Home » Issues » Racism » Racism

Racism Cont.

Once it was culturally and politically acceptable for psychiatrists to invent the so-called “mental disease,” “drapetomania”—the impulse of a slave to seek freedom. Today, it is both culturally and financially acceptable for psychiatrists to stigmatize with the label “mentally ill” those minority groups who are protesting racial oppression, educational discrimination and economic favoritism. Their cry is not a “mental illness,” but rather the result of a sane and fundamental impulse to survive, and a valid protest against injustice.

Psychiatrists have targeted minority children, who are over-represented in Special Education in the United States and drugged.

  • In May 2003, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) unanimously passed a resolution supporting federal legislation to protect children from being forced onto psychiatric drugs in schools.

  • In December 1999, the National Caucus of Black State Legislators unanimously passed a resolution that called for a national investigation into “the use of all psychiatric drugs and their effects on children in this nation.” This followed a Christian Science Monitor article reporting that a New York study had found “minority boys [in New York] are 11 times more likely to be on [stimulant] medication than is the general student body.”

    • The pages in this section provide information and facts about psychiatry’s role in creating modern racism and betraying in the name of help.

    Go to Racism