First of all, I didn’t know Amanda Seales has all the titles she did. I’m 26 for reference, a ‘97s baby. I know her from Insecure on HBO.

Her reputation is that she is unlikable and hard to work with. Honestly, I never looked deep into the rumors about her, but I remember that no one on the Insecure set liked her and she was always in some controversy.

I also bought into the belief that she was light skinned with a white mom, and her mom isn’t even white, as I learned with this interview. It’s a misconception Shannon repeated, (which is sad cause he was actually interviewing her).

Watching this three hour interview, I got to see more of her and her personality. I didn’t go in blind. I had been seeing clips of it on Tik Tok about her neurodivergence, her relationship with Issa and Issa’s assistant, her autism diagnosis, and speaking about racism.

I read comments and decided I needed to watch it because Amanda is a polarizing person and has the reputation that her mouth gets her into trouble.

On Club Shay Shay, Amanda says she is diagnosed as autistic and that clinical diagnosis exists. She never clarified how she received her diagnosis and I honestly don’t think she needs to. I think she knew people would try to discredit her if she said she self diagnosed, but she also said that other black autistic women reached out to her and resonated with her experience.

She says her mom saw some common characteristics of autism when she was younger but wasn’t sure what to do. She is thankful that she was allowed to be herself young and that her mom didn’t try to quiet her quirks.

She says her belief that she has autism comes from her experience. That society is phony and people who are autistic don’t catch the social cues and can’t (or don’t want to) perform in line with the phoniness. An example is “respecting” someone just because they’re an authority figure, like how she would call the teacher out in class, which Shannon said most adults would find disrespectful.

You can understand something about someone and still choose not to engage, but some comments say Amanda is using the diagnosis as an excuse. That shows that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of autism and neurodivergence. No one has to deal with anyone, but it’s always “mental health matters” until it’s unpalatable.

A lot of people don’t know what autism is or how it presents itself. They think of stereotypes and extremes. They also don’t recognize self-diagnosis as valid, which it is in the autism community. Getting the diagnosis can be expensive and time consuming and if you’re an adult and, or black, it can be harder to be diagnosed because signs of autism can be misread.

With a clinical diagnosis or not, autistic people are still autistic. It isn’t a moment in time type of screening. It’s about how your brain works and it presents itself through thought processes and behavior, which is why self-diagnosis is valid. There’s also evidence it is hereditary and she believes her father is autistic.

I’ve researched autism prior to this and I follow autistic creators. If you don’t know or follow people who are autistic or have autistic children, (I can give some examples if you want them), then your opinion is uninformed, especially because there are signs of it in her interview. There’s a reason autistic woman relate and have reached out to hers.

I believe, at the very least, I’m neurodivergent, which is an umbrella term that autism falls under. This interview was triggering and annoying to watch as a neurodivergent black woman, partly because of their dynamic and partly because of their conversations about race. Twenty minutes into it, I was already tired.

The theme of this interview is that Amanda feels she is misunderstood and not protected. She says people don’t like her because she takes things literal and she says things literally. At times, I peeped this in the interview.

Shannon and Amanda were barely on the same page and I get the vibe that Shannon allowed his preconceived notions about her to cloud the interview. When you think one way about a person, you’ll look for something to confirm what you already believe and that seems to be the story of Amanda’s life. And if you don’t like someone or look down on them, you’ll miss what they mean or try to prove them wrong.

She’s been called difficult, mean, nasty and she says she knows she’s not because her actions haven’t showed that. She doesn’t know herself to be vindictive or try to trick people but her tone makes people feel like she is. She also says people view her one way, but she sees it differently. For example, she would say she is detail oriented, but others view it as nitpicky.

She says people who’ve never met her say this about her and Shannon asks her why she cares. She says it’s a part of autism and that you’re always aware something about you is different and you always want the room to feel good.

She says she tends to provide the answer when people ask questions because she wants to help and in doing so has been labeled as extra, a show off, know it all.

She says no one wants to be invalidated and black woman are constantly in the position of appeasement. She wants people to not like her for a legit reason and is done convincing people of her intentions, which always seem to be misconstrued.

Amanda also says now she is learning social cues and how to reign in certain tendencies, learning that it might be honest but you don’t have to say it. She feels like she has to renovate herself (mask) to be palatable to others, which feels inauthentic and is a struggle.

She says people are allowed to treat her any way and think she is just supposed to take it. And that people like her are a blessing because you don’t have to guess how she’s feeling. There’s no subtext or ulterior motives.

She says she needs to learn not to expect people to move the same way she does and stop trying to see the good in other people. And that someone told her she needs to remember most people are full of shit.

What really got to me, was how Shannon did try to invalidate her experience, multiple times. He’d bring in his own experience or “play devil’s advocate” and to me, he was trying to poke holes in some of what she was saying about her autism, race, and her experiences.

Amanda has her masters in African American studies, which she says she got so people wouldn’t undermine her, which I’ve talked about before through my own experience. She says she views the world through a different lens. When she talks about race and times she’s experienced racism, it seems Shannon tries to discredit her, taking race out of it and saying “kids are kids” and “most adults don’t like children talking back.” It was exhausting.

Shannon and Amanda have a brief pause where she asks him to not be combative. Shannon says he in turn asks her to not take him disagreeing as being combative and she says it is combative when undermining takes place. He accuses her of being narrow minded and only seeing things through her lens and she says that is rich considering he is doing what he is accusing her of.

This interview showed, Amanda is knowledgeable about her interests and understands her privileges. She says she’s emotionally mature and aware and I believe that.

They discuss a lot from DEI, to rap beef, to individualism vs. community, and some of her controversial moments. Some of it can come across as egotistical and lacking accountability, but I believe what she says at face value and I don’t view her to think she’s better than anyone. I actually related to a lot of what she says and she drops a lot of gems.

To wrap this up, here are some other takeaways/quotes that stood out to me:

“I’m no longer going to argue what people think with what I know.”

Forgiveness was taught by slave owners and we are too forgiving sometimes.

Redemption requires action.

Overachievers are looked at as doing too much.

We can’t all be main characters or at the top.

There’s beauty in difference.

There’s a difference between being different from you and harmful to you.

How do you not believe in psychics but you believe in God?

Society is phony.

All I’m doing is existing.

No one wants to be invalidated.

It’s exhausting doing the emotional labor for others.

What is a black space? Now it feels like it’s just black faces with white commerce behind it.

Say it how you want it to be understood.

Eventually you start to believe lies they accuse you of and you turn into that person.

We oversimplify in order to serve white supremacist ideologies.

Watching the interview, I gained more of an appreciation of Amanda. I do believe she is misunderstood but that her personality won’t mesh with everyone. I’ll get around to listening to her podcast. I definitely want to read the book she is working on.