Mask Mandates in History
“The image of Escrava Anastácia has been making many appearances in several recent anti-lockdown protests around the world. The way in which the likeness of this muzzled female Brazilian slave has been used to illustrate the various forms of pandemic population restrictions, particularly the mandatory wearing of face masks, has been criticized by various media outlets for its perceived cultural appropriation and irreverence to the historical suffering of black people. This article represents an opportunity to address this claim of cooptation and to explain the merits of illuminating the current health-driven limitations as indeed a form of enslavement.”
Scientific Racism
Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis advanced in 1851 by physician Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiana Medical Association, to explain the tendency of black slaves to flee captivity. As such, drapetomania is an example of scientific racism. The term derives from the Greek δραπετης (drapetes, “a runaway [slave]”) + μανια (mania, “madness, frenzy”).
The diagnosis appeared in a paper published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, where Dr. Cartwright argued that the tendency of slaves to run away from their captors was a treatable medical disorder. He offered the following as “medical advice”:
If the white man attempts to oppose the Deity’s will, by trying to make the negro anything else than “the submissive knee-bender” (which the Almighty declared he should be) by trying to raise him to a level with himself… or by denying him the usual comforts and necessaries of life, the negro will run away; but if he keeps him in the position that we learn from the Scriptures he was intended to occupy, that is, the position of submission; and if his master or overseer be kind and gracious in his hearing towards him… the negro is spell-bound, and cannot run away.
Psychiatry: Science or Seance?
Studies suggest that psychics and psychiatrists are soul mates. Psychiatry literally means “healing the soul.” A seance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. Who could be better matched?
The word “shrink” suggests “witch doctor,” and long may they stir the same pot.
But wait! Breaking news tells us that psychiatrists are medical doctors. Very well. Let us judge them as such.
Objective tests are expected to be the basis of any medical diagnosis–except a psychiatric one. Here, a sort of “by-guess and by-golly” standard is good enough to justify a potentially crippling intervention.
In a recent article in the top-tier medical journal JAMA Psychiatry, prominent researcher Kenneth Kendler writes that our current psychiatric diagnoses are just “working hypotheses, subject to change.”
Ask for a second opinion, a third, a fourth. Chances are very good that they will all be different. Nonetheless, the solution is always to brutalize the patient’s brain based on no understanding at all of its delicate mechanism.
Is there an antidote to the psychiatric “solution”? Yes:
- Don’t seek help from those who mean you harm.
- Don’t let their smiles fool you.
- Visit Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
~Alan Graham, staff writer
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