When America’s Views on Autism Started to Change

A year before he died from a suspected heart attack, the journalist Steve Silberman posted this on Facebook: “When I die, please don’t say that I’ve crossed over into the spirit realm, gone to the Other Side, moved on to a better place, rejoined my ancestors, or any other of those comforting fables. Just selfishly or selflessly use my own impermanence to WAKE UP to your own.”

This call to action—a Beatnik nod mixed with real encouragement—exemplified Silberman’s approach to the world. Silberman was open, and he implored those around him to lean into the messy dynamics of human existence. His receptiveness to new ways of thinking helped him push his readers to shift their own views on numerous topics, not least autism.

For generations, autistic individuals and their families were conditioned to believe that autism is a shameful affliction that must be hidden away from “normal” society or, better yet, “cured.” Silberman, who himself was not autistic, challenged this perspective. His 2001 Wired story “The Geek Syndrome” explored the prevalence of autism and Asperger’s diagnoses in the Bay Area and helped usher in an era of destigmatization. As he wrote near the end of that story: “For all we know, the first tools on earth might have been developed by a loner sitting at the back of the cave, chipping at thousands of rocks to find the one that made the sharpest spear, while the neurotypicals chattered away in the firelight.”

[John Donvan and Caren Zucker: What we learned from autism’s first child]

In 2015, Silberman published NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. The book—part history, part anthropology, part sociology—became a best seller and was translated into many languages. My colleague Jennifer Senior, who was then a critic for The New York Times, wrote of NeuroTribes, “At its heart is a plea for the world to make accommodations for those with autism, not the other way around.” An Atlantic article noted that the book “will resonate with anyone whose experience registers outside narrowing definitions of normal.”

Silberman granted dignity and humanity to his interview subjects, instead of poking and prodding at them as if they were lab rats. NeuroTribes helped bring the concept of neurodivergence—that the human brain simply works in different ways, rather than one “correct way”—into the national conversation. Silberman’s work also helped push back on the scientifically unproven idea that vaccines cause autism. He “realized that the anti-vax panic was really rooted in fear of autism—and autism wasn’t something to be feared,” the writer Eric Michael Garcia, who is autistic and was a friend and mentee of Silberman, told me. “He would be the first to say that this wasn’t something he invented, but he was definitely the person who brought it into the mainstream.”

In recent years, members of the neurodiversity and disability movements have put forth a simple mantra: “Nothing about us without us.” Silberman could synthesize complicated science, sure, but he also knew that real-life stories are what matter most, and he centered them in his writing. When Silberman died last month at the age of 66, the internet lit up with remembrances. I was lucky enough to call Silberman a friend, and I have been corresponding in recent days with many people who knew him.

After the release of NeuroTribes, Garcia told me, he began to notice a cultural shift around the topic of autism acceptance. “It no longer became a fringe idea, or something that was only spoken about in different pockets of the internet,” he said. “It was something that people could grasp and find tangible and adopt themselves.”

Nicholas Thompson, The Atlantic’s CEO, used to work with Silberman at Wired. He told me, “I used to think of Steve Silberman as one of the most wonderful members of an endangered species in Silicon Valley: folks who were bighearted, tech-loving, countercultural, humble, and curious. It was a group of people who built much of that world but then were crowded out by other folks a bit too obsessed with money and power. Steve was never absorbed into the new culture, but he also never seemed to resent it. He just kept writing, exploring, and being kind to everyone.” Another former Wired colleague of Silberman’s, Evan Ratliff, said that he “lived by the belief that deep listening and careful writing could elevate any subject, bring humanity and beauty to any story.” Silberman, he said, “was the guy who pulled up other writers, giving us his confidence before we even had our own.”

[From the September 2023 issue: The ones we sent away]

I experienced this side of Silberman firsthand. Long before we met, he boosted my work on social media, as he did for countless others, and we became internet friends and then, eventually, real-life friends. I fondly remember the warm afternoon we spent sitting in his San Francisco backyard this past January, chatting about disability, politics, and, especially, music. Silberman could go way down the rabbit hole of a Bill Evans jazz record or articulate the appeal of the Grateful Dead like no one else. His love of music was not tangential to his science work but intertwined with it. Musically and journalistically, he was a seeker, someone not afraid of swimming around in complication. The last text I have from him is a link to an obscure EP he thought I’d enjoy. Since he died, I’ve found it hard not to keep playing it.

In the years to come, I’ll most often think of Silberman whenever I see signs of his influence on American culture. One such moment, as Garcia noted, happened last month at the Democratic National Convention, when the camera panned to Gus Walz, the son of the party’s vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz. Gus is not autistic, but he has ADHD, anxiety, and a nonverbal learning disorder, three conditions that fall under the umbrella of neurodiversity. As his father spoke, Gus stood up excitedly and swelled with emotion. Rather than appear uncomfortable or nudge Gus to rein in his feelings, Walz’s wife, Gwen, who was sitting next to her son, simply let him be. “I’m really happy [Silberman] got to see that happen—this idea of parents accepting neurodivergent children on such a big stage,” Garcia said.

But what Silberman might tell you is that it didn’t matter that he saw it; what mattered is that other families were watching.