Two largely unsuspected groups are actively and deceptively fostering racism throughout the world. These groups are psychiatry and psychology. It is therefore ironic when a leading psychiatrist like Adrian James warns that racism is “a strain on the NHS.”
He states the NHS has a moral, ethical and legal duty to boost efforts to stamp out racism. With this in mind, consider the following with reference to his profession.
For centuries, psychiatrists and psychologists have provided the ‘scientific’ justification for racism and the resultant abuse, assault and genocide of targeted races and groups.
In 1797 psychiatrist Benjamin Rush, the ‘father of American psychiatry’ declared the colour of Blacks was caused by a rare, inherited disease called ‘Negritude,’ which derived from leprosy. He said the only evidence of a “cure” was when the skin turned white. This ‘disease’ was used as a reason for segregation so that Whites would not be ‘infected.’
In 1883, English psychologist Francis Galton created the term ‘eugenics’ from the Greek word eugenes, meaning ‘good stock.’ He encouraged using ‘better’ human stock from which to breed and discouraged what he considered ‘less desirable’ stock from having children, evidently considering himself part of the ‘better’ stock and thereby capable of judging the future for all humanity.
Eugenics developed into the concept of ‘racial hygiene’ which was widely popularised by German and American psychiatrists and which later fuelled Hitler, giving him ‘scientific reason’ for the forced sterilisation and outright killing of millions of ‘inferior’ people.
Psychiatric atrocities didn’t end with World War II. In 1958, psychologist Hendrik Verwoerd became South Africa’s Prime Minister. He is known as the architect of apartheid, having studied psychology in Nazi influenced Germany.
He issued the country’s first segregation policy in the 1930s, laying the groundwork for apartheid and with it, secret psychiatric slave labour camps. Tens of thousands of black South Africans were incarcerated in the camps during the apartheid era and allowed to die from untreated medical conditions.
And then there are the words of Nelson Mandela. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom he stated, “Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud …
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another… The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement.”
The psychiatric sources of apartheid and similar ‘extraordinary human disasters’ must be clearly identified to achieve a humane society. We must therefore continue to identify and limit the influence of the exact source of this social poison – psychiatrists and psychologists.
Read more about psychiatry’s involvement in racism: Creating Racism: Psychiatry’s Betrayal
