In my Site Meter, I discovered that someone had searched in Google for an answer to the question, "Can white people chemically straighten their hair?"
Many people whose skin color group would be considered "whites" in the United States, nonetheless have wavy, curly hair that may even suggest aspects of their ancestry of which they are unaware, but which DNA genetic testing could easily confirm.
Here in Brazil, and perhaps now more than ever before, white people and Black people--everyone--seems to be straightening hair. One television commercial even declares that, "You have a right to straight hair," and then of course suggests a product which can make that right a reality.
My step children play with a girl who would certainly be considered white in the United States, based on skin color and long wavy mousy-brown hair. But long and wavy isn't good enough anymore. She straightens her because she wants it to be as straight as that of the Japanese and Hawaiian women whom we see on television.
Based on my personal observations, the same caustic lye and formaldehyde that will straighten Black women's hair will also straighten the hair of white women. And many white women are taking the bait like bluefish swallowing hook, line and sinker.
The reader who posed this question found an American Journal of Color Arousal article entitled, Do Some People Who Straighten Their Hair Need Psychiatric Treatment?
I think maybe they do, and I'll tell you why based on personal experience: Two or three months ago, my step-daughters began using chemicals to straighten their hair. Since then, they have both begun to sneeze constantly, but with no symptoms of cold or flue, no headaches, no change in apetite, no wait gain or loss. Why are these TWO girls sneezing constantly and does the correlation with hair perming prove causation?
In addition, my wife has begun going to the sink and blowing out of each nostril in turn as if she had an insect stuck in her nasal system. The sound is raucus and can be heard from neighboring houses. (I know because our neighbor does the same thing.)
If you became convinced that your two daughters constant sneezing was the result of perming their hair, would you forbid them repeatedly use of those chemicals? Or would you select constant coughing as the inevitable price of pretty hair?
If you believe that pretty hair today is more important than protecting your lungs for the lifetime you will need them, then maybe you should see a doctor. If your lung specialist says to stop using lye and formaldehyde, but you find this socially and politically impossible, then I suggest that you see a psychiatrist or a community activist who can help you to free your DNA-determined hair from the grips of cultural and economic insanity.
The following is reprinted from the address above.
The American Psychiatric Association has never officially recognized extreme racism (as opposed to ordinary prejudice) as a mental health problem, although the issue was raised more than 30 years ago. After several racist killings in the civil rights era, a group of black psychiatrists sought to have extreme bigotry classified as a mental disorder. The association's officials rejected the recommendation, arguing that because so many Americans are racist, even extreme racism in this country is normative—a cultural problem rather than an indication of psychopathology.
The American Psychiatric Association has never officially recognized extreme racism (as opposed to ordinary prejudice) as a mental health problem, although the issue was raised more than 30 years ago. After several racist killings in the civil rights era, a group of black psychiatrists sought to have extreme bigotry classified as a mental disorder. The association's officials rejected the recommendation, arguing that because so many Americans are racist, even extreme racism in this country is normative—a cultural problem rather than an indication of psychopathology.
The psychiatric profession's primary index for diagnosing psychiatric symptoms, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), does not include racism, prejudice, or bigotry in its text or index.1 Therefore, there is currently no support for including extreme racism under any diagnostic category. This leads psychiatrists to think that it cannot and should not be treated in their patients.
To continue perceiving extreme racism as normative and not pathologic is to lend it legitimacy. Clearly, anyone who scapegoats a whole group of people and seeks to eliminate them to resolve his or her internal conflicts meets criteria for a delusional disorder, a major psychiatric illness.
Extreme racists' violence should be considered in the context of behavior described by Allport in The Nature of Prejudice.2 Allport's 5-point scale categorizes increasingly dangerous acts. It begins with verbal expression of antagonism, progresses to avoidance of members of disliked groups, then to active discrimination against them, to physical attack, and finally to extermination (lynchings, massacres, genocide). That fifth point on the scale, the acting out of extermination fantasies, is readily classifiable as delusional behavior.
More recently, Sullaway and Dunbar used a prejudice rating scale to assess and describe levels of prejudice.3 They found associations between highly prejudiced people and other indicators of psychopathology. The subtype at the extreme end of their scale is a paranoid/delusional prejudice disorder.
Using the DSM's structure of diagnostic criteria for delusional disorder,4(p329) I suggest the following subtype:
Prejudice type: A delusion whose theme is that a group of individuals, who share a defining characteristic, in one's environment have a particular and unusual significance. These delusions are usually of a negative or pejorative nature, but also may be grandiose in content. When these delusions are extreme, the person may act out by attempting to harm, and even murder, members of the despised group(s).
Extreme racist delusions can also occur as a major symptom in other psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Persons suffering delusions usually have serious social dysfunction that impairs their ability to work with others and maintain employment.
As a clinical psychiatrist, I have treated several patients who projected their own unacceptable behavior and fears onto ethnic minorities, scapegoating them for society's problems. Their strong racist feelings, which were tied to fixed belief systems impervious to reality checks, were symptoms of serious mental dysfunction. When these patients became more aware of their own problems, they grew less paranoid—and less prejudiced.
It is time for the American Psychiatric Association to designate extreme racism as a mental health problem by recognizing it as a delusional psychotic symptom. Persons afflicted with such psychopathology represent an immediate danger to themselves and others. Clinicians need guidelines for recognizing delusional racism in all its forms so that they can provide appropriate treatment. Otherwise, extreme delusional racists will continue to fall through the cracks of the mental health system, and we can expect more of them to explode and act out their deadly delusions.
