Autism Vox

Race, Class and Autism

by Kristina Chew, PhD on May 20th, 2007

The Special Needs Network was founded by Areva Martin and Donna Ross, who are both mothers of autistic children; the group teaches parents how to advocate for their special needs children. As a May 19th Los Angeles Times article notes:

Poor and minority kids with parents who don’t know how or whom to pressure get fewer services — and get them later — than middle-class and wealthy kids with assertive parents. African American and Latino children with autism are one to two years older than white children before they’re diagnosed.

In Los Angeles, it took white kids an average of four visits to specialists over four months to be diagnosed with autism; black children required 13 such visits over 10 months, according to 2005 legislative testimony of Robert Hendren, executive director of the UC Davis MIND Institute.

“It’s like dealing with insurance companies every day of your life,” Areva Martin says. “If you’re a single mother, how do you do that? The children in those worlds are lost.”

So she has put herself smack in the middle of the special-education fracas, fighting on two fronts. One is for her own child. And for the last two years, she also has been teaching some of the poorest families in Los Angeles how to be just as pushy for their kids as she has been for hers.

The article futher illustrates the impact of race not only on the age of autism diagnosis, but also on the educational services a child receives, which can make a difference in their future. (And on parents aging and fears about what will happen to a disabled child who is also aging, see this May 19th article.) Martin, who is a lawyer and Ross, speak at churches, auditoriums and libraries in LA’s neediest neighborhoods, to reach out to mostly African American and Latino and educate them about their rights, and about how to make sure their children get an appropriate education. When Martin spoke at an auditorium in South-Central LA and mentioned that African-American children are diagnosed about a year and a half year later than white children, she heard mumbles in the audience: “‘More like five years around here’”; “‘Add three years to that if you’re in South-Central.’” Martin, who was raised by a paraplegic grandmother in a St. Louis housing project, notes that

“Growing up with someone who was disabled definitely made me sensitive………If you have money, you get an attorney to go with you and you walk away with a full complement of services, 30 hours a week of special services. If you live in South-Central, you go in alone, the centers will offer two hours of special services, and people leave saying ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ “

Martin also says that

“I still meet families whose kids are 5 or 6, and they don’t have any services yet. On a micro level, there’s still a lot of despair and helplessness. But on a macro level, things are starting to happen.”

One of those things being a parent learning to say “thank you very much—–and what about this, too, for my child?”

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POSTED IN: Education, Legal Issues, Race & Ethnicity