Black Aspergians

[Kaylis-Americanis]

I found this blog when I was on the Psychology Today website.

Where are the black people with Asperger's? When I began learning about Asperger's and autism, one of the first things I read was that its incidence was virtually the same across all races. It was more common in males, but was otherwise evenly distributed throughout the world.

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/my-life-aspergers/200902/the-myth-the-black-aspergian

interesting....

[adhocisadirtyword]

I'm not sure what to think of this. It's an interesting article, but I don't know that the answer is either genetics or culture.

It may be a combination of both. I wonder if there is as high of an incidence of ASDs among Africans as there is among African descendants in Western countries.

With that said, the American black culture is, in some ways, different from other minority cultures (as would be expected from all cultures). I'm just not so sure it is as simple as comparing the number of blacks in Autie events to the number of Hispanics.

The gay movement is seeing a lot of this also after the whole Prop 8 thing. Many African American homosexuals refuse to come out because of how homosexuality is viewed in the black community - without hard numbers this appears to be a larger problem than in other communities. I wonder if there is a stigma to being different - to standing out. I honestly don't know and couldn't really begin to understand all the facets, but it's just something that comes to mind.

[hyke]

Don't know what this means, could mean a lot of things.
Might be that professionals don't think of aspergers when they have a black client. Just like it is often missed in women. Might be that black society is a better place to function in as an aspie, and therefor that aspies become less visible.
Might be that all the places we meet, internet or other places, are just not where most black aspies will go.
There will probably be a cultural component, one that might affect visibility, and bias of professionals.

It is worth looking into it. But question will be, how to do that. Having a poll on Gestalt will make no sense.

Some groups get specific diagnoses, seems lots of young maroccan men here get the dx schizophrenia. Might be that that could cause misdiagnosing autism, because a professional will think of schizophrenia first.

I would not be amazed if bias from professionals would cause missing out on asperger in some groups of people. As soon as there is a language barrier that could already be the case. And lots of traits will show different in a different culture.

And I do not really trust professionals to be unbiased and open.

The article is interesting because of all the questions it raises.

[adhocisadirtyword]

Good points, Hyke.