Racism and Psychiatry

Abstract

Psychiatry produces racialized narratives which generate and sustain its own forms of racial distinction; it provides expertise in validating the racialized narratives of a range of social agencies and it offers therapeutic intervention to heal those whose lives are publicly defined with reference to race. This paper explores these fragmented and sometimes contradictory relationships between psychiatry and race through the story of a black teacher living in Montreal who became the target of racial harassment and psychiatric intervention which ultimately defined him as paranoid and dangerous.