Struggling in school and not knowing why, getting placed in a separate class, and being marked as disabled can have a deep and lasting impact on a student. Schools in the United States employ biases and misconceptions about learning disabilities, even though they are the very places in which these notions should be non-existent. These biases and misconceptions become specifically salient when examining the intersection between race and the diagnosis of a learning disability. Students of color are disproportionately represented in having a learning disability. Learning disabilities have become a racial project used to stigmatize minority students. This is not to say that learning disabilities and neurodivergency do not exist in a neuroscientific context; however, their construction
in the American school system is not contingent on neuroscience, but on one’s ability to perform in a white supremacist neoliberal environment. This paper strives to answer why this happens and how race impacts the diagnosis of a learning disability. This disproportionality can be attributed to cultural and linguistic factors that differ from white norms and values being misconstrued by white teachers, pedagogical failures, and correlating low achievement with learning disabilities. Moreover, examining the intersection of race, gender, and class is necessary; males of color and low-income students of color are particularly vulnerable to stereotyping from teachers.
 

Learning Disabilities (LD) are a social construct that were created to normalize a single learning style and to demarcate anyone who does not fit in. School systems often conceptualize LD as a biologically reified developmental failure in children that hinders them from succeeding in school. McDermott (2001) instead contends that it is a social category that exists in American culture. He says that “without social arrangements for making something of differential rates of learning, there is no such thing as LD” (272). Thus, American school systems have established a right and wrong way of learning in the classroom such that students are either able-minded or disabled. Moreover, a student’s value is ascribed to their ability to fit into this system, not what they are learning or their improvement over time. It is important to discover not just what the system is, but who created this system and why.

The creation of LD was a racial and political project constructed by white middle-class parents and educators to promote the well-being of their children only and protect them from being labeled the harmful stereotypes that were being applied to Black and Brown students. Sleeter (2010) attributes the rise of LD to the pressures to revamp the American education system during the Cold War to compete better with Russia in the mid-1960s-1970s. The recommendation for American schools was to strengthen their reading

instruction, group students based on their ability, and have a better teacher teach the top students. The desegregation of schools in the United States was occurring simultaneously. Black and Brown students were seen as a hindrance to the improvement of America’s
education system. Thus, four “syndromes” were created to classify lower class and minority students: “mentally r*tarded, slow learner, emotionally disturbed, and culturally deprived” (222-223). However, when there happened to be some white middle-class students in the below-average classes diagnosed with one of these syndromes, their parents were infuriated. They recruited doctors to say that their child had suffered a mild brain injury because they could not fathom having their children being demarcated in the same way as Black and Brown students. This association of LD with exclusively Black and Brown students reified LD into “a category that was used politically by concerned parents and educators who believed white middle class failing children should not be failing or at least should suffer the consequences of school failure as little as possible” (234). However, these parents had no qualms about employing racist and classist stereotypes to further degrade and mark Black and Brown students.

Since the conception of LD, students of color are overrepresented in the category of LD than their white peers. The following percentages of students at public schools that are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act from 2019-to 2020: “White students – 14.7%, Black students – 16.6%, Hispanic students – 13.8%, Asian students – 7.1% Pacific Islander students – 11.2%, American Indian/Alaska Native students – 18.3%, and Two or more race students – 15.4%” (EducationWeek). The following are demographics of students at public high schools in the United States from the 2019-2020 school year: “White students – 45.8%, Black students – 15%, Hispanic students – 28%, Asian – 5.4%, Pacific Islander students –.4%, American Indian students – .9%, and Two or more races – 4.5% (Statista).” As evidenced in these statistics, students of color are disproportionately represented, especially Native American and Black students.
 

Educators’ and school systems’ biases which cause them to misunderstand different cultural and linguistic backgrounds are one of the reasons that Black and Brown students are disproportionately represented as having LD. These biases are extremely dangerous when considering the racial demographics of teachers and students. Studies show that the student diversity is rapidly increasing, while teachers are predominantly white. A prominent example of this is when educators misinterpret limited English language proficiency in Hispanic or Latinx students as them having a LD. In Santa Barbara, Latino students are significantly disproportionately represented as having a learning disability: “Children from Latinx families are 3.43 times more likely to be identified as having learning disabilities than their white peers in the Santa Barbara Unified School District” (Weis 2020). This disproportionality is occurring because educators do not distinguish between LD and issues with learning, comprehending, and analyzing the English language due to the monolingual culture in the United States. However, diagnostic criteria for LD neglects the fact that many students are forced to work in their second or third language, something extremely difficult. The result is a lack of understanding from school systems resulting in racialized bodies being stigmatized.

Pedagogical and implementation failures impact why minority students get overrepresented in receiving an LD diagnosis. Both the pedagogy of American schools as a whole and the pedagogy of the LD diagnosis process are flawed and problematic. American pedagogy thrives on the American ideal of individuality. Diagnosis of LD obscures the racist standardized way of learning praised in the American school system and makes students believe that there is something wrong with them as opposed to something being wrong with the system. There are also biases and shortcomings in the pedagogy of both the referral and the diagnosis process for an LD. The Santa Barbara school system found that there are no “clear and consistent systems to intervene when multilingual students are struggling” (Weis 2020). Educators do not focus on making or implementing policies because it is more convenient to map LD onto Hispanic students. They do not bother to engage in the research to unlearn the biased idea that everyone is on the same playing field and learn that judging multilingual students with monolingual standards is unacademic. Teachers merely refer to these students for services even that are not needed. When proper protocols for a diverse student body are not made and teachers are not trained adequately to combat their inherent biases, Black and Brown students get misdiagnosed.
 

The low achievement model is another reason for which minority students are disproportionately represented in getting an LD diagnosis. The low achievement model refers to the justification for an LD when there is either a discrepancy between one’s IQ and performance at school or when a student performs poorly in school or on an IQ test. However, this disproportionately impacts students of color for multiple reasons. Firstly, IQ tests are notoriously culturally biased to favor white middle-class students. In the case Larry P v. Rillies (1979), the court ruled that the IQ tests were the reason that African American students were overrepresented in special education classes. Despite this legal precedent, IQ tests are still used today to diagnose LD and there are accusations that it is
still culturally biased. This model assumes that underperforming always implies a LD. Shrifer et. al (2011) examines the problems with the low achievement model and they find that it does “not identify whether a child’s low achievement is commensurate with his or her ability” (247). Shrifer is pointing to the misconception that low achievement must imply disability, without accounting for extenuating circumstances that affect performance such as struggles with mental health, stressors at home, and poverty, all of which disproportionately affect Black and Brown students.
 

The intersection of race and gender has an impact on how students are diagnosed with LD. Males are more likely to be diagnosed with a LD than females (there are little to no statistics or studies about this including nonbinary students). According to the OSEP, males are 2.7 times more likely to be identified as having an LD. Banks (2017) did an ethnography on the experience of Black high school students who were diagnosed with LD. Through centering the voices and the lived experiences of these students, she brought to light the interdependence of racism and ableism. Black students are faced with a double bind in that they must prove themselves and break the resounding stereotypes and labels imposed on them, but cannot do so without self-advocacy as it will likely be misinterpreted for aggression. Gregory, one of the students interviewed, said that “they always saw me as aggressive...these teachers are never going to stop labeling me, stop judging me no matter what I do.” The intersection of Gregory’s identity as a Black male
with an LD makes him particularly vulnerable to stereotyping and labeling. Gregory’s experience speaks to the fact that school systems and educators inherently have unconscious biases causing them to constantly label and stigmatize students different from them, which inevitably end up being Black men.
 

Low-income students of color get doubly stigmatized which increases their susceptibility to being diagnosed with an LD. The low-achievement model and the labels of a “slow learner” and being “culturally deprived” are entrenched in harmful stereotypes. The criteria for “slow learner” and “culturally deprived” assume that low-income students of color have inherent deficiencies because they “did not value intellectual work and lacked values necessary for success in school and society, such as delayed gratification, individuality, and the belief that hard work brings success” (Sleeter 223). These values are of individuality and the belief that hard work brings success is explicitly American values. People in poverty and people of color are often seen as not being American. This rationale specifically harms low-income students and students of color and contributes to the disproportionality of LD diagnoses because schools are entrenched in neoliberalism and white supremacy.
 

There have been attempts by white education scholars to discredit the fact that minority students are overrepresented in LD diagnoses. However, when examining both the historical context and the current American school system, it is evident that these attempts are baseless. Black and brown students have been, are, and likely will be overrepresented in students who have an LD. The reasons for this include misunderstanding and misinterpreting cultural and language differences, using the low-achievement model, and pedological failures. Ultimately, American school systems were designed for and continue to operate such that white middle-class students are favored. LD started as and continues to exist as a racial project: Black and Brown students are made to believe there is something inherently wrong with them, but in reality, they are ostracized for not phenotypically or behaviorally fitting into the homogenous, Euro-centric, neoliberal standard of learning established in American schools. As seen time and time again in
American history, educational institutions are inexplicable from white supremacy leading to non-white students being seen as the problem for not succeeding.