"Is extreme racism a mental illness?"

New Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2000 by Poussaint, Alvin, Toledano, Ben, Schaler, Jeffrey, Liefer, Ron

The weekly PBS program DebatesDebates recently posed the question "Is Extreme Racism a Mental Illness?" The following is an edited adaptation of the views expressed.

Dr. Alvin Poussaint:

My position is that extreme racism is a mental illness because it represents a delusional disorder.

Anyone who feels that all blacks or all Jews are responsible for all the problems in the world, and that they have to be exterminated to correct it, this represents a delusion which fits into the category of the psychiatric nomenclature for a delusional disorder. And I think it's treatable...

"Extreme racism" is not just false belief. These people reach the point that they're very delusional about it. Racism does have kind of a scale. There are gradations of racism. Some people just don't like other people and want to avoid them. Some people actively discriminate. And there are some people who want to kill and eliminate them...

I think that someone who moves on their delusion, which basically is a paranoid delusion, that person has gone beyond anything ordinary. With the criteria as represented by the American Psychiatric Association, that person fits the criteria for delusional disorder, persecutory type...

These people who get into a genocidal mode based on their delusions are mentally disturbed and are probably treatable, if we took a constructive view and didn't imply that somehow this is just hatred and there's nothing we can do about it.

I think we can educate people with mild forms of racism. I think for people who reach the extreme stage, we should see that as a mental disturbance and try to do something about it and get those people some help to prevent catastrophes...

Some argue that we're absolving people when we say they have a mental health problem, but that's not absolving them... I think if we project that this is a disturbance, we need to do more about it than we're doing. And it takes all kinds of shapes. There's a public health approach, which should be major, because it's a public health problem. And then there could be the individual treatment approach. When you get these really acute people, in some way they need to be contained and need some help and need some clarity.

They're out of control. It's not just a moral thing...

When I say "extreme racists," I'm looking at those people who are far gone, people who are ready to go out and kill, who represent a danger to others, perhaps a danger to themselves. And this is kind of where you draw the line.

All the time we intervene with people who are trying to commit suicide. We probably should intervene with more people who are trying to commit homicide for a variety of reasons. But there's a situation where suicide is defined as a mental health problem, but homicide is not defined as a mental health problem...

I think we are offering something to these people who are extreme racists who might say, "Maybe I have a problem.

There's something I can do about it"...

Atty. Ben Toledano:

The term "extreme racism" is a problem for me because I didn't know it had been divided into categories or classes, minor racism, moderate racism, extreme racism...

My expertise is in the field of being on the streets, in the neighborhoods around just regular people who are trying to deal with political, day-to-day problems. And I'll tell you this, as long as this racism game continues, in my opinion, we're not going to solve real problems. Everybody is so busy pinning labels on people today, it's become really an industry of sorts. We don't get a chance to deal with how to actually solve it...

If we were to follow Dr. Poussaint's suggestion of treating everybody that doesn't like blacks or doesn't like Jews or doesn't like Catholics, then the bigots will have a field day, because it's never going to be possible for the psychiatrists to put everybody who's got a prejudice on the couch. I think that it is silly to suggest that what these people need is treatment.,.

Education is a big alternative. Teaching people what's wrong about racism, the Judeo-Christian principles of how to treat other human beings, is a hell of a lot more productive and a lot healthier than putting labels about something being a mental illness on things. I think it's a moral question, not a medical question...

Wanting to murder people and wipe out people, genocide, for example, is a totally different question from prejudice...

We have this giant wall which separates us, very much like the Berlin Wall, but much worse, which we call racism.

And we're doing very little about it. I've seen the failure of politics to solve this problem, because politicians use it to get votes on both sides and don't really want to solve it, because it will deprive them of a constituency...I know much less about medicine than I do about politics, but I'm not convinced at all after today's debate, in spite of these three learned gentlemen and what they've told us, that medicine is a solution either to racism...

I don't believe the politicians can do it, I don't think the doctors can do it. I think if it's to be done, and this is very much speculation, it can only be done by religious leaders, spiritually. That is our only hope, the churches, the rabbis, the priests, the ministers will find a way to change our hearts. And without that, I don't think racism will ever be solved.