Under the Strain of Color , livre ebook

208

pages

English

Ebooks

2015

Écrit par
N. Mendes Gabriel

Publié par
Cornell University Press

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208

pages

English

Ebooks

2015

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

18 août 2015

EAN13

9781501701399

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

3 Mo

In Under the Strain of Color, Gabriel N. Mendes recaptures the history of Harlem's Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic, a New York City institution that embodied new ways of thinking about mental health, race, and the substance of citizenship. The result of a collaboration among the psychiatrist and social critic Dr. Fredric Wertham, the writer Richard Wright, and the clergyman Rev. Shelton Hale Bishop, the clinic emerged in the context of a widespread American concern with the mental health of its citizens. Mendes shows the clinic to have been simultaneously a scientific and political gambit, challenging both a racist mental health care system and supposedly color-blind psychiatrists who failed to consider the consequences of oppression in their assessment and treatment of African American patients. Employing the methods of oral history, archival research, textual analysis, and critical race philosophy, Under the Strain of Color contributes to a growing body of scholarship that highlights the interlocking relationships among biomedicine, institutional racism, structural violence, and community health activism.

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Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

18 août 2015

EAN13

9781501701399

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

3 Mo

Under the Strain of Color

A volume in the series Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry

Edited by Sander L. Gilman and George J. Makari

A list of titles in the series is available at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Under the Strain of Color

Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry

Gabriel N. Mendes

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2015 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2015 Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mendes, Gabriel N., 1972– author. Under the strain of color : Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the promise of an antiracist psychiatry / Gabriel N. Mendes. pages cm. — (Cornell studies in the history of psychiatry) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5350-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Mental health services—New York (State)— New York. 2. African Americans—Mental health—New York (State)— New York. 3. Social psychiatry—New York (State)—New York. 4. Community psychiatry—New York (State)—New York. 5. Lafargue Clinic (New York, N.Y.) 6. Wright, Richard, 1908–1960. 7. Wertham, Fredric, 1895–1981. 8. Harlem (New York, N.Y.) I. Title. RC451.5.N4M43 2015 616.890089'96073—dc23 2015005315

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood îbers. For further information, visit our website atwww.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

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For my father Maxwell Mendes, the Tod Cliftons, and the Lafargue Clinic patients

In practically all its divergences, American Negro culture is not something independent of general American culture. It is a distorted development, or a pathological condition, of the general American culture. Gunnar Myrdal,An America Dilemma, 1944

It does not occur to Myrdal that many of the Negro cultural manifestations which he considers merely reective might also embody arejectionof what he considers “higher values.”. . . It is only partially true that Negroes turn away from white patterns because they are refused participation. There is nothing like distance to create objectivity, and exclusion gives rise to counter values. . . . It will take a deeper science than Myrdal’s—deep as that might be—to analyze what is happening among the masses of Negroes. Ralph Ellison, “An American Dilemma: A Review,” 1944

The Freudians talk about the Id And bury it below. But Richard Wright took off the lid And let us see the woe. Dr. Fredric Wertham, “Underground,” 1942

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction: “A Deeper Science”

1. “This Burden of Consciousness”: Richard Wright and the Psychology of Race Relations, 1927–1947

2. “Intangible Difîculties”: Dr. Fredric Wertham and thePolitics of Psychiatry in the Interwar Years

3. “Between the Sewer and the Church”: The Emergence of the Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic

4. Children and the Violence of Racism: The Lafargue Clinic, Comic Books, and the Case against School Segregation

Epilogue: “An Experiment in the Social Basis of Psychotherapy” Notes Index

120

154 163 187

Acknowledgments

I have been blessed with some extraordinary guides, mentors, colleagues, friends, and, above all, family. Without those people who have both chal-lenged me and had my back as I worked on this project, the book you are now reading would never have been possible. This book had its incubation in a set of conversations I had in graduate school with a truly remarkable group of scholars and teachers at Brown University. Foremost among them was James T. Campbell, whose model of integrity and rigorous thinking and writing remains a constant source of inspiration and guidance in every single aspect of my life as a scholar. I am especially grateful to Jim for his investment in the development of this project and for his close and illumi-nating readings of draft after draft of each chapter. Most of all I appreci-ate his contagious enthusiasm for the art of historical narrative. To this day, I walk away from conversations with Jim enlightened and enlivened, rededicated to the task at hand. I also offer my most sincere thanks to Mari Jo Buhle and B. Anthony Bogues. They modeled for me all that I aspire to be as a rigorous and responsive mentor and guide to students. While in Providence I found an invaluable intellectual community both inside and outside the walls of Brown University. I thank Doug Brown, Liza Burbank, Marcia Chatelain, Tom Chen, Themis Chronopoulos, Joe Clark,

x Acknowledgments

Moritz Ege, Gill Frank, Jim Gatewood, C. Morgan Grefe, Jonathan Hagel, Anas Hamimech, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Sheyda Jahanbani, Katie C. Miller, S. Ani Mukherji, Jason Pontius, Kate Schapira, Kate Schatz, and Sarah Wald. I especially thank Ani, Jonathan, and Sheyda, who have been my closest intel-lectual companions on this journey. Thank you, Katie, for allowing me to kvetch to you over the years and for letting me bombard you with crudely written paragraphs masquerading as correspondence. This book would not have been possible without the support of librar-ians and archivists at Brown University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Yale University, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Library of Congress. Nor would it have been possible without fellowships from the Brown Graduate School and Emmanuel College. I would especially like to thank Emmanuel College’s Nancy Northrup, Bill Leonard, and Javier Marion for their hospitality and guidance during my year at Emmanuel as a Diversity Dissertation Fellow. I thank Samuel K. Roberts for his early encouragement of my project and for providing me with a vital forum in which to share my research. Alongside Sam, a number of other colleagues have contributed to the development and completion of this project. I thank most especially Bart Beaty, Leah Gordon, and Jay Garcia. I’ve been tremendously lucky as well to have a set of friends and conîdants who’ve been there to keep me intellectually and existentially sane over the years. They have rescued me from the monotony of the solitary life of the desk on many occasions. And it has often been my nonacademic friends who have reminded me of the necessity that this book be in the world for everyday people to read. Thank you to Joe Barbour, Ben Carlin, Derek Andrew Curtis, Quentin DiDonna, Jamahl Gambler, Michael Guilbert, Kibria Sarkisian, Alyasha Owerka-Moore, Darryl A. Smith, and my Tower Bar crew. The University of California, San Diego, has provided generous research and writing support through the Hellman Family Fellowship, the Faculty Career Development Grant, and the Academic Senate Research Grant. At UCSD, I have been fortunate to have Natalia Molina and Curtis Marez as my ofîcial faculty mentors. They are two of the most patient, generous, and engaged scholars I have ever encountered within American academia. I have also been the recipient of unstinting support and guid-ance from past chairs of the Ethnic Studies Department, Ross Frank and Yen Le Espiritu. Not only did they read and comment on chapter drafts

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