This view influenced how all the diagnostic guidelines were written, and created a feedback loop that endured for decades: the Autistics who got diagnosed were primarily wealthy white boys, and those boys continued to set the standard of what Autism was and how it was understood in the studies that followed.[61] The few white girls who were diagnosed had to be very obviously “masculine” in how their Autism presented. Nonwhite Autistics were instead identified as defiant, antisocial, or schizophrenic—all disorders that made it easier to incarcerate them, or forcibly place them in
...more
