Black disabled individuals suffer significant disparities in biomedical and educational systems. This can include difficulties with the diagnostic process and accessing the proper amount and types of services and care in both systems. In the education system, in particular, a Black child’s placement in a segregated special education classroom can have detrimental lifetime outcomes such as high-than-average experiences with police violence, mass incarceration, and chronic unemployment post-high school. This systemic violence is perpetuated and maintained by everyday humans, anti-Black ideologies, racism, and ableism. These ideological stances can take the shape of tropes about Black culture, such as “Black people miss-trust the medical system” and “Black people don’t talk about autism.” Tropes such as these place the blame for health and education disparities squarely on the shoulders of Black parents. Families are also navigating linguistic processes that silence Black voices and requests for progress, such as color mute language and demands for decorous behavior.

In this dissertation, I explore how four different mothers engage in the process of “gaming the system” as a means of providing safety, care, and a path to a good life for their disabled children. Each chapter is an in-depth look at the lived experiences of each mother. I follow the ways that these parents think about and interact with the categories of race and disability. The mothers in the following chapters often face unimaginably complex systems like the education system, which present seemingly impossible problems for them to solve on behalf of their children. To make sure that their children get access to the appropriate supports, services, and accommodations, the mothers make parenting choices that, at first glance, seem immoral, wrong, and problematic. This includes actively seeking a misdiagnosis as it is a more protective diagnosis. Paying close attention to the experience near, I argue that these mothers’ refusal or acceptance of autism and the corresponding services can show the multitude of ways that parents are enacting errant possibilities of care to protect and provide a good life for their disabled children.