Sound advice from Dr. Frances Cress Welsing

By A. Peter Bailey
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

Recently when browsing through a July 1974 issue of Ebony magazine, I came across an opinion piece by the late Frances Cress Welsing. In the article, “On Black Genetic Inferiority,” the brilliant psychiatrist made observations that are as relevant in 2016 as they were when she wrote them 42 years ago.

In the opening paragraph, she noted, “It is absolutely imperative that we as Black people get very quiet and calm and begin to think critically and analytically in a very broad perspective and cease doing push-button reactions to social events that happen around us and that relate negatively to us.”

She cites as an example of what she considered our knee-jerk reaction to statements by white supremacist Dr. William Shockley who said Black folks are genetically inferior to whites. Wrote Frances, whom I was fortunate to know as a colleague, “In recent months, in response to Dr. Shockley’s appearance, we as Black people have been behaving as though we are shocked by Dr. Shockley (no pun intended) and as though he has some message we have never heard before. If we begin to relate to our past and present history as a people we immediately become aware that the effective majority of white people have always believed or spoken and acted as though they believed that people of color were genetically inferior to whites. Don’t we understand that the white concept of Black genetic inferiority is the basic underlying reason and logic behind the whole of our experience since leaving Africa in slave ships and our subsequent mass confrontation with Europeans (whites)?”

Frances, if she was still here physically, would pose that same question to Black folks today who are “shocked” at statements made by some of Donald Trump’s supporters or at attempts to suppress the Black vote. It is to be extremely naïve or willfully ignorant to be shocked about expressions of white supremacy/racism when that has been a dominant and fundamental concept in this country for nearly 400 years. We need to follow Frances’ advice to think critically and analytically and cease having push-button reactions to those who want to harm us physically and psychologically.

This article originally published in the November 14, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.