income.
I reproduce here a condensed version of a post I made in 2018, containing the remarks I made to introduce Steve:
Autism Connections was honored to have Steve Silberman keynote our 28th Annual Autism Conference on April 27 [2018].
I was privileged to introduce Steve to the Conference.
Here are my remarks, trimmed a bit, but otherwise more or less as I delivered them.
Autism in the Age of Neurodiversity
Introductory Remarks for April 27, 2018 Annual Conference
by Michael F. Wilcox
Welcome, Everyone!
A special welcome to those who are here for the first time. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Michael Forbes Wilcox, and I am the President of the Board of Autism Connections. I am not the first openly autistic person to serve on our Board, and I certainly won’t be the last. We’d like to have more.
[I mentioned language and labels, and the organization’s openness to all.]
I first figured out that I’m autistic 13 years ago, when I was 59 years old. For those of you who are not autistic, allow me to do the math. [laughter] Yes, that means I am now 72 years young.
As if to compensate for our slow neural development at an early age, we autistics seem to age more slowly as well. We remain active intellectually and physically longer than our unfortunate neurotypical counterparts [laughter]. Or, so I am told.
This organization, like most autism organizations, was started for the purpose of providing assistance to autistic children and their caregivers.
Our first speaker, Steve Silberman, will have much to say about this history, I suspect; or, at least, his book NeuroTribes does.
In the early days of autism identification, not only was autism, in this country at least, thought to be a childhood condition, but it was believed to be almost always accompanied by intellectual impairment.
We now know that these ideas give a much too restrictive view of the wide range of autism. The very word “spectrum” came into use, at least in part, to promote the idea that autism is not related to intellectual capacity, nor is it confined to any other subgroup of the population. Autism is a natural, and widespread, condition.
Let me repeat that: autism is a natural part of the human condition. It is not a deficiency. It is not a disorder. It is a difference. It is a profound difference, to be sure. And one that many of us are very proud and privileged to own.
[I spoke about advocacy, and asked people to volunteer to help.]
And now, let me turn from asking you for help to introducing you to a source of some wondrous information that will enhance your understanding of autism, and the needs of autistic people. I am referring, of course, to our first speaker, Steve Silberman.
I am proud to count Steve as a friend. He is one of the few people I know who has more friends than I do. And such variety! Talk about diversity…
Music, for example, is very important to Steve. I can tell from his Facebook feed that he has been spending a lot of time lately with David Crosby. He calls himself a fly on the wall, but he’s being modest. He is not an entirely passive player in the game, having produced albums, including a box set for the Grateful Dead that was their most successful commercial release of all time.
When I heard on my local radio station that David Crosby would be appearing at Tanglewood in June, I burst out laughing. Not because that is, in itself, very funny. But I was immediately reminded of a story that you [looking at Steve] told me. [I did not repeat the story; it was an amusing anecdote of Steve’s, about another Crosby appearance at Tanglewood many years ago.]
Two years ago [in 2016], Steve gave the keynote address for World Autism Day at the United Nations. Ten years earlier, such an event might have been filled with the gnashing of teeth and the gushing of pity for us poor autistic folks who would never amount to anything. Instead, Steve gave an impassioned speech calling for the full inclusion of autistic people. I think that was one of the best talks you [Steve] have ever given.
Later, on that program, our friend Ari Ne’eman introduced the crowd to sensory-friendly applause, acknowledging our borrowing from the deaf community. [I demonstrated the sign for applause]
I saw, in response, hundreds of people waving their hands in the air, with Steve right in the front, and it brought tears to my eyes, to think how much the world has changed, even in the few short years I’ve been involved.
So, in a few moments, when you welcome our speaker, instead of clapping, give it a try!
You [again, looking at Steve] may remember the conversation we had at NYU when you appeared before the journalism school. You were asked how you came to be not just a reporter, but an advocate for autistic people. We talked about how, when you are African-American, or gay, or Jewish, or autistic, or belong to some other group that has been marginalized; discriminated against, misunderstood, picked on and bullied, excluded, and told in ways both direct and indirect that you are not welcome, you can easily develop empathy for someone else who belongs to a similar group.
I asked you if you had observed, as I have in the hundreds of autistic people I have come to know; a high degree of social awareness and a very common desire for social justice. You just laughed and said, “I think it could be a diagnostic criterion!” Do you remember that?
I’m not gay and I’m not Jewish, and Steve is not autistic. Yet, we have a lot in common. Here I am, trying to make a difference, and here you are, doing the same.
It is with enormous pleasure that I introduce to you my good friend, Steve Silberman.
Steve’s keynote address and follow-up session took up most of the morning, and he stayed on for lunch. After that, he had a couple of hours to kill before his ride to the airport. I asked Karen, our Executive Director, if the facility had a private room where Steve and I could sit and chat. No, she said, but there was a coatroom that they were using to store the conference paraphernalia, and we could use that if we didn’t mind sitting on boxes.
We had a wide-ranging conversation. He told me about his next writing project, and we discussed the latest controversy in the autism community. Steve told me that in his research, he had come up with definitive evidence that Hans Asperger was not a Nazi sympathizer, as some were claiming. I told him I was looking forward to his writing about that, because Asperger was one of my heroes.
No, he wouldn’t be doing that, he told me. His speaking engagements were winding down, and he had to focus on his next income-producing project. I was sorry to lose his advocacy about that issue, but as it turned out the controversy pretty much died away of its own accord. We moved on to other topics.
There was a knock on the door, and Karen came in to retrieve some materials, quietly apologizing for interrupting our conversation. “That’s all right,” said Steve, “we’re no longer making out.” Karen gave him a startled look, as if she almost believed him. Then we all laughed, and Karen made a hasty retreat.
Although I never met Keith, I certainly heard a lot about him. Steve was very proud that they were among the first gay couples married in California. In all the years I knew him, he almost never referred to Keith by his name, seeming to get a thrill out of saying, “my husband.”
Steve wrote a loving account of the events leading up to and surrounding their marriage.
His last sentence in the essay is especially poignant.
I am very grateful for having known Steve, for his friendship, and for all that he did to make this world a better place.