Are racists crazy? : how prejudice, racism, and antisemitism became markers of insanity / Sander L. Gilman and James M. Thomas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilman, Sander L., author.

Thomas, James M., 1982- author.

Contributor:

ProQuest ebook central.

Series:

Biopolitics (New York, N.Y.)

Biopolitics: medicine, technoscience, and health in the 21st century

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prejudices--Psychological aspects.

Prejudices.

Racism--Psychological aspects.

Racism.

Antisemitism--Psychological aspects.

Antisemitism.

Mental illness.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 385 pages.)

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2016]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

The connection and science behind race, racism, and mental illness In 2012, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Oxford reported that - based on their clinical experiment - the beta-blocker drug, Propranolol, could reduce implicit racial bias among its users. Shortly after the experiment, an article in Time Magazine cited the study, posing the question: Is racism becoming a mental illness? In Are Racists Crazy? Sander Gilman and James Thomas trace the idea of race and racism as psychopathological categories., from mid-19th century Europe, to contemporary America, up to the aforementioned clinical experiment at the University of Oxford, and ask a slightly different question than that posed by Time: How did racism become a mental illness? Using historical, archival, and content analysis, the authors provide a rich account of how the 19th century 'Sciences of Man' - including anthropology, medicine, and biology - used race as a means of defining psychopathology and how assertions about race and madness became embedded within disciplines that deal with mental health and illness. An illuminating and riveting history of the discourse on racism, antisemitism, and psychopathology, Are Racists Crazy? connects past and present claims about race and racism, showing the dangerous implications of this specious line of thought for today. The connection and science behind race, racism, and mental illness In 2012, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Oxford reported that - based on their clinical experiment - the beta-blocker drug, Propranolol, could reduce implicit racial bias among its users. Shortly after the experiment, an article in Time Magazine cited the study, posing the question: Is racism becoming a mental illness? In Are Racists Crazy? Sander Gilman and James Thomas trace the idea of race and racism as psychopathological categories., from mid-19th century Europe, to contemporary America, up to the aforementioned clinical experiment at the University of Oxford, and ask a slightly different question than that posed by Time: How did racism become a mental illness? Using historical, archival, and content analysis, the authors provide a rich account of how the 19th century 'Sciences of Man' - including anthropology, medicine, and biology - used race as a means of defining psychopathology and how assertions about race and madness became embedded within disciplines that deal with mental health and illness. An illuminating and riveting history of the discourse on racism, antisemitism, and psychopathology, Are Racists Crazy? connects past and present claims about race and racism, showing the dangerous implications of this specious line of thought for today.

Contents:

Introduction

Psychopathology and difference from the nineteenth century to the present

The long, slow burn from pathological accounts of race to racial attitudes as pathological

Hatred and the crowd: World War I and the rise of a psychology of racism

The Holocaust and post-war theories of antisemitism and racism

Race and madness in mid-twentieth-century America and beyond

The modern pathologization of racism

Conclusion: the specter of science in twenty-first-century racial discourse.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781479894758

1479894753

Publisher Number:

99973199703

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.