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students with disabilities represent 18.5 percent of students with disabilities under the Individual With Disabilities Education Act, but they make up 29 percent of students with disabilities referred to law enforcement and 35 percent of students with disabilities subjected to school-based arrest.
Effects of Systemic Racism When Black parents try to enlist help for their children, medical professionals often don’t take their concerns seriously—a form of implicit bias that can play a significant role in medical outcomes for Black people in general. When researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine evaluated more than 9,000 notes in the medical records of one clinic, they found that doctors were more likely to use judgmental words that suggested skepticism (such as “claims” and “insists”) for Black patients than for white patients, and that Black patients were more likely to receive lower quality of care. When it comes to developmental delays, a pediatrician may dominate the conversation and ask Black parents fewer questions, Dr. Spinks-Franklin says, even when their child is at high risk. “Simply asking parents what their expectations are about normal development would give them the opportunity to voice their concerns and discuss issues that need to be addressed,” Dr. Spinks-Franklin says. Breanna Major, a social worker in Aurora, Colorado, and mother of an 8-year-old daughter on the spectrum, says that her family’s experience was a clear case of implicit bias and racism. Major always suspected something was different about her daughter from infancy and started trying to get help for her at age 2, but she didn’t receive an autism diagnosis until her daughter was 6. After being bounced around to different agencies by her health-care provider, she was unable to convince anyone her daughter might have autism. Instead, she faced questions about her own aptitude and was directed to programs to improve her parenting skills. “They made it seem like it was my fault and even asked culturally
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WHEN FAMILY AND FRIENDS QUESTION YOUR CONCERNS If you find yourself on the defensive when you share worries about your child’s development, Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin suggests these responses:
“Children with speech delays are more likely to struggle with learning how to read and make friends. I don’t want my child to have those problems, so I am going to talk to the pediatrician about getting help for them.”
“I would rather be safe than sorry. I am worried about my child’s development, so the wise thing for me to do is to ask the doctor to help us find the support they need, so they can be as successful as possible in life.”
“I know that Uncle Jerry was a very late talker and that he had a hard time in school. He didn’t have access to the kinds of help and resources that we have today. We don’t want our child to struggle more than they have to when there are many ways to help them while they’re young.”
“When we know better, we do better. We didn’t wear seat belts in the 1970s, but now we do. They used to use lead paint until we learned it wasn’t safe. Now we know that developmental delays can be a sign that something is seriously wrong, and we have resources to help children.”
insensitive things such as how often I washed my daughter’s hair,” Major says. During a visit to her own doctor, who is also Black, Major expressed her frustration about not being able to find help for her daughter. “My doctor said, ‘I think you’re being discriminated against because you’re a single Black mother,’ ” Major says. “When I finally met with an evaluator at a children’s hospital, I was told that my daughter’s prior evaluations had been enough to get her a diagnosis, and it wouldn’t have been a problem if I were white,” Major says. She says she’s filed an official complaint and shared her story with a regional administrator to address concerns regarding bias and providers’ cultural competency. Not only is there cause for Black people to be wary of the medical establishment, but kids with autism have behavioral issues that legitimately make parents uncomfortable about how they will be viewed in health-care settings, says researcher Emily Feinberg, Sc.D., a clinical nurse-practitioner and associate professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine. A child might bolt from their parents, for example, or struggle with clothing textures due to sensory issues. That was a feeling Major was very familiar with when attempting to get a diagnosis for her daughter. “At each appointment during the evaluation process, I made sure we were both well-dressed and her hair was combed well,” Major says. “I didn’t want to give them any reason to suspect that I was a negligent parent.” In fact, a study by Dr. Feinberg and her team found that Black mothers worry that discussing their own mental health challenges could trigger the involvement of child protective services—findings that suggest similar fears could also be a barrier to discussing concerns about their child’s development.
A Sense of Stigma Among Friends and Family Compounding the problems parents often face in health-care settings are ones they can experience closer to home. Not all parents know what the signs of autism and other developmental
