Aspergers and Ethnicity

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Hey everyone.

I'm new to this, and am very glad to have found a website dedicated to Asperger's Syndrome.

I'm a 20 year old female and I self diagnosed myself as having AS about 1 yr ago after solid research on the disorder. I am hoping to seek a professional to get a proper diasgnosis at some point soon, but either way, i am confident I have it (nothing else describes my weirdness so flawlessly)! !

About the topic of my thread, I recently read on a facebook thread on AS, that AS affects white people, particularly those in north and western europe greater than anyone else. Does anyone know if there is any truth to this?
Initially I assumed that AS (and autism) could randomly affect anyone of any race equally. It would be very interesting to know more about this as I myself am black caribbean.

It can affect any ethnicity. It just seems that it's mostly white people because of the "white and nerdy" stereotype thye often show in films. Or maybe it's more common in western countries because they are more advanced in thier doctors and stuff?
That's just my take on it

I don't think anyone is being assessed for ASD's as an adult often enough by professionals, and when they do assess, they are usually unconsciously biased by thinking of white with AS.

I think screening for ASD's should be part of any comprehensive medical or psychological assessment. However, only specialists in ASD's tend to do it well.

White people tend to be richer and more educated, so they're more likely to get a diagnosis.

I have AS and i am black it was easy for me to get diagnosis because of all my over problems that i have got other then AS syndrome.

It's just that in western culture, dominated by white people, differences & alternative lifestyles are accepted. There is a lot of focus on individuals.

Minorities & old-world cultures tend to be much more traditional. The focus is more on the community & differences that divide are not accepted nearly as much.

There's probably not a difference in numbers of aspies among different ethnicities. However, western culture would encourage someone to break out, find themselves, & embrace their differences, while a more traditional culture would surpress such individuality.

The first 2 people I met who said they had Asperger's syndrome were black and Hispanic. The first person who I met in person from Wrong Planet is Filipino.

if it indeed is Genetics it might very well be connected with Ethnicity.. my first impression was that people along the Western Europeans coast seem to be more affected like the Irish and so on...

also many Filipino, blacks and Hispanics have European roots without knowing it...

i wish there were more data on this, but since the western "predominantly" white world is the richest we would of course see more ASD here due to hi-tech medical ect facilities..

could be that only europe and north america "has time" for such diagnoses

i doubt that aspergers would be an issue in a 3rd world country, where _everyone_ are having a crap time, and relative subtleties such as aspergers would go ignored.
i still remember reading on spanish wikipedia, how hobos and homeless are often aspies :S

NO. What it probably means is wthe western medical and academic systems are stupid enough to get fixated on classifications as if they are the NEW LAW or some such thing.

Do not worry, it will bleed out into non-white populations like everything else rotten about the establishment.

in saying that, a dx has brought me relief - so long as i reframe it as a positive and not a negative. (see Glider 18's Wonderful Wolrd of Autism thread in the genrral discussion section at present.! )

Or they have other names for the same phenomena..

In Japan for instance, there's a word for a-boy-locked-inside-his-room-24/7. Like Len from Digimon 2.0 or something-or-other.

Possibly, some cultures cast shame on people who are the parents of "different" kids.
But retro-actively, some cultures might just call those kids gifted.

I mean, I've heard stories of native american(Indian, what/ever, stupid europenans really aren't good at naming stuff, never have been, SORRY) tribes who actually solved the issue of intergrating homosexuality and transsexuality into their gender-bound structure: Men into men would forage with the women, and Women into women would go out and do the bloody, gorey stuff. They called them the "third gender" apparently.

Pretty cool, seeing perfectly fine solutions to modern-day issues being forgotten.
But I highly doubt many people who don't know overly much about western culture will start using western alphabet-shortnote for stuff they already have worked out, good or bad.

i think I've seen it asked if it's more predominant amongst Jews

I read recently (a dodgy source admittedly) that there was no autism in the Amish community. I guess because their gene pool is pretty small. Anyone know if this is true?

I think there was a research study that was looking into genetics. I think it was Ashkenazi jews. I think it was because they had a tradition of marrying people within their own communities, so it was easier to try to find the genetic anomalies, in much the same way as the population of Iceland has been subject of kinds of genetic research, because they're also a comparatively isolated, inter-marrying population.

If you try to compare, say, african american, with Icelandic, with Ashkenazi jewish, with Samoan, with Chinese, with Nigerian or whatever, there would automatically be a heck of a lot of genetic differences, relating to colour of skin and hair colour and texture, and eye colour and so on, which would make it more difficult to track down the differences that are significant markers for Asperger's or autism generally. When you compare a like with like population, you're not going to get so many differences, because, hair, eye, skin colour etc will be similar, so the main differences you're going to get flagged up are genetic anomalies and diseases, I guess.

As for perhaps why fewer black youths are diagnosed, well, my theory is that they are probably just written off as naughty or bad. I say this because I grew up and went to school in the 1970s and 80s and wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult. I had some behavioural problems at school, was suspended a few times. Mostly I was restless and naughty because I was bored, because the lessons weren't challenging enough. I was lucky to have a high IQ and to be quite gifted academically. I can easily imagine that someone having similar problems who wasn't so academically gifted being punished more severely and being excluded. I'm aware that statistically speaking, black boys are more likely to be excluded than other groups. (I just vaguely remember reading something to that effect, can't remember where or when.)

Tying the two together, if you get an Aspie black boy, and if he starts misbehaving, having meltdowns or just challenging authority (which a lot of Aspies do, because if something doesn't seem logical, we'll often object or speak out against it, which some teachers will interpret as disobedience), then instead of being referred to an educational psychologist, they're probably more likely to ended up labeled as bad and excluded.

i dont know much about this, but i think i got it correct when i am thinking about the religious peoples who live without modern technology right? if so i would not expect to see much ASD with them as they would probably not use technology to find out what was wrong or different.... i might very well be wrong though...

the problem with societies that are closed is that they tend to find their "own" quazi scientific explanation for what happens and so on..