Locating Mental Health in Black and White Men

Abstract

‘Race’ as identified by skin colour has been traditionally associated with the notion of the Other. In western culture the black man as Other has acted as a type of repository into which white men have projected anxieties about, for example, their sexuality. In psychologized, post-colonial culture such projections have taken on a different form and in this study we utilize Q-analysis to explore how this manifests itself into a representation of the white man as a type of ideal, contained, thinking subject set in opposition to a representation of the black man as someone who is constituted from without, by his relationship to the external world. We conclude by considering the evaluative and practical implications of this duality for our understanding of the mental health of black and white men.