Systematic Racism and Autism

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Racial Disparities in the Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder

It should be noted that prejudices and stigma carried in the general population against certain races is "shockingly" also present in health professionals.

Plenty of evidence that doctors, mental health professionals will take varying interest in clients based on their racial background. Sometimes this may be due to lack of experience in dealing with people of different cultures.

One aspect is that autism diagnosis will be different for people living in different culteral backgrounds. For example, if one is living in a predominantly white culture and one is black, or one is living in a predominantly black culture and one is white, one naturally will be standing out as living different lifestyles and will have different ways in how one lives even if ones family has lived there for a few generations.
The result of this is that if a child who comes from the traditional background is autistic, and comes across as being different, they are more likely to notice it. If a child who is culturally different is autistic, they may not think of autism because they are thinking the child is different through culteral reasons.

It is also interesting that an autism assessor would struggle to assess people if they are flown half way across the world to another culture that may speak the same language, but the culteral differences make the assessor struggle to tell what ways are part of the culture and what ways are related to autism, and it can take decades of time to learn these culteral differences... So if an assessor relocates, they have to rely on local people working with them who know the cultural ways to be able to assess efficiently. (I heard this from a professor who had gone right around the world assessing people as part of his studies, and he had to rely on local assessors to work with him due to the culteral differences. His study actually concluded that right around the world the percentages of people on the spectrum are roughly the same).

But cultural differences and ways do give an extra complication when it comes to assessing people for autism.

Another similar difference is one that I personally found, is that I have a different background then most who live in my area, because my parents were/are different. This means that my autism traits (Bear in mind that I am waiting to be assessed) that I have found out I have were assumed by me and others to be due to my different way of life and so the different way of live was camaflaging the autistic traits... And I had also been forced to learn how to mask to fit in from an early age, and it is only when oes life starts to fall apart when one hits more serious conditions associated with not being diagnosed that one starts to desperately looks for answers in a last attempt to try and survive.

Yes. Cultural differences certainly do make a difference, but I would not go as far as calling it discrimination, as to discriminate means a purposful attempt has been made to discriminate rather than there being an issue that has been brought to light that needs to be looked at that many were not aware needed to be addressed. (Discrimination is a different thing as to discriminate means one has to make a purposfully informed decision to exclude some to favour others).