It was in that context that Dorothy Groomer, the mother of a young African-American man named Steven, explained to the makers of the 2002 documentary Refrigerator Mothers that “a whole team of doctors” from the University of Illinois refused to diagnose her son with autism, though he displayed all of the classic signs. “They said, ‘No — it may be an emotional disturbance, but it was not autism.’ We did not fit the classic mold for autism, which is white, upper middle class, and very, very bright.”
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