How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories

This passionate treatise from psychologist Lassiter (coeditor of Black LGBT Health in the United States) interweaves his life experiences with an analysis of systemic racism in the U.S. He opens with diagnostic criteria for a so-called “whiteness mindset” that prioritizes individualism and materialism, while causing such “symptoms” as psychopathic thoughts, negative emotions, and oppressive behaviors. Such a mindset, he writes, pervades much of Western society and has hampered his own path to becoming a psychologist, from his difficulties finding an internship where he could treat Black clients to discrimination he faced for failing to hew to Black gay male “stereotypes” (“I was not the loud, comical, and histrionic best-friend-Black-gay-man that my students hoped for”). While the rehashing of personal grievances wears thin, Lassiter makes powerful points about how racism permeates the field of psychology, with a dearth of Black clinicians and inadequate training for white therapists working with minority populations leading to misdiagnoses (Black children are disproportionately diagnosed with disruptive behavioral disorders rather than such mood disorders as ADHD) and treatments that fail to address Black people’s lived experience. It’s a strident and intimate call for reform. (Nov.)