Hi. My name is Sam Williams. I'm a Brown Welsh autistic person disabled with long COVID. History books are written by the winners. History is written by the winners, which in the case of the last 500 years in my part of the world is either white Europeans or white Americans.

I've been reminded of this because a number of things have happened to me in the past week. I have had, racism encountered in a long COVID charity Facebook group. I've had, right-wing  ableism, experienced by me at a local green party meeting when I told my story about being a brown person disabled with long COVID, in the southwest of England. When I was arguing about being a lone brown person disabled with long COVID before a White Labour MP on Wednesday. She couldn't see what I was saying.

She couldn't see me. And, this is the problem I'm experiencing at the moment. I lack visibility, to the people whom I'm speaking to. The single story that they're seeing is that of the white person. There are hierarchies, within anywhere, where you've got white people and brown people.

I am absolutely at the bottom in terms of visibility. The one thing I have experienced in common with all of these situations or with other situations recently is that I lack visibility. When people are saying they don't see colour, what they're really saying is that they see only the whiteness that is the cultural default for every situation.
 When we're talking about health and health outcomes, black people face worse sentencing outcomes in court. Black people, black women, are 4 times more likely to die in childbirth.

Black people have much worse mental health outcomes because of racism. I'm not accusing anyone of racism. I'm merely saying that as a brown person, my story lacks visibility. I think you I think people can see, parts of the story. They can see this the parts of the story that are in common with the experiences of white people, but they can't see my distinctiveness.

They can't see the loneliness of my position. The loneliness of being seemingly the one lone brown autistic Welsh person talking about having long COVID in the UK. These recent events have really, really crystallized my loneliness, my feeling of social abandonment in talking about my experience.