Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a psychiatrist who has written many books on issues of race, spoke last night in Wilson Hall on racism and its effects upon black society.
Her speech, titled "White Supremacy and Black Mental Health," was sponsored by the Office of African-American Affairs as part of African-American Heritage Month.
Welsing began the address by instructing the audience members to hug themselves and repeat "I love myself," as a way of preparing them for the difficult issues that would be addressed in the course of her speech.
"I was trained in general psychiatry ... and Freudian psychological theory," but it didn't apply to black patients, she said.
"I ran into issues of racism. Racism is a system operative in everything that we do ... to maintain white over non-white," she added.
Welsing said she wants to know why racism exists, and she said she attributes racism to melanin, a genetic trait that causes skin color.
"Melanin is a genetically dominant tradition," and each time a child between a white and a non-white is born, it is colored, Welsing said.
She said she asked white people whether they wanted their children or grandchildren to be colored, and they answered no. "Therefore racism is related to white genetic annihilation," she added.
Though non-whites are referred to as minorities, they actually account for 90 percent of the world's population, which leads to whites fearing the disappearance of their race, she said.
The effect of the white supremacy culture can lead to troubles in black male/female relationships, black self- hate and problems with psychological mental health, Welsing said.
"Facing the truth [about racism] leads to the maximization of mental health," she said.
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