Racism: How to Talk About it with Your ADHD'er

These are unsettling, historic times. The news is devastating as we enter the summer of 2020. Our cities are reeling, camps are restricted, and our communities are mourning the loss of lives and the struggle for justice and liberty. 

As protests continue across the U.S. sparked by the death of George Floyd (as well as Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many other people of color), we are having more conversations about what has long percolated through the structures of our society, known as systemic racism.

Implicit Bias In the Schools and ADHD 

Evidence shows that people of color — Black and Latino in particular — are much less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, learning disabilities, and other mental health conditions.  To start, we need to infuse resources into poor and underfunded schools and have sufficient diagnostic tools that evaluate the individual rather than widen cultural and language barriers.

But where the work really needs to be done involves the role of "implicit bias" in our school systems. Minority families report that school personnel are more responsive to white families and less likely to interpret challenging behavior in Black or brown kids as ADHD, a learning disability or mental health diagnosis. 

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Hundreds of schools across the country have zero-tolerance discipline policies that thrust students out of the classroom into the criminal justice system, known as the school-to-prison pipeline. For example, according to The School to Prison Pipeline, in a U.S. Department of Justice complaint, school officials in Jefferson Parish, La., have given armed police “unfettered authority to stop, frisk, detain, question, search and arrest schoolchildren on and off school grounds.”    

What’s even more troubling is that the majority of students in the pipeline are Black students and students with disabilities. A nationwide study by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reports that Black students are 3.5 times more likely than their white classmates to be suspended or expelled. 

The discrepancies are more alarming for black students with disabilities. An analysis of the government report by Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, found that about 1 in 4 Black children with disabilities were suspended at least once, versus 1 in 11 white students with disabilities.

Teachers and schools need support to use best practices for behavior modification rather than turning to punishment and referral to law enforcement for challenging behavior. But this isn’t just about teachers and schools. 

The Effects of Redlining and Racism 

Because schools are funded by property taxes, schools in Black neighborhoods are overcrowded and have few resources. Historically, redlining blocked off Black neighborhoods from public and private investment, denying Black individuals loans and other government services, including school resources and funding, based purely on race.   

According to act.tv, a progressive media company, a study of banks in the 1980’s in Atlanta showed that banks were more likely to give loans to low-income white families than middle income Black families. Redlining still affects major cities like Chicago today. A 2017 article in The New York Times stated that for every $100 of wealth for a white family in the US, Black families have $5.04. Although there are efforts for Black college applicants to become less scarce, there are biases for graduates. Studies have shown that a resume with “white-sounding” names receive twice as many callbacks than those with “Black-sounding” names with similar backgrounds.

Our Role in Implicit Bias

When there are prejudgments in society that people are not aware that they have, this is known as implicit bias. We need to own and accept that most of us have unconscious biases. These perceptions have developed from our own experiences, which we unconsciously and erroneously accept as truth. When these implicit biases become engrained into our societal structures, that’s when it becomes systemic racism. When we recognize the role these biases play in how decisions are made and how these decisions affect human lives, we can make room for change. 

How parents choose to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, implicit bias and systemic racism is influenced by each family's experience. While parents of color are significantly more likely to talk with their children about racism, especially with the urgency of what's going on now, almost all kids will benefit from the opportunity to talk about what’s happening, which can reassure them and help promote change.

The following are some strategies to support you with this conversation with your child, with some extra tips for talking about this topic with your ADHD'er.