Passes: Dr. Alvin Poussaint, 90, Tried To Classify Racism as Mental Health Disorder

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

Dr. Alvin Poussaint died at age 90 on  Feb. 24  at his home in Chestnut Hill, Mass. surrounded by his wife and family – decades after he failed to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to classify racism as a mental illness.

Years of observation led Pouusaaint, a professor of psychiatry, emeritus, at Harvard Medical School, to conclude  racism was a pathology that laws and protests could not cure. Poussaint (pronounced pooh-SAHNT) recognized the continued impact of systemic racism. While he also urged Black Americans to embrace personal responsibility and to nurture traditional family structures, years of research led him to conclude that some Whites behave and establish their own sense of worth, by using Blacks and some other groups as scapegoats, according to news reports.

His death came at a time when the Trump administration is dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

“I have known psychiatrists who projected their own unacceptable behavior and fears onto ethnic minorities as scapegoats,” he said in a 1999 New York Times interview. “Often, their strong racist feelings were tied to fixed belief systems impervious to reality checks, reflecting symptoms of mental dysfunction. Community and family members should know that they can seek professional help for individuals who exhibit violent racist thinking,” Poussaint said.

In a 1999 opinion piece, he wrote, “It’s time for the American Psychiatric Association to designate extreme racism as a mental health problem. Otherwise, racists will continue to fall through the cracks of the mental health system, and we can expect more of them to act out their deadly delusions.”

Poussaint  worked as a professor of psychiatry, emeritus, at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and was a respected authority on race relations in the USA and abroad. Before he began at Harvard in 1969 and retired in 2019, he not only recruited and mentored nearly 1,400 students of color and established supplemental educational programs to help students from underrepresented groups achieve successful careers in medicine, he also worked with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the height of the civil rights movement.

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The son of Haitian immigrants, he was born in Harlem, the seventh of eight children.

“He understood racism beyond the impact it has on Black people. He understood racism as a mental health and public health problem,” his niece, Rita Nethersole of Boston, told the Bay State Banner. “Relentless research made him conclude that Blacks often suffer from ‘post-traumatic slavery syndrome’ and that racism causes some white people to “lose touch with reality.”

Poussaint is survived by his wife of 32 years, Tina Young Poussaint, a Harvard Medical School professor of radiology and head of the Department of Radiology at Boston Children’s; as well as a son Alan; a daughter Alison; a sister, Dolores Nethersole; and numerous nieces and nephews.