INTRODUCTION The Creation of Racism

Is racism alive today?

In the United States, African-American and Hispanic children in predominantly white school districts are classified as “learning disabled” more often than Whites. This leads to millions of minority children being hooked onto prescribed mind-altering drugs to “treat” this “mental disorder.” And yet, with early reading instruction, the number of students so classified as “disabled” could be reduced by up to 70%.

African-Americans and Hispanics are also significantly over-represented in U.S. prisons.

In Britain, black men are 10 times more likely than white men to be diagnosed as “schizophrenic,” and more likely to be prescribed and given higher doses of powerful psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs. They are also more likely to receive electroshock treatment (over 400 volts of electricity sent searing through the brain to control or alter a person’s behavior) and to be subjected to physical and chemical restraints.

Around the world, racial minority groups continue to come under assault. The effects are obvious: poverty, broken families, ruined youth, and even genocide (deliberate destruction of a race or culture). No matter how loud the pleadings or sincere the efforts of our religious leaders, our politicians and our teachers, racism just seems to persist.

Yes, we do have racism today. But why? Rather than struggle unsuccessfully with the answer to this question, there is a better question to ask. Who?

The truth is we will not fully understand racism until we recognize that two largely unsuspected groups are actively and deceptively fostering racism throughout the world. The legacy of these groups includes such large-scale tragedies as the Nazi Holocaust, South Africa’s apartheid and today, the widespread disabling of millions of schoolchildren with harmful, addictive drugs. These groups are psychiatry and psychology.

In 1983, a World Health Organization report stated, “ … in no other medical field in South Africa is the contempt of the person, cultivated by racism, more concisely portrayed than in psychiatry.”

In 1999, Professor of Community Psychiatry, Dr. S.P. Sashidharan, stated, “Psychiatry comes closest to the police … in pursuing practices and procedures that … discriminate against minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom.”

In 2001, Dr. Karen Wren and Professor Paul Boyle of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, concluded that the role of scientific racism in psychiatry throughout Europe has not only been well established historically, but that it persists today.

For nearly 40 years, CCHR has worked in the field of human rights and mental health reform, and has investigated the racist influence of the “mental health” professions on the Nazi Holocaust, apartheid, the cultural assault of the Australian Aboriginal people, New Zealand Maoris and Native American Indians, and the current discrimination against Blacks across the world.

Psychiatry and psychology’s racist ideologies continue to light the fires of racism locally and internationally to this day.

This publication is designed to raise awareness among individuals about this harmful influence. Not only can racism be defeated, but this is vital if man is to live in true harmony.

Sincerely,

Jan Eastgate President,
Citizens Commission on Human Rights International

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