How the Education System Fails Black Autistic Students

By Brianna Patt: How does discrimination hold back Black kids with autism, and how can we help them flourish instead of fail?In an article by WUFT news in Florida, it typically takes a year and a half longer for Black children to receive a diagnosis as opposed to White children, with them more likely to receive a misdiagnosis. They go on to ,Black children are misdiagnosed with emotional and behavioral disorders, as well as educational disabilities. WUFT suggests this may be due to what the research is largely based on early systematic data on Autism, which is largely based on a 1943 study, were done using a data pool of young white men.“Autism doesn’t discriminate between race or gender, but how it presents might. Typical screenings are more likely to capture autism in white male children in part because those are most of the children being studied,” Katie Hyson of WUFT stated.The uniform nature of how these studies have been done results in a subsequent gap in knowledge and education regarding the Black community. For instance, in over 1,000 autism intervention studies from 1998 to 2017, only 252 added in race/ethnic data. This translates into a lack of proper resources....