Evolving Scientific Racism

In 1869, the term eugenics was first used by British psychologist Francis Galton. The term came from the Greek eugenes, meaning good in stock. To improve the race, he encouraged better human stock to breed and discouraged less desirable stock having children. Eugenics claimed that immigrants from Italy, Greece, Hungary, and other Southeastern countries carried a germ that made them more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality.

In 1879, German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig University declared that as mans soul could not be measured with scientific instruments, it did not exist. Man suddenly became merely another animal. Stripped of his soul, he could be manipulated as easily as a dog could be trained to salivate at the sound of a bell. This rationale suited Wundts military masters at the time.

Such scientific rationales were used to justify the practice of slavery in the U.S. In 1797, psychiatrist Benjamin Rushwhose face still adorns the seal of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) todaydeclared that the color of blacks was caused by a rare, inherited disease called Negritude which derived from leprosy. Rush said that the only evidence of a cure was when the skin color turned white. The disease label was used as a reason for segregation.⁷

In 1851, Samuel A. Cartwright, a prominent Louisiana physician, claimed to have discovered two mental diseases peculiar to blacks, which he believed justified their enslavement. These were called Drapetomania and Dysaesthesia Aethiopis. Dr. Thomas Szasz says, The first term came from drapetes, a runaway slave, and mania, meaning mad or crazy. Cartwright claimed that this disease caused blacks to have an uncontrollable urge to run away from their masters. The treatment for this illness was whipping the devil out of them.

Dyasethesia Aethiopis supposedly affected both mind and body. The symptoms included disobedience, answering disrespectfully and refusing to work. The cure was hard labor!⁸

In 1918, American eugenics advocate, Dr. Paul Popenoe arrogantly proclaimed that the IQ of blacks was determined by the amount of white blood in them. The lighter skinned the blacks the higher their IQ, and the blacker he was, the lower the IQ.⁹

Similar theories have persisted. In the 1950s, an expert in IQ testing, psychologist Lewis Terman, claimed that poor children could never be educated, and that Mexicans, Indians and blacks should never be allowed to reproduce. Such tests were used to stop Italians, Poles, Mexicans, and others from moving to the United States and tainting American blood.

Even as recently as 1994, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnsteins book The Bell Curve, still claimed that African Americans and Latinos do worse than whites in intelligence tests, are genetically disabled and therefore cannot cope with the demands of modern society.

Through invented diseases and such bogus concepts as lower IQ and racial inferiority, psychiatry has not only legitimized 20th and 21st century racism, but created outright genocide.

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