Why Are Taxpayer Funds Being Used to Perpetuate Stereotypes at Public Schools By Dr. Umar Johnson About Disabled Children?
- Jul 1
- 19 min read
Why are taxpayer funds being used across the country to perpetuate harmful stereotypes about disabled children? This question demands urgent attention, especially as public figures like Dr. Umar Johnson spread controversial and damaging views about autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, psychiatric diagnoses, and special education. These views not only misrepresent the realities of disability but also undermine the civil rights of disabled children and their families.
This article examines Dr. Johnson’s claims, the reality of special education and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), and the broader historical and social context of disability rights. It also highlights the harm caused when families are shamed for seeking support and how such rhetoric recycles old prejudices under the guise of racial empowerment.
Dr. Umar Johnson’s Claims and Their Impact
Dr. Umar Johnson has gained attention for his public statements on disabilities, particularly autism and ADHD, often framing these conditions as products of laziness, pharmaceutical greed, or systemic oppression designed to academically disenfranchise Black children. Some of his key claims include:
Many children in special education are simply lazy.
ADHD is largely a construct driven by pharmaceutical profits.
Special education acts as a pipeline to prison.
Autism and other disabilities are used to deny Black children proper education.
These assertions are deeply flawed and harmful. Labeling children as lazy ignores the neurological and developmental realities of disabilities. Suggesting that ADHD and autism are pharmaceutical inventions dismisses decades of research and the lived experiences of millions. Claiming special education is a prison pipeline confuses correlation with causation and misrepresents the purpose of educational support.
Understanding the Role of the IEP
The Individualized Education Program (IEP) is often misunderstood. Dr. Johnson’s rhetoric implies that the IEP itself is a harmful tool, but the truth is quite the opposite. An effective IEP is designed to provide tailored support to help disabled children succeed academically and socially.
The real issue is not the IEP but the disability itself and the systemic barriers disabled students face. Research shows that students with well-implemented IEPs have better educational outcomes and lower rates of involvement with the juvenile justice system. The IEP is a civil rights tool, ensuring access to education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Key statistics:
According to the U.S. Department of Education, students with disabilities who receive appropriate special education services graduate at higher rates than those who do not.
Studies indicate that early intervention and proper accommodations reduce behavioral issues and improve academic performance.
The “school-to-prison pipeline” is more accurately linked to exclusionary discipline practices, not the presence of an IEP.
The Danger of Denying Disabilities and Replacing Science with Ideology
History is filled with examples of people who claimed to protect children by denying disabilities, blaming families, or rejecting scientific evidence. From the eugenics movement to institutionalization, these ideologies caused immense harm. Today, similar patterns emerge when ideology replaces science in discussions about autism, ADD, ADHD, and other disabilities.
Denying disabilities or framing them as moral failings or conspiracies does not protect children. Instead, it delays diagnosis, prevents access to therapies and accommodations, and increases stigma. Families who seek evaluations, therapies, medication, or special education services are often unfairly accused of participating in oppression or harming their children.
This rhetoric shames parents and stigmatizes children who genuinely need support. It creates barriers to care and fosters mistrust in medical and educational professionals. The result is a community divided against itself, where disabled children suffer the most.
The Irony of Historical Stereotypes Recycled Today
Disabled people have long been labeled with harmful stereotypes: lazy, defective, morally weak, spoiled, possessed, criminal, or broken. These labels justified exclusion, abuse, and neglect. Today, some of this language is recycled under the banner of racial empowerment, ironically perpetuating the same stigma.
Calling children with autism or ADHD lazy or accusing families of complicity in oppression echoes past prejudices. It ignores the diversity and complexity of disability experiences and undermines disability rights as civil rights. Disabled people deserve respect, support, and inclusion.. not stigmatization.
Why Public Funds Should Support Disability Rights, Not Stigma
It is troubling that taxpayer dollars and public platforms amplify messages that stigmatize autistic people, those with ADHD, and children with learning disabilities. Public funds should support evidence-based education, therapies, and accommodations that empower disabled children and their families.
Supporting disability rights means:
Ensuring access to accurate information and resources.
Providing adequate funding for special education and related services.
Promoting inclusive education that respects all students.
Challenging harmful stereotypes and misinformation.
Listening to disabled people and their families as experts in their own lives.
When Someone Tells You Not to Get Your Child Evaluated
Anti-evaluation rhetoric, your family's rights, and what to do instead
A Viera Advocacy Group explainer. We provide educational information, advocacy support, and training. We are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice. This article is general information, not advice about any individual case.
There is a message circulating in parent communities right now, and if you have not heard it yet, you will. It comes dressed in the language of love and protection. It says: do not let the school evaluate your child. Do not hand over that outside report. Do not consent to that behavior assessment. Do not accept that label. The school is not your friend. The IEP is a trap. Keep your kids out of special education.
It is delivered by charismatic people, sometimes to large and devoted audiences, and it lands because it contains a grain of something true. Schools can get things wrong. Children have been misidentified, over-disciplined, and failed. Parents should document everything and trust their instincts. Those things are real, and any honest advocate will tell you so.
But the grain of truth is wrapped around a core that can quietly devastate a disabled child. Because when a frightened parent acts on the full message, the result is not protection. The result is a child who needed help and did not get it, who was then misunderstood as lazy or defiant or "a behavior problem," and who was punished for needs that were never identified in the first place.
At Viera Advocacy Group, we work with families on exactly this terrain, and we have watched the cost of it up close. So this piece does two things. First, it explains what your child is actually entitled to under the law, in plain language, so that no slogan can talk you out of rights you did not know you had. Second, it gives you a vetted set of national resources you can use today, no matter what state you live in. We will use one unfolding situation in a small Virginia city as a running example, because it shows how this rhetoric stops being an abstract internet argument and starts shaping what happens to real children in real schools.
Let's start with the floor beneath your feet, the one the slogans want you to forget is there.
PART ONE: THE FLOOR. WHAT YOUR CHILD IS ACTUALLY OWED
Federal law does not treat special education as a favor. It treats it as a right, with a structure built to protect it. You do not have to be an attorney to understand the load-bearing pieces, and once you know them, a great deal of the fear that anti-evaluation rhetoric runs on simply loses its grip.
Child Find. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), school districts have an affirmative legal duty, called Child Find, to identify, locate, and evaluate children who may have a disability and may need special education. This duty exists whether or not you ask. It covers children who are struggling, children who are suspended frequently, and children who are falling through the cracks. A district cannot lawfully wait, ignore, or run out the clock. When someone tells you that asking for an evaluation invites trouble, understand what they are really doing: they are asking you to help the system avoid a duty it already owes your child.
Evaluations are free, and you can request one in writing. By law, school evaluations to determine whether a child has a disability are provided at no cost to the family. You can put a request in writing at any time. Dating it and keeping a copy matters because in special education, the paper trail is the case.
FAPE and the IEP. If a child is found eligible, the district must provide a Free Appropriate Public Education, or FAPE, through an Individualized Education Program (IEP). The IEP is not a label that follows a child like a sentence. It is a legally enforceable plan: goals, services, accommodations, and supports that the school is then obligated to deliver. The slogan that calls the IEP "incarceration education preparation" has it exactly backwards. The IEP is the document that obligates a school to support your child. Walking away from it does not free your child. It frees the school.
You are an equal member of the team. The law makes parents equal participants in the IEP process. Your consent is required for the initial evaluation and initial services. Your input belongs in the room. The framing that schools are an enemy to be starved of information collides head-on with a process the law designed to run on your information and your voice.
Section 504 and the ADA. Beyond IDEA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibit disability discrimination and retaliation by schools. Importantly, for disability discrimination claims, these protections reach public schools and public agencies regardless of funding technicalities. These are the laws that protect a child from being excluded, denied access, or punished for being disabled, and that protect a parent from retaliation for speaking up.
Restraint, seclusion, and the duty to report. When schools physically restrain a child or place a child in seclusion, those are among the most dangerous things that can happen to a student, and they fall disproportionately on children with disabilities. States have requirements for documenting and reporting such incidents to the state education agency. That reporting is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the mechanism by which a state can see patterns across schools and intervene. Hold onto this point. It returns later, and it matters more than almost anything else here.
That is the floor. Now look at what the rhetoric asks you to do to it.
PART TWO: HOW ANTI-EVALUATION RHETORIC ACTUALLY WORKS
To see why this messaging is so corrosive, it helps to look at a concrete example rather than a caricature. In a small city in Franklin, Virginia, a nationally touring speaker, Dr. Umar Johnson, was featured at a public community celebration. He has a large following and tours the country addressing predominantly Black audiences about education and family. He is, by design, provocative.
His right to speak is not in question. The First Amendment protects inflammatory and offensive speech, and it protects his. Anyone who tells you a speaker like this can simply be arrested for the content of his message is wrong about the law, and building your understanding on that mistake will only mislead you. The point of examining his message is not to silence it. It is to inoculate parents against it, because the specific content maps directly onto the legal protections we just walked through.
Consider what the message tells parents to do, drawn from widely circulated public statements, and what each instruction would actually cost a child:
He tells parents that an outside evaluation "should never end up in school," and to stop sharing evaluations with schools. The cost: schools often need that documentation to satisfy Child Find, establish eligibility, and build accommodations. Withholding it does not protect the child. It strips the team of the information that triggers services.
He tells parents never to consent to behavioral or emotional evaluations. The cost: those evaluations are how a child gets a functional behavior assessment, a behavior intervention plan, trauma support, or a safety plan. Refusing them does not keep a child out of a pipeline. It leaves a struggling child without the supports that prevent escalation and exclusion.
He frames the IEP as a road to prison, frames ADHD identification as a trigger for child protective services and forced medication, and frames psychiatric medication in language designed to make any parent who has considered it feel like an abuser. The cost: fear. A parent who absorbs this may avoid the pediatrician, hide a diagnosis, decline services, and disengage from the very meetings where the law makes them an equal voice.
He dismisses reading disability as fraudulent and recasts disabled children as lazy and their parents as negligent. The cost: this is stigma wearing the costume of empowerment. It reframes a child who needs structured literacy instruction or a speech evaluation as a discipline problem, which is precisely how disabled children end up punished instead of supported.
And in social media posts, he positions himself as the alternative to a child's own IEP team, inviting parents who feel "bullied and harassed by your child's school, principal, teacher or IEP team" to call him instead.
Read as a whole, the operational effect of this advice is unmistakable. It would lead a parent to withhold the evaluation that identifies a disability, refuse the assessment that produces a support plan, delay the early-childhood screening that, for a young autistic or speech-delayed child, is the difference between intervention inside a critical developmental window and intervention after it has closed, and treat the IEP team as a trap rather than a tool. In other words, it would persuade the parents of disabled children to dismantle, with their own hands, the federal protections their children depend on.
It is worth naming directly that Dr. Johnson's public rhetoric does not stop at special education. His statements extend into openly racial and separatist territory, including demeaning generalizations about white people and hostility toward friendships and relationships across racial lines, rhetoric many reasonably regard as racist. A compilation of his own public statements is included with this piece so you can hear it in his own words and judge for yourself. It is offered not to inflame but as relevant context, because when public resources and public institutions become associated with a speaker, the full content of that speaker's documented message is a fair matter for public awareness, particularly in a community where families of disabled children are at the same time raising disability-rights concerns.
You do not have to demonize the speaker to reject the advice. You only have to know the floor well enough to recognize that the advice asks you to tear it up.
PART THREE: THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME A PUBLIC SCHOOL SAID NO
There is a useful pattern here, and it is worth knowing, because it shows that questions about whether a public institution should platform this speaker are neither new nor fringe. They have been raised before, in public, more than once.
In January 2014, Portland Public Schools in Oregon canceled Dr. Umar Johnson's scheduled appearance at Jefferson High School, according to reporting by The Oregonian. The following year, in February 2015, Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland canceled a Black History Month event over concerns about his publicly stated views, as reported by outlets including BET. And in June 2016, the School District of Philadelphia abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance as a commencement speaker at a city high school, as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Three separate public educational institutions, across three states and three years, each reached a similar decision once his record came into view. None of this is censorship. He remained free to speak anywhere that would have him, and he has continued to draw large audiences. It is a series of public institutions deciding, independently, that lending their name and their venue to this particular speaker was not appropriate for the students they serve.
That track record is the relevant precedent for any community now examining its own institutions' choices. The question is simply whether local public bodies exercised the same diligence those other districts and colleges did, and if not, why not.
It also matters for a community committed to every child. A speaker whose public record includes stigmatizing an entire group of students is not a neutral choice for a publicly supported platform, particularly when the same speaker's message also discourages the disability identification and services that vulnerable students depend on. These are not separate concerns. They are the same one: whether public systems are protecting all students, or platforming messages that put some of them at risk.
PART FOUR: THE PART THAT MAKES THIS MORE THAN AN INTERNET ARGUMENT
Here is where the Virginia example stops being about one speaker's opinions and starts being about public accountability, which is the part every parent and every taxpayer has a stake in.
The celebration that featured this speaker was produced in association with a locally based nonprofit, Amun Ra. State corporate records identify a sitting member of the city's elected governing body as an officer of that nonprofit. Public-facing materials placed the city's identity alongside the event in a "partnership" framing, and the city's parks and recreation presence helped promote it. And at a public council meeting, an elected official stated, on the record, that the city used part of its funding for the event and promised an after-action accounting of, in the official's own framing, how tax dollars were spent.
That admission matters. It means the question is no longer whether public resources touched an event that platformed a message hostile to disability rights. By the city's own statement, they did. So, again, why are taxpayer funds being used to perpetuate stereotypes? What remains open is narrower: how much, toward what, and specifically whether any public money or in-kind support flowed toward the speaker's appearance as opposed to general festival costs. When an elected official is also an officer of the organization producing the event, and public funds flow toward it, the law has a name for the questions that follow. They are conflict-of-interest questions, and in Virginia, they are governed by the State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act. They are answered not by speculation but by records: disclosures, recusals, invoices, in-kind logs, and the promised public accounting.
This is not an accusation that anyone broke the law. It is the ordinary machinery of self-government. A community is allowed to ask how its money was spent, whether anyone with a personal stake participated in the decision, and whether the accounting it was promised was ever delivered. Those questions belong to everyone, regardless of politics.
And notice the timing, because it is the heart of why this is a disability-rights story and not merely a budget story. In that same community, at that same time, families of children with disabilities say they have been fighting their school system for the exact evaluations, services, and protections the platformed message tells parents to refuse. When a public institution lends its resources or its name to a message openly hostile to the legal rights of disabled children, in a place where disabled children's families say those rights were being denied, the convergence is enough to warrant questions. Not a verdict. Questions, framed honestly, supported by records.
PART FIVE: ZERO IS A NUMBER WORTH STARING AT
Set the speaker aside entirely now. Set aside the event, the funding, and the conflict questions. There is a concern in this story that needs no ideological frame at all, and it may be the most important thing in this entire article for the safety of children.
Special education in many districts runs partly through regional cooperatives that serve several school divisions at once. These regional programs are common, and they are also where some of the most serious incidents occur: restraint, seclusion, and the handling of students with significant behavioral and communication needs. The distance between a child's classroom and the district nominally responsible for that child can become a place where accountability gets lost.
State law requires that serious incidents like restraint and seclusion be reported to the state education agency. Reporting is the early-warning system. It is how a state notices that a particular program restrains children at alarming rates, the way an aviation regulator spots a dangerous pattern by aggregating incident reports no single airline would flag on its own. Without reporting, there is no pattern detection. Without pattern detection, there is no oversight. Without oversight, the children least able to advocate for themselves are the most exposed.
In the Virginia situation, the concern raised is that the public record reportedly shows zero such incidents reported by the district to the state, a count that sits in stark tension with families' firsthand accounts of incidents involving restraint, seclusion, and safety.
Zero is a remarkable number. You get zero from one of two places: a district that has achieved something close to a miracle, or a district that is not reporting. If families' accounts are credible, the second explanation is the one that demands examination. A reporting failure of that kind is not a paperwork lapse. It would mean the state has been structurally blind to whatever has been happening to disabled students in those programs, unable to see patterns, unable to intervene, unable to protect.
This question requires no theory about anyone's motives. It is a matter of counting. How many incidents occurred, how many were reported, and why those two numbers do not match. It is exactly the kind of question an audit exists to answer, and exactly the kind of question parents in any district can learn to ask about their own schools.
PART SIX: A WORD FOR PARENTS WHO ARE AFRAID TO SPEAK
We work with parents who have reached the point of being afraid to raise concerns at all. Afraid of retaliation. Afraid of being labeled difficult. Afraid that naming an uncomfortable pattern will get them dismissed as the problem rather than heard as a parent.
That fear is not irrational, and we will not pretend it is. But here is what we tell the families we walk alongside, and it is the throughline of everything Viera does.
The way to be heard is not to make the loudest possible claim. It is to make the most documented one. When a concern is wrapped inside an overstatement, an assertion of motive you cannot prove, a legal premise that turns out to be wrong, an inference dressed up as a fact, anyone who would rather not address it is handed an easy exit. They do not have to answer the documented part. They only have to point at the overreach and let everything fall with it.
The careful version is the one that cannot be waved away. It says: here is what happened, here is the record, here is the line between what I know and what I suspect, and here are the questions I am entitled to have answered. It asks for an inquiry rather than declaring a conclusion, which means the only way to make it disappear is to actually answer it. That is not timidity. In our experience it is the single most powerful posture a parent can take, and it is the one that keeps the focus where it belongs: on the child, on the law, and on the records.
If you take one thing from this section, take this. You are allowed to ask hard questions about how a public institution treated your child. Ask them in writing. Tie each one to a document or a date. Keep the focus on disability, on the law, and on equal treatment. Framed that way, your questions are not a liability. They are the record that protects you.
PART SEVEN: YOUR ACTION TOOLKIT AND VETTED NATIONAL RESOURCES
Knowledge is only protective if you can act on it. Here is a starting toolkit and a set of national, verifiable resources that work in every state. Contact details change, so we link to the directories that keep them current rather than to any single local number.
If a child may have a disability and needs help
Put your evaluation request in writing. Address it to the school and special education director, date it, describe your specific concerns, and ask for a full evaluation under Child Find. Keep a copy. Email creates an automatic timestamp.
Find your state's Parent Training and Information Center (PTI). Every state and territory has at least one, funded under IDEA, providing free information and support to families of children with disabilities from birth to age 26. They help you understand your rights and prepare for meetings. Find yours through the Center for Parent Information and Resources (CPIR) at parentcenterhub.org.
Connect with your state's Protection and Advocacy (P&A) agency. Every state and territory has a congressionally mandated, legally based disability rights agency, part of the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN). P&As provide advocacy and, in many cases, legal representation, and they have specific authority to investigate abuse and neglect of people with disabilities, including in schools and facilities. Find yours at ndrn.org under member agencies, or through the federal directory at acl.gov (Find Your P&A Agency).
If you need an advocate or attorney
The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) is a national nonprofit focused on the rights of students with disabilities. Its site offers guidance on choosing an advocate or attorney and a directory of professionals. Start at copaa.org. When selecting an advocate, ask about training and experience; the field is not formally licensed, so the questions you ask matter.
If your child has been restrained, secluded, or you suspect incidents are going unreported
Document everything: dates, times, what your child reported, any marks or distress, and every communication from the school. Request the school's records and incident reports in writing. Ask your district, in writing, how it reports restraint and seclusion to the state. Your P&A agency is a particularly important contact here, because investigating abuse and neglect of people with disabilities is squarely within its federal mandate. COPAA and the Alliance Against Restraint and Seclusion also maintains resources on ending restraint and seclusion.
If you believe your child faced disability discrimination or retaliation
You can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces Section 504 and Title II in schools. A few specifics worth knowing, drawn from OCR's own guidance:
A complaint must ordinarily be filed within 180 calendar days of the last act of discrimination, though waivers for good cause exist.
You do not have to be the victim. You can file on behalf of your child or another person.
You are not required to use the school's internal grievance process first. But if you do use it and then come to OCR, you generally must file with OCR within 60 days of the school process concluding.
Retaliation is itself a violation. If a school retaliates against you for advocating or complaining, that is independently something you can bring to OCR.
You can find the electronic complaint form and instructions on OCR's pages at ed.gov (search "file a complaint OCR").
A practical note for the current moment: federal enforcement priorities can shift between administrations, and timelines and emphases at any federal agency can change. That is one more reason to use your state-level tools, your PTI and your P&A, in parallel rather than relying on a single channel. State special education complaint systems and state disability rights agencies operate independently of federal enforcement.
For autism-specific support and a neuro-affirming frame
When you seek autism information, look for sources that respect autistic people as whole people with strengths, not deficits to be erased. Be cautious with any source that frames autism through fear, blame, or discredited claims about causation, because that framing delays the early identification and support that actually helps children thrive. Your PTI and P&A can point you toward neuro-affirming, evidence-based local resources, and many autistic-led organizations offer parent guidance grounded in acceptance rather than fear.
PART EIGHT: THE BOTTOM LINE - Why Are Taxpayer Funds Being Used to Perpetuate Stereotypes?
A slogan told you the IEP is a prison and the evaluation is a trap. The law tells a different story. The IEP is the document that obligates a school to support your child. The evaluation is the key that unlocks services your child is entitled to receive for free. Child Find means the duty to look for your struggling child belongs to the school, not just to you. Section 504 and the ADA mean your child cannot be discriminated against, and you cannot be retaliated against for speaking up. And the requirement to report restraint and seclusion means a state is supposed to be watching, which only works if districts actually report.
When public figures, or public institutions, or public funds become entangled with a message that tells parents to surrender these protections, the right response is not panic and it is not silence. It is knowledge, documentation, and questions framed carefully enough that they cannot be dismissed. That is true whether the question is about your own child's IEP or about how your city spent its money or about why a district, such as FCPS, reported zero incidents in a year that families remember very differently.
You are not difficult for asking. You are not a problem for documenting. You are a parent standing on a floor the law built for your child, and you have every right to refuse to let anyone talk you off of it.
Viera Advocacy Group provides neuro-affirming, trauma-informed special education and disability rights advocacy, including IEP and 504 review, evidence organization, and support through school meetings and state complaints. Much of our educational work is offered freely to families who need it. If this helped you, consider sharing it with a parent who needs it, or subscribing to our newsletter for more plain-language guides.
This article is educational information, not legal advice. Viera Advocacy Group LLC is not a law firm. For advice about your specific situation, consult your state's Parent Training and Information Center, your Protection and Advocacy agency, or a qualified special education attorney.
Final Thoughts
The question remains: why are taxpayer funds used to spread harmful stereotypes about disabled children? The answer lies in a dangerous mix of misinformation, ideology, and misunderstanding. Disabled children deserve better. They deserve support grounded in science, respect, and civil rights.
Families should never be shamed for seeking help. The IEP is not a pipeline to prison; it is a pathway to opportunity. History warns us about the consequences of denying disabilities and replacing science with ideology. Today, we must choose to protect disability rights and reject rhetoric that harms the very children it claims to defend.
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