BY SUDI YUSUF
Throughout this research, the terms "Black" and "African-American" are used interchangeably when referring to people of African descent and their descendants. In the text, the word "Black" begins with a capital letter, as is customary to indicate the status of Black individuals as a people, so the word "White" in reference to people of European origin will also be capitalized. Over the past 500 years all over the world, Black people have been subjugated, enslaved and sometimes even exterminated from each other. Sometimes these acts were committed in the name of a king or queen, other times in the name of a tribe or country. Often they were committed in the name of God.
These actions have always been committed to consolidate and extend the power of a few. In a social system designed to achieve superiority and domination, the experience of that system shapes its people (racial/ethnic group) so that they can function, in the terminology of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, as "functional superiors" or oppressors as opposed to "others" who are reduced to the role of "functional inferiors*" or the oppressed. The events of the past decades and centuries have made it clear to all thoughtful citizens that racism pervasively influences all institutions of our society. Many actions of the United States of America throughout its history continue to conflict with its credo that "all men are created equal". Unfortunately, the belief in the reality of human races based on biology and racism is still widespread in the United States and Western Europe.
How is this possible when there is so much scientific evidence against this phenomenon? The purpose of this research is to present the consequences of racist ideologies and their institutions on the mental health of those who are victims of them. In this regard, what are the impacts of racism as an institution on the mental health of African-American populations in the United States? This paper provides an overview of research on how racism can affect mental health. First, we will explain and define the causes of racism and the factors that produce and maintain it. Next, we will look at the consequences of institutional racism and what impact it has on oppressed and subordinate minority groups and their living conditions, including their mental health. Finally, we will look at the solutions that are being considered and suggested as a means of addressing the problem.
Racism has been running like a poison in the bloodstream of American society ever since Europeans landed on these shores. At the root of it is the undisputed belief that there are physical differences between people that explain intellectual attributes and abilities. The denial by the United States and Americans of their blatant racism and atrocities committed throughout the nation's history has become pathological". Over the past 500 years, people have learned to interpret and understand what racism is. Among other things, that there are very specific things that are related to race, such as intelligence, sexual behaviour, work ethics and abilities, respect for the law, aggression and even brain size. We have learned that races are structured in a hierarchical order and that some races are better than others. Even though we are not racist, our lives are affected by this ordered structure. We were born into a racist society. To fully appreciate the depth of the misconceptions, misunderstandings and lies that have underpinned the dehumanization of Africans and their descendants, we must first be clear about some basic concepts and how they relate to each other.
In this connection, how did the notion of "races" come about in the racist ideologies and policies that dominated the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the United States of America? Americans and Europeans were wrong to mistreat blacks and Native Americans, but it took a few years before the mistake became apparent. At the time of Madison (the Constitutional Convention was over), it was generally accepted by many people in America that blacks were inferior. They considered Africans to be an inferior human species to those of European origin. Madison and the other founding fathers determined that Africans were the equivalent of three-fifths of a human. This was a widespread belief at the time and frequently expressed by politicians. One of the justifications expressed by Europeans in America was the fear that blacks would marry each other and Native Americans and form an invincible army that would destroy them.
These false beliefs that denigrated Blacks were largely promoted by influential people in all social, political and scientific institutions. In 1916, the American lawyer and eugenist Madison Grant, speaking of the interbreeding of races, said: "...two distinct 'species' of humans cannot live side by side without one driving the other out, of forming a population of 'race bastards' with the lower type ultimately being preponderant. "His colleague, the chairman of the Harvard psychology department and the country's most respected psychologist, William McDougall, said that African-Americans and non-European immigrants posed a biological threat to American civilization and were incompatible with American democracy. Why were these views so widely held? Why has the humanity of Africans and Native Americans been questioned? Europeans justified their mistreatment of blacks and Native Americans by claiming that they were inferior beings incapable of abstract ideas. They were also considered incapable of morality and unable to become Christians. These theories then provided the basis for racist thinking about people of color. Non-Europeans were considered inferior and needed to be guided and controlled by rational and moral men (i.e. white European Christians). Europeans believed and glorified the idea that they were superior to people in technologically backward countries.
These ideologies were used for political purposes within nations, especially in America to justify slavery, segregation and the introduction of the Black Codes in 1865, laws to control the movements and activities of recently liberated people. Similarly, in Nazi Germany during the mid-twentieth century, ideologies of racial superiority with no scientific validity were used to justify the deaths of six million Jews in concentration camps. In order to fully grasp and conceptualize this social and political phenomenon that dominated our interactions between individuals, it is important to have a clear and understandable definition. Moreover, what are the reasons that would motivate a group of individuals to set up such a system in their favour? Today's leading historians, economists and sociologists agree on the "scientific" theories justifying the idea that racism and discrimination against non-Europeans are the result of the economic and political conditions that began to emerge in Spain and Portugal in the 15th century. Dr. Frances Cress Welaing (1935-2016), a behavioural scientist and general and child psychiatrist in Washington, DC, refuted these theories in her 1970 publication The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy). The publication of his research was a theoretical statement, a psychogenetic theory, and a worldview on the origin and meaning of the white supremacy world system. She first gave her definition of racism: "The local and global power system structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; [...] The ultimate purpose of the system is to prevent white genetic annihilation on earth - a planet in which the overwhelming majority of people are classified as non-white (Black, Brown, Red, Yellow) by white-skinned people. »
to be continued…
part 1 of 2