Maria Davis-Pierre is the founder and CEO of Autism in Black, a group that provides autism information and awareness to families in the black community. When her daughter was only six months old, Maria Davis-Pierre noticed that she had such a slow response to loud noises that she began immediately to wonder if she had autism. As a mental health therapist, she had experience working in the school system with children, and she knew that early intervention was important. By the time her daughter was 18 months, there was no doubt that it was autism, but the doctors wanted to wait until she was three years old. That’s when Maria camped out in the doctor’s office every day until he finally agreed to give her a diagnosis.
Both Maria and her husband had medical backgrounds, and they knew that early treatment for autism would improve the trajectory of their daughter’s life. But for many black children, the statistics paint a different picture. 47% of black children who have autism also have an intellectual disability. This is double the burden of white children, who only have a 27% chance of having both. Even though these statistics are laid out along race, it’s important to note that this has nothing to do with genetics and it has everything to do with access to diagnosis and treatment.
For Maria, who’d already been advocating within the black community, she saw that the stigma and bias from both inside and outside the black community were hindering black children with autism from getting the help they needed in a timely fashion. Racial bias, the distrust between the medical community and the black community, and religion are just a few of the outside forces that affect a black child’s diagnosis.
I realized early on as I was advocating for Lucas that my background gave me an advantage over other parents. My education and socioeconomic status gave me privilege over other parents who just didn’t have the same resources that I did, and I wanted to change things for those other parents who don’t have the same advantages. Maria felt the same call to be an advocate for black children with autism. That’s one of the reasons that her organization focuses on training therapists to be culturally responsive as they provide therapy.
Maria is hosting an Autism in Black virtual conference on April 1-3, 2021, and she is looking for attendees and speakers to discuss this topic. If you’d like to be involved in her work, she invites you to contact her through her website.
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