Like all children, non-White children are not a monolith and individuals face discrimination based on their personalities, subsets of symptoms, and how their race, class, and other intersecting identities are viewed by White educators (e.g., model minority status of Asian-American students). I specifically focus on Black and Latine students in this post, but future research should focus on ADHD's social-emotional impacts on children of Asian or Indigenous descent.
Dis/ability and race
Notions of race and dis/ability are deeply intertwined. According to DisCrit: Dis/Ability and Critical Race Studies, the tradition of scientific racism has led not only to the belief that Black and Latine people are biologically and intellectually inferior to Whites (Annamma, Connor, and Ferri 2016, pg. 9-10) but also to the construction of an educational system built on this belief. Policy factors (e.g., funding, redlining) have led to decreased opportunities and social protections for young children of color, especially those in poor neighborhoods, and the toxic stress and chronic trauma from maltreatment by educators at the interpersonal and district levels directly stunt Black and Latine children's neurodevelopment (Harvard Center on the Developing Child 2007). When coupled with notions of dis/ability -- especially given how the belief that Black and Latine students are cognitively inferior has historically been used to dehumanize them -- we are confronted with how "subjective societal interpretations of and responses to specific differences from the normed (White) body" are weaponized against children of color and their families (Annamma, Connor, and Ferri 2016, pg. 10). In fact, on a very literal level, "dis/ability status justifies segregation and unequal treatment for students of color compared to their White counterparts;" Black students are three times as likely to be diagnosed as emotionally disturbed, 67% more likely to be removed from school grounds, and 13 times more likely to be arrested in school compared to White students (pg. 11-15).
In terms of ADHD specifically, children of color are not diagnosed as often compared to their White counterparts (Frye 2017, Nigg 2020, Morgan et. al. 2013). However, due to racial trauma and stereotyping, the social-emotional challenges that come with ADHD may worsen in Black and Latine students, hearkening back to the research done by the Center on the Developing Child mentioned in the previous paragraph. DisCrit's assertions complicate this; despite systematic under-diagnosis (or the over-diagnosis of White students, perhaps), there is tension between overrepresentation of Black children in "emotional disturbance" and intellectual disability categories and the under-diagnosis of children of color for ADHD. Psychiatrists' racist biases, such as the framing of Black men, for example, as violent and unpredictable, may "impact how they read the very same symptoms" of ADHD from child to child (Frye 2017). As a result, Black children with ADHD's behaviors may be misread as inherent to their Blackness and not as a symptom of a neurodevelopmental condition; when Black children are diagnosed with ADHD, however, many families of color see ADHD as a racist label used to further stigmatize their children (Frye 2017, Coker/Understood.org 2020). For this reason, an ADHD diagnosis is often frowned upon in communities of color, and Black parents can be mistrustful of doctors diagnosing their children due to historical violence against Black people from the medical community (Frye 2017, Coker/Understood.org 2020). Dr. Tumaini Coker, whose children were diagnosed with ADHD, states of psychiatrists:
You’re just trying to point something that’s wrong with my kid. And this is another way to kind of, you know, find a way to hold my kid back or these kind of things....It can be true that, yes, the child has ADHD, but can also be true that there’s a significant amount of implicit bias that the teachers or the school system is putting on that child. And that’s really tough place for a parent of a Black child to be. Because you know that there’s some element of need educationally for that child. But then you also know that, yes, there’s this element of racism, both structural and interpersonal racism, that’s impacting the kid in school. And to navigate that and to figure out each day, you know, which is which, it’s hard.
Latine students with ADHD may also face obstacles related to cultural expectations. From the podcast InIt:
Racism and ableism writ large -- as with more specific environmental, political, and neurodevelopmental factors -- are ubiquitous and mutually reinforcing, and these factors will inevitably affect the neurodivergent child of color's social world.
Socialization of Black and Latine students with ADHD
The social experiences of Black and Latine children with ADHD vary based on school demographics, the surrounding communities, and of course the individual personalities and symptoms of students, but are ultimately informed by the stacked stigmas of being non-White and dis/abled, policies around dis/ability and education (e.g., IDEA and LREs), and the lingering effects of school integration (Anderson, Saleem, and Huguley 2019, Teachers College 2004). The American educational system has not been built with the assets and needs of Black and Latine dis/abled children in mind; according to Anderson, Saleem, and Huguley, students report that "teachers and staff omit Black youth from advanced course recommendations, disproportionately scrutinize the behavior of Black boys, or choose to leave racially representative content out of the curriculum" (2019), exacerbating feelings of social isolation and intellectual-behavioral inferiority in Black and Latine students. The National Center for Learning Disabilities similarly reported that "students with learning and attention issues often experience feelings of failure, lack of acceptance among their peers and high levels of bullying, which can increase the risk of misbehavior and absenteeism" and further contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline that already affects students of color (NCLD 2017). Black and Latine students with ADHD, dealing with challenges that come with both their race and dis/ability, may then be labeled as untrustworthy, unintelligent, or unstable by their teachers and peers because the system has been designed for White, neurotypical students (Harper 2017, Anderson, Saleem, and Huguley 2019).
In terms of special education itself, Kristen Harper reports that "in 2014, children of color with disabilities -- including 17 percent of Black students, and 21 percent of Asian students -- were placed in the regular classroom, on average, less than 40 percent of the school day" (2017). They also note that IDEA provisions intended to benefit students of color are underutilized in many districts (Harper 2017); NCLD adds that other district-wide programs such as social-emotional learning (SEL) initiatives are often not shaped to meet the needs of dis/abled students (NCLD 2017). This means that Black and Latine students diagnosed with and receiving accommodations for ADHD will not be adequately integrated with their neurotypical, often White peers, and will not receive sustained, engaging, and culturally relevant social and emotional support from their teachers that centers these children's assets and areas of need.
Although what ultimately needs to take place is systemic change at the school design, cultural, and policy levels, it's important that educators and administrators designing social-emotional interventions for ADHD and other dis/abilities understand the pernicious ways that racism and ableism work together to systematically exclude and violate dis/abled children of color. If teachers, administrators, parents, and others in the school community continually frame Black and Latine children's behavior through a deficit lens, they are in turn ignoring race, class, and dis/ability related stressors (again, due to the systems in place) and the nuanced social-emotional and neurobiological needs of these children.
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