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Selected Examples of Scientific Racism
1.Thomas, A. & Sillen, S. (1979). Racism and psychiatry. Secaucus, NJ: the Citadel Press, page 2. " The Black man, it was repeatedly claimed, was uniquely fitted for bondage by his primitive psychological organization. For him, mental health was contentment with his subservient lot, while protest was an infallible symptom of derangement. Thus a well-known physician of the ante-bellum South, Dr. Samuel Cartwright of Louisiana, had a psychiatric explanation for runaway slaves. He diagnosed their malady as drapetomania, literally the flight-from-home-madness, ‘as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation.’ Another ailment peculiar to Black people was dysaethesia Aethiopica, sometimes called rascality by overseers, but actually due to ‘ insensibility of nerves’ and ‘hebetude of mind’, explained Dr. Cartwright. Whereas psychologically normal Negroes were faithful and happy –go-lucky, the mentally afflicted ones ‘pay no attention to the rights of property…slight their work…raise disturbances with their overseers.’ "

2.Thomas, A. & Sillen, S. (1979). Racism and psychiatry. Secaucus, NJ: the Citadel Press, page 17. "Here (scientific confirmation) is proof of the necessity of slavery. The African is incapable of self-care and sinks into lunacy under the burden of freedom. It is a mercy to give him the guardianship and protection from mental death." Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, arguing for the extension of slavery, 1844

3.Thomas, A.& Sillen, S. (1979). Racism and psychiatry. Secaucus, NJ: the Citadel Press, p. 7. " One of the most influential proponents of the concept (of phylogenetic thinking) was ‘the father of child study’ in this country, G.Stanley Hall, founder of the American Journal of Psychology in 1887 and the first president of The American Psychological Association…Hall (stated that) ‘every child from conception to maturity, recapitulates every stage of development and must be treated gently and understandingly by more developed peoples. Thus, in his widely read work Adolescence (1904), Hall described Africans, Indians, and Chinese as members of "adolescent races" in a stage of incomplete growth."

4.Thomas, A.& Sillen, S. (1979). Racism and psychiatry. Secaucus, NJ: the Citadel Press, p. 8. "In view of the black man’s background it is ‘miraculous’…that in America he has gone as far as he has. ‘All honor to the race which has accomplished the impossible…(his bondage) in reality was a wonderful aid to the colored man.’ The necessity for mental initiative was never his, and his racial characteristic of imitation carried him far on the road…During its years of savagery…the race has learned no lessons in emotional control, and what they attained during their few generations of slavery left them unstable.’ " Arrah B. Evarts, M.D. "Dementia Praecox in the Colored Race", 1914

5.Ferguson, G.O.(1916). The psychology of the Negro. Wesport, CN: Negro Universities Press, p.3. "No two races in history, taken as a whole, differ so much in their traits, both physical and psychic, as the Caucasians and African. The color of the skin and the crookedness of the hair are only the outward signs of many far deeper differences, including…temperament, disposition, character…instincts, customs, emotional traits and diseases. All these differences…are seen to be great as to qualify if not imperial every inference from one race to another…so that what is true and good for one is often false and bad for the other." G. Stanley hall, The Negro in Africa and America, 1905

6.Ferguson, G.O.(1916). The psychology of the Negro. Wesport, CN: Negro Universities Press, p.124. "It is the common opinion that the Negro differs more from the white in such traits(the feeling and dynamic side of the mental life) than in intellect proper. His emotions are generally believed to be strong and violate in their manifestations…Instability of character is ascribed to the Negro, involving a lack of foresight, an improvidence, a lack of persistence, small power of serious initiative, a tendency to be content with immediate satisfactions, deficient ambition…along with high emotionality and instability of character, defective morality is held to be a Negro characteristic."

7.Nobles, W.W. (1986). African psychology: Toward its reclamation, reascension, and revitalization. Oakland: The Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture. "(Black and other ethnic minority children) are uneducable beyond the nearest rudiments of training. No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable citizens in the sense of the world…their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stock from which they come…Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master abstractions, but they can be made efficient workers…There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusual prolific breeding." Lewis Terman, The measurement of intelligence, 1916

8.McDougall, W. (1921). Is America safe for democracy? New York: Scribner, pp 54-55. "The colored men of this country are largely, I suppose, of mixed White and Negro descent. It may be suggested that the native inferiority in respect to this quality (intelligence) is an evil effect of crossbreeding of these two widely dissimilar races. This is a possibility. But facts are strongly against it. First the colored men of the Northern states showed distinct superiority to those of the South. Have they not a large proportion of White blood? I do not know, but I suspect it…We have allegation frequently made, that every colored man who has risen to distinction has been of mixed blood. It is perhaps difficult to prove the rule, but it is difficult to find exceptions."

9.Sullivan, H.S. (1964). The fusion of psychiatry and social science. New York: Norton, p. 103. "Heterosexual activity seems to be one of the few unrestricted recreational outlets (for Negroes). I judge that there are many definitely promiscuous people and that this laxity arises from factors of personality development as well as from a promiscuous culture."

10.Flanders, J. (1976), Practical psychology. New York: Harper and Row, p. 15. "At the time of his writing, Bradburn’s findings represent Psychology’s best guess about the nature of psychological well-being. It is interesting to see where such well being is found nowadays and what factors seem likely to produce it. Bradburn found the usual socioeconomic indices to be strongly related to overall psychological well being. Having a higher income is associated with greater well being at all ages, even with the effect of education level removed. If you have a higher level of education, you are likely to feel happier, but only if you are under 35 years of age. Being black means less happiness." Norman Bradburn, The structure of psychological well-being, 1969

Teaching Black Psychology- A Resource Manual
Charlyn Harper-Browne, Ph.D.
Atlanta Metropolitan College
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