Culture
There are three patterns that are well known in regards to mainstream students and minority labels in the United States:

"A higher percentage of minority children than of white children are assigned to special education";
"within special education, white children are assigned to less restrictive programs than are their minority counterparts";
"the data — driven by inconsistent methods of diagnosis, treatment, and funding — make the overall system difficult to describe or change".In the present day, it has been reported that white districts have more children from minority backgrounds enrolled in special education than they do majority students. "It was also suggested that districts with a higher percentage of minority faculty had fewer minority students placed in special education suggesting that minority students are treated differently in predominantly white districts than in predominantly minority districts".Educators have only recently started to look into the effects of culture on learning disabilities. If a teacher ignores a students culturally diverse background, the student will suffer in the class. "The cultural repertoires of students from cultural learning disorder backgrounds have an impact on their learning, school progress, and behavior in the classroom". These students may then act out and not excel in the classroom and will, therefore, be misdiagnosed: "Overall, the data indicates that there is a persistent concern regarding the misdiagnosis and inappropriate placement of students from diverse backgrounds in special education classes since the 1975". Social roots of learning disabilities in the U.S.
Learning disabilities have a disproportionate identification of racial and ethnic minorities and students who have low socioeconomic status (SES).
One such difficulty was its belief of central nervous system dysfunction as a basis of understanding and diagnosing learning disability. This conflicted with the fact that many individuals who experienced central nervous system dysfunction, such as those with cerebral palsy, did not experience disabilities in learning. On the other hand, those individuals who experienced multiple handicapping conditions along with learning disability frequently received inappropriate assessment, planning, and instruction. The NJCLD notes that it is possible for learning disability to occur simultaneously with other handicapping conditions, however, the two should not be directly linked together or confused. In the 1980s, NJCLD, therefore, defined the term learning disability as: a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to Central Nervous System Dysfunction. Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g. sensory impairment, intellectual disability, social and emotional disturbance) or environmental influences (e.g. cultural differences, insufficient/inappropriate instruction, psychogenic factors) it is not the direct result of those conditions or influences. The 2002 LD Roundtable produced the following definition:Concept of LD: Strong converging evidence supports the validity of the concept of specific learning disabilities (SLD). This evidence is particularly impressive because it converges across different indicators and methodologies. The central concept of SLD involves disorders of learning and cognition that are intrinsic to the individual.