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ALVIN POUSSAINT: Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: Thank you. I arrived here today, and I found out that a young man who I graduated from high school with in New York City, and then I went to college with him, and we both graduated in the same class at Columbia in 1956, is your college president, Ken Keller. So we just had a little reunion upstairs.

We went to high school together and to college together, in the same classes, so it was good to touch base with him, after all of these years. So you can see I am pretty old, right? He's pretty old, right? So I gotta be pretty old too. I just look different.

[LAUGHTER]

Today, we're going to have a discussion and maybe food for thought. I'm going to throw out ideas for discussion, and maybe look at things in a different way. And the talk will focus around multiculturalism, but also to try to help us get a better feel for what norms are in this society.

Values as well as prejudices, which we take for granted and become institutionalized to a point that we don't even understand, sometimes, exactly what we're doing, and what some of the basic assumptions are that make us feel and deal in different ways, that are rooted very much in American culture and rooted very, very deeply.

And sometimes, we don't even know when we are doing wrong toward other individuals, because the people doing wrong are sometimes operating in their own framework or from their own standards or norms so that they cannot see clearly what they are doing.

Now, let me give you a graphic example of this from a very important, powerful institution, The New York Times. The New York Times-- you've all heard of The New York Times, right? The newspaper, authoritative newspaper in the country.

At the end of October, on October 25, exactly, I happened to be flying to St. Louis, and I picked up a copy of The New York Times. And The New York Times had in a headline, "Uncle Sam Indian Giver." And in the article, there was discussion about how the federal government had given money to the states, and they were now taking it back because it was a mistake.

And the headline said, "Uncle Sam Indian Giver." And I was shocked that The New York Times, besides printing the words but would have it in a headline as a legitimate colloquialism in the language, which is that colloquialism, or that, you know-- anyway, that's the equivalent to saying, "working like a nigger," right? It's equivalent to saying, "Jew him down," that term, "Indian giver." It is derogatory. It's also a lie, right? In fact, that was what we were doing to the Indians--

AUDIENCE: Right.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: --right, with the treaties and breaking them. The New York Times had the headline. I said, well, how could the brilliant men on The New York Times let such a thing happen? Well, I wrote them a letter about it, and I got an answer back from the chief of the news desk editor.

And he said, I don't know how that term slipped through all of the editors and got into the headline. He said, you're absolutely right, it's a terrible ethnic slur, et cetera, et cetera, but they didn't apologize. They didn't apologize. You hear what I'm saying? He acknowledged it was wrong, and that they would watch it, and so on, and so forth, but all of their editors did not understand that that was a derogatory term.

And it's because we have institutionalized so much in the United States, the legitimacy of making fun of and talking in a derogatory way about Indians that we don't even know that we do it, right? So we have little kids coming along, little kids in daycare and so on, what are they doing? They're playing Indian.

Now, you don't play Italian. You don't play Irish. How come you play Indian? And what are we teaching the kids, you see, when we teach them to play Indian? Are we laying the groundwork, you see, for them to see other people in a derogatory way, right? They're playing Indian. What's playing Indian mean? All stereotypes, right? Whoop, powwow, and all of this other business and things.

And they start getting-- then they have songs they sing. (SINGING) One little, two little, three little Indians. One little-- I mean, suppose you had a song like that, (SINGING) one little, three little, two little Negroes. One little, three little, two-- I mean, you would really recognize it. But we accept it, see?

And it got me to thinking about other things too. And then I-- you know, I'm psychiatrist, and I would start thinking about the questions on the Wechsler IQ test, the most widely used IQ test, and the information section. This is to measure your intelligence. Now IQ tests, they have a question, who discovered America? Now, who discovered America, folks? For two points.

[LAUGHTER]

Now, that's a derogatory question and a racist question, particularly to Native Americans. But even without that, it is a racist question. Because what it says-- you see, I'm talking about norms now. Who defines and establishes what reality is and what is real in this society?

By having a question like that, you say that America, this land, was not here. It didn't have an existence. The people who were here had no existence. That somehow, they were make-believe, until a white Western European came and discovered it, right?

You see what that-- and see how that sets your mind off, right there. Every time you celebrate Columbus Day, you are participating in a norm that's rejecting of Native Americans and other colored peoples, in particular, and reaffirming the authority of white Europeans.

AUDIENCE: It shouldn't be, right.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: Because that's all about who discovered America, right? And they used to mark Native American children wrong if they said they came here first, taking points that argue. Now, the examiner is supposed to ask, well, yeah-- this is Lisa's suggestion-- well, yeah, you were here first, but who came from across the oceans?

[LAUGHTER]

Now, why do the good scientists still use that question on the IQ test? Did you hear what-- do you see what I'm saying? Because it's an accepted norm to do that and to have that perspective in the society toward a group of people, and establishes the white European as the one who defines society and civilization. And we all suffer from that, like the plague.

Let's get to another fundamental definition that's so rooted and so crazy, but that is affecting all of us in subtle ways psychologically that we don't even realize. What is the definition of a Black person in America? Who's Black? How would you define a Black person?

Does anybody want to tell me who a Black person is? How do you become Black? You become Black if you have any known Black ancestry in America. Why is it if you have 99% white blood or genes and 1% Black genes, you are Black? Hmm? That Black blood is awfully strong stuff, one drop.

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

Have you ever known anyone who was partly Black? In Minnesota, you have a lot of-- they use the word biracial, but those kids are defined by the society as Black kids and are seen as Black kids. Why? Who established the definition? And what does the definition say?

Well, the only way you can come up-- first of all, let's establish that Black people didn't make up that rule, see? Maybe Black people, if they made up the rule, would have said, anybody with any white blood is white, see? So most of the Black folks in the United States would be white. Now, we could--

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

So you could-- now, when you put on applications-- if you got any white blood, one drop of the strong stuff the other way, you put down white, and let them deal with it.

[LAUGHTER]

Well, that definition, what it says fundamentally, it's a racist definition of race. It says-- here's the equation, now, for the chemistry majors-- you've got white purity. White is pure. Black is impure, is a taint. If you take any amount of impurity and mix it with purity, you come out with impurity.

Anybody who's got the Black blood, and that definition is impure, and therefore, relegate it to the lower caste system in the society. So any white person with any amount of Black blood was called Black and made segregated. And even, there were slaves, right, as you got the children from the slavemaster, particularly copulating with Black slave women, right?

So the definition itself is a white supremacist definition that continues the notion of white purity in our psyches, because Black people accept that definition and white people accept that definition. So it keeps alive in us the notion of the white purity thing, you see, and white supremacy, by defining everyone, see, with any Black blood as Black.

So you get ridiculous things. When Vanessa Williams won the Miss America, a lot of the people watching it didn't know she was Black, whatever that means, right? She has blonde hair and blue eyes, right, and a lot of other things too, but they defined her.

So the next day, a lot of people turned on television, and they said, this Vanessa Williams is Black. And a lot of white people said, she's Black? And a lot of Black people said, oh, I could tell, right? And there are a lot of Black people around who feel they have a special skill at detecting one drop of Black blood in anybody. Oh, I know, she's really Black.

[LAUGHTER]

And then we accept the definition so much that if there's a "Black person," whatever that means, quotes, who's very light-skinned, we're always on the guard, are they trying to pass? I know they got it in them, are they trying to pass, right?

So we participate in the game too. But there's a fundamental message in the game that's part of the psyche of this culture, right, and maybe permanently so, unless you want to redefine the situation to make it more balanced and sensible, see?

And then we get to another level of ridiculousness-- and if there's any psychologists here or social scientists who want to fight with me over this, we can fight-- another level of ridiculousness is with this definition of race. Then you get some social scientists who say, we are now going to compare Black people with white people in terms of their IQ, right?

And then we're going to come up-- we've got data showing that white people are innately more intelligent, and so on, and so on, than Black people. Well, who are they studying? What race are they stud-- what are they studying when they say Black people in the United States? They don't have any purity of genes or anything else. You understand what I'm saying?

So on the face of it, that is a piece of ridiculous research. When it says, we are going to study Black and white people according to that definition of Blackness, it makes no scientific sense to me--

AUDIENCE: There's no purity of genes.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: --right? There's something fundamentally wrong. And then the other thing is wrong, they use IQ tests, in addition, that are biased. So they go from a biased instrument to a faulty definition of race, and they're going to tell you something scientific about innate intelligence, right?

And these men got invited to campuses all around the country to spread their lore in the name of academic freedom and scholarship. And Black students were supposed-- the Black students were encouraged to come hear these men and discuss it objectively, right? I'm serious. There were people, well, this is just an academic issue, come and discuss-- it's not an academic issue, it's an assault on Black people.

What's the issue that someone wants to-- for any reason, to say, someone has more or less innate intelligence? That becomes a personal issue for every Black person and is an assault on them, right?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: It's an assault on them. And it affects them. As a psychiatrist, I know it affects them. It messes with their head, creates self-doubt, binds their energy. Why should they be discussing and arguing with anybody over a subject like that? Just consider the men enemies, that's all you do.

[APPLAUSE]

And an example of some of those questions from the IQ test-- let me give you some examples, and you tell me if these questions, in your mind, measure intelligence, OK? Question, Wechsler test, a little kid smaller than you comes up and starts hitting on you, what do you do? For two points on your IQ.

What's the answer? What's the intelligent answer to that question, that measures innate intelligence? Now, the answer that the folks who made up the tests want is that you would restrain the little fellow, or you would walk away. You hit him folks, and you lose your points. Now, when they give the test to inner-city kids--

[LAUGHTER]

--right, they lose all points on that question. Another question, what would you do if you found a wallet in the street, for a measure of your innate intelligence? It might depend on how hungry you were, right? Now, those questions all have to do not with intelligence at all-- at all, they have to do with socialization and your values.

They have to do with your values, not with your intelligence. It has to do with your social-cultural experience and your values. If I have a value that I want to take the money out and just give the credit cards back, well, that's my value. You can't say, it's not intelligent.

You can say, you think it's a faulty value system, but don't say that I'm innately not smart. I may be very smart to feed myself. Other questions like, what do policemen do? Your answer to that depends on your experience with policemen.

[LAUGHTER]

And even when they cited, well, this test is valid because it's predictable, you know why? Because the whole framework operates in the same framework. Do you know what I mean? It's all the same system. That doesn't mean that it's not biased, which it is, toward particular people in the society.

There's a lot of class bias in that test, profound class bias, right? On the face of it, there is, and many of the other ones. But yet, people are still calculating IQ scores in clinics and putting them in their clinical workups, IQ 80, IQ-- I mean, that is really silly stuff. And I say that to my colleagues who do that.

And when I work with psychologists, when they write a report, I don't want any IQ on the bottom of that-- IQ number. Because it biases all the clinicians toward the kids in one way or the other. And using a biased instrument, you don't want that.

If you want to use something like the IQ test, don't call it IQ. Say, you want to assess the person's knowledge or how much information they have. But don't say, this permanently determines their native mental ability. I know some professors, Black ones, who had IQs when they were young of 80, right, as measured by these tests, who are college professors, at major universities.

So you have to be very careful, because you're doing harm to children by thinking that you have certain knowledge and abilities that are scientific, that permanently labels or confines them in terms of their development. So it's an issue in psychology.

Now, let's take another example of norms, not their misuse, just maybe to understand them, but also to understand what they do to us and how we accept it. And I'm going to go back now to the 1800s for this example, because it's such a good one.

In the 1840s, a lot of slaves were running away from a plantation in Louisiana. They were running away from the plantation to freedom, north. And the slavemaster was very upset about losing his property and his profits, so he called in Dr. Cartwright. Dr. Cartwright was a surgeon and also a psychologist, at least he called himself such.

And he called in Dr. Cartwright to come down to study the situation, to help him, why the slaves were running away. So Dr. Cartwright went down and did very much what a social scientist would do today. He interviewed everyone, the children, the slaves, the slavemasters, and so on.

And he wrote this long scientific paper, which he published in the New Orleans Medical Society Journal in 1851. And I have a copy of the paper in my files. Dr. Cartwright concluded that the slaves running away from the plantation were suffering from a mental disease that he called drapetomania mania, which means runaway mania.

[LAUGHTER]

And then he prescribed a treatment for it, to keep the slaves on the plantation. So Dr. Cartwright defined wanting to be free as a disease. Now, does that sound absurd? But now, let's look at it from Dr. Cartwright's vision of the world. He felt that it was an acceptable, legitimate norm that you have slavery, that that was in fact the way the world should be. So then he defined deviations from the norm as pathology. That's what he did.

So the slaves running away and wanting to be free, in his mind, was a deviation from what he considered to be normal, that the slaves should want to be slaves. And he called it pathology and disease. And he said there were other diseases that the slaves had too, particularly the ones who were belligerent. He said that was a disease as well.

Now, think of the power that Cartwright had, coming from a scientific viewpoint of legitimizing the institution, helping to maintain it, but also in brainwashing the slaves. See, because the slaves, and Black people, and Native Americans, and others are defined, and get their science and whatever from the majority of people who define things from their perspective.

One rule that you should have is to wonder-- if any group of people are being defined in a certain way, who are the out-group, ask yourselves, would that group of people define the situation in the same way as the out-group is defining them, see? And frequently, you'll find they're not.

Certainly, the slaves would not have come up, even if they had conducted a study, with the fact that Black people who ran away from the plantation were mentally ill. Slaves wouldn't come up with that. So that comes from the majority of the people in power and control.

But then, in turn, they affect the oppressed group. Because then the oppressed group says, hey, you know, these big white scientists who know everything said we're mentally ill. Then they try to keep the other Blacks on the plantation, you see, and say, no, you stay here. You run off, making you sick. You know, happiness is here. Mental health is here.

And, you know, that's not far-fetched. A lot of social scientists did argue that Blacks were more mentally healthy on the plantations. They used that as an argument against slavery, and that's because Blacks had a low suicide rate. So they would take the low suicide rate and say, you see, they have a lower suicide rate than we have because they're happy on the plantation. And they used it for justification.

So these definitions and stereotypes-- and Blacks have a lot of negative ones. And one of the things you do in a society that comes from a racist, at least portions of it, culture is that you look for negatives in people. You're more delighted with the negatives than you are with the positives. And you give them more attention. And you talk about them more. It's like you seek it out, almost. You bear in on it.

And the other thing is things, again, get defined in the wrong way. And then you have to wonder too, well, what is the political-- you know, what are the political statements being made in any definitions of people?

I mean, you ever wonder why one of the major stereotypes about Blacks during slavery that developed is that they were lazy, and they were doing all the work, right? They were doing all the work, and they were defined as lazy. "What's your major problem with the slaves, slavemaster?" "They're lazy." Now, figure out that psychological trick there. It's very clever.

If they can convince the slave that his major problem is they're lazy, what happens for the slavemaster? The slaves become more productive. They make more money. So it's in their interest to keep pushing the notion that you're not working hard enough, and then to say it in a pejorative way, you're lazy-- like a moral statement, right?

So morally, you had better work hard. You better get some work ethic in this time of slavery. Some people are saying that today, get the work ethic, and go out and work for $3.35 an hour, and you make $7,000 at the end of the year, $3,500 below the poverty line, OK? So it has it's kinds of things.

The other thing is is that the slavemaster, when he was calling Blacks lazy, was engaged in some misinterpretations because of their perspective on the situation. Because what he was defining-- what they were seeing and defining as lazy was passive resistance.

What do you do-- for those of you who have children, you know what I'm talking about. I mean, if you're a slave, you have no option to refuse or say, no, sir, to the slavemaster. You have to say, yessuh. And if you then realize and understand that slavery is unjust, and you shouldn't be doing this, what do you do? If you openly rebel, they kill you.

So you develop passive resistance or passive-aggressive strategies, just like your kids do to their parental authority. You say, go do this. The kids say, yes, I'll do it, mom. Yeah, dad. Then they go in and sweep the dirt under the rug, ball up the clothes and throw them in the closet, right, take their good time to do it, three days.

And the parents shake their head, and get mad and angry, and they call the kid lazy. What's the matter, you lazy bum, and this, and this. Kids are just resisting parental authority, right? One way of looking at it.

And the Blacks were frequently resisting in a lot of small ways-- all the Blacks will tell you this-- the orders from the slavemaster, or from whites, in particular, who they felt were exploiting them. And that was a lot of the behavior, as well, see? But Blacks not being in a position to define, they don't make the definitions.

Even a modern term like "culturally deprived," see, you have to know that that's the definition coming from outside somewhere, on another group of people. Because Mexican-American poor are not going to get together and say, our major problem is that we are culturally deprived. They won't do that.

And then look at the politics of that. "Implicit," if a group is culturally deprived, if Black folks are culturally deprived, it's implied that there's some people around who are not culturally deprived. That's your reference group, right, the norms. Now, what group is that?

Who are those people who are not culturally deprived, who's the normative reference group? You know who they are. I mean, I don't have to tell you. It also defines a pathway for you for getting out of your situation, so it has a political message. You have to become more like the culturally un-deprived group to get out of your fix.

So that definition is very important. Because if you want to say, listen, the issue is not that you're culturally deprived, the major issue is that you're oppressed people. The solutions for oppression are different than the solutions for being culturally deprived. So that, sometimes, these definitions are meant to lock you in to certain processes. And it's done in intuitive ways, because the people in charge establish the definitions.

And one of the things that happens, in all of this, is that the oppressed people at the bottom begin themselves to develop a minority perspective, or a minority kind of psychology inside their head, you see? Now, think of all the words that you associate with the word "minority." What words would you associate with "minority," see?

The women's movement started, and they did something which I felt was psychologically incorrect, but, now, I know how they were thinking about it. They immediately defined themselves as a minority. You don't want to do that. Don't say you're a minority, because it's a psychology that goes with that notion of being a minority.

And I'll get to that more later, but I think it can become a handicap in many ways because of what it implies. There's other kind of general norms and attitudes we have, and the stereotypes, and the debates going on, the Moyers program on the Black family, see? Now, that's-- or let's take something even more decisive.

One of Reverend Jesse Jackson's problems, when he was running for the nomination, was all the newspapers and the media referred to him as the Black candidate. They didn't refer to Mondale as the white candidate, or Gary Hart as the white candidate. Now, what does that do? Why do they say, the Black candidate?

AUDIENCE: To make him look naked.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: It limits him, and it makes the population out there-- by saying he's a Black candidate projects that he is only concerned about Black people. Because if they said, Mondale was the white candidate, no Black folks would vote for him, right? He's the white candidate, it implies that he's only for white people, see?

So it's a question of who's in charge in defining the minority person as the Black candidate. I mean, they don't say, the Italian candidate. They don't say, the Irish candidate as a modifier before their names, or the Norwegian candidate-- Walter Mondale, the Norwegian candidate-- because he represents the majority culture.

But that becomes a limitation on Jesse Jackson, because the media keeps defining him into a bag and into a corner. And he had to fight to try to convince-- and the newspapers said, well, you are the Black candidate, aren't you? What's the matter? I mean, you ain't Black?

[LAUGHTER]

See, they had trouble understanding, right, in their head reference points. So that becomes something that's confining. To have to be seen in that way and manipulated in that way, that makes your life much more difficult, and in itself, is a pressure-- a pressure.

But back to the Moyers program. What was wrong with the Moyers program? You see, they wanted to throw Black leadership on the defensive, and say, oh, you're messed up people, irresponsible Blacks with all your faults. We ain't doing nothing to you. You're doing it to yourself.

And what's wrong with the program? First of all, the program was not balanced. It focused on the negative, right, totally, the very bad negative. They didn't show you any balance. They didn't show you poor two-parent family homes. Mm-mm. They were delighted in the negative, OK?

The other thing it did that was wrong, and this is, again, part of the problem, is that they made it a Black problem. It is not a Black problem. Teenage pregnancy is not a Black problem. It doesn't derive from Blackness. Teenage pregnancy is a problem for the whole society. Is that right?

AUDIENCE: That's right.

[APPLAUSE]

ALVIN POUSSAINT: Single-parent families are a problem for the whole society, and it's been going up very rapidly in the white community. So if you want to portray an issue of single parents, or men who father children and don't take care of them, and you want to make that the issue, then you have white folks on the program too. You don't just have Black folks.

Because what happens with that, that's very faulty, even for white people who may not see it negatively, even for white people who may be sympathetic. What happens is they make you think that there's a Black solution to it, right?

And so the whites may sit up there and feel, well, this is a Black problem, there must be some Black solution. There's not a Black solution to it. There may be gradations of dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds, but there has to be a societal solution to that problem.

There's not a Black solution to joblessness, there's a societal solution to joblessness that will affect all of the unemployed, the white unemployed and the Black unemployed. Programs to affect teenage pregnancy, to help children, are not just Black programs. They have to be programs for everyone, with a focus and targeted on areas of greatest concern, which is OK.

But by making it seem like it's a Black problem, and then have all these columnists writing articles over and over again about, you see, these Black families-- allows them to escape and allows them not to deal with these problems in the white community, and pretend that they don't exist, and to continue to scapegoat the Black community. You understand that?

[APPLAUSE]

And Reverend Jackson was up there on the program, all defensive. And he said, no, it's not genetic, you know. It's not genetic, you know. Yeah, you're right, it's not genetic. But people are still into the genetics thing, a lot.

Even Black folks are confused about genetic arguments. See, if white people tell Black folks-- they say, Black folks, hey, you know, you got rhythm, Black folks get mad. Then they get together by themselves and they say, yeah, we got it.

[LAUGHTER]

And then you got all these coaches who think playing basketball is genetic. You know they do. Because some of them are going over to Africa to recruit basketball players. I mean, they ain't going to Sweden-- I mean, they ain't going to Sweden to recruit and teach Swedes how to play basketball or be on American teams, but they're going to Africa, trying to get them. They must think there's something genetic.

Now, admittedly, Black folks here are a select group of people, right? Slavemasters didn't go over there and pick up any scrawny slaves. They picked up a select group of people, OK? So that's there. That's real. No one will argue with that. But the real issue is that people refuse to see, when they start thinking genetics, they have a natural ability to do that.

Blacks have good ability to play ball, you know why? Because they practice it a lot. They practice it a lot. It's on their agenda. It's one of the things that they have been indoctrinated with by the society, is that-- one thing that Blacks are supposed to be good at is being entertainers and sports. That's one avenue that they let you through first, right?

But even at the top sports-- see, they hung on for a long time because of some superiority fights and that, about white supremacy, that even surrounded all of the Black heavyweight champions, right, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis-- like, became the great white hope all the time. These people can't beat us, mentality. We beat them at everything.

So then, after a while, that gave way. And when Blacks saw they got into these places first, back in the '40s, then start gearing up, so this is one of the ways to escape poverty. And this is one of the ways to success. So Black kids-- and it's also been told that you are good at that, but you have no brains, right?

So then the kids feel confident about doing something in sports and not confident about doing things in academics, right? So it's what's on the agenda. Black kids come home from school, and they get the basketball. And they go out and they practice basketball four and five hours a day. You ride around Chicago and New York, and you see the Black kids are playing basketball at night, in the dark. No wonder they are good when the lights come on.

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

Now, if those Black kids came home from school, and they spend four and five hours studying science, they would be good at math and science too.

[APPLAUSE]

But it's not on the agenda for a variety of reasons, some of them that have to do with indoctrination, that it doesn't happen. It just has to get on the agenda. I mean, people think that Asians-- you know, all this stuff going on about Asian-Americans, like implications. Like, they genetically have this ability to do academics and science. You know what it is? It ain't genetic with the Asians, they study more.

They study more. That's no stereotype. That's in studies. That is, the average Asian-American student studies twice as many hours as the average American student-- a study just came out of California-- because their cultural orientation around education and their psychology around education is different.

It's on their agenda in a different way. And it's a different way culturally that they function with that. But the practice-- and all the professors sitting here know this-- that practice or putting in the time is the critical ingredient to success in academia or in college, right? That if you put in the time, most of the stuff you will get. You don't have to be any mental giant.

With most of the material, you have to put in the hours and the time. So there's a lot-- you see, part of the minority psychology I refer to is this kind of indoctrination that the Blacks will accept. But also other things too, because it means that you-- you know, minority implies that you're weak, you're passive, you're not in charge, right?

See, Blacks adapt to being not in charge. We know we're not in charge most of the times. We don't run anything, right? What does that do to your head to know you don't run things. No, we don't run things.

And to know that day in and day out, how does it affect our motivation, and what we feel we can accomplish? Does it make us feel more like victims, that we have no choices because we're not in charge? That other people are acting on us and we can't do anything about it? Sure it does.

The same thing-- that's why I said, I don't think it's good for women to put that label on themselves, minority. Because they ain't a minority. In numbers, they were saying they were minority politically, see, because they suffer the same oppression. See, I could give this discussion on women and come up with a lot of the same stuff, you know.

Women were defined into positions of inferiority by the norms as well, coming from all kinds of scientists, right? And then it got sophisticated and fancy in the psychoanalytic literature. But essentially, we had the same thing going with women and mental illness.

We said-- I mean, back when I was going through training, if a woman was too aggressive, you referred her for treatment because she was castrating. I mean, is there a male counterpart to being a castrating woman? Is there?

See, it's a pejorative term to keep women in their place. Say, you're castrating, step back, be nicer, calm down, don't be aggressive, don't try to get ahead of me. Otherwise, we send you to see the doctor who treats the sick.

And then they said that women did things-- that women were always engaging in masculine protest. I mean, men never engaged in feminine protest. But women were engaged-- and then they had the real scientific clincher. They said, women were suffering from penis envy.

Now, there was no-- I mean, there was no vagina envy. I mean, that wasn't in the books. They weren't writing about men-- but women had penis-- I'm telling you. Right 20 years ago, I used to treat women for those kinds of problems. And I'd want to discuss it with her, now, talk to me about your penis envy.

[LAUGHTER]

And then they defined women according to biology, right? They said, your natural place-- you are anatomically a receptive instrument. So therefore, you should be passive, and a recipient, and not do the things that men do with their swords, right? And then the women buy into that. And then they cooperate in their own oppression. Do you see what I mean about what a woman's role is?

AUDIENCE: Right.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: Who defines the woman's role? The woman's role, historically and psychologically, has been defined by men, right? So you have to challenge what their perspective is, which the women's movement, of course, does. And one of the first groups that the women came after were the psychiatrists and the psychologists. You know that. They said, you clean that stuff up. You are justifying-- trying to justify our oppression.

Well, one of the problems too in being a minority and adapting to it is, sometimes, you don't even know when you're under stress. Because it just goes on, and you take it, and it rolls off you, but you're under stress. Blacks are under stress because a lot of places they go, they don't feel welcome. That's a stress.

Then the stress when they're in situations where they perceive that the white people consider them to be dumb until they prove otherwise, which goes on a lot, right? That's a stress. It's a stress when people only want to relate to them in terms of their color, right? They have to talk about a Black topic.

And sometimes-- so there's a tension there all the time. They have to talk about a Black topic. They want to engage-- and it's not necessarily malicious. But, sometimes, it gets silly. And I've had silly things happen to me, sometimes, with whites, with the intense need to relate to me around something Black. And they'll say, hey, I met this guy at a party in Denver. He was a Black guy. His name was Jim Jones. He's an accountant. Do you know him?

[LAUGHTER]

I'm serious. You'd think-- this happens all the time, you know. And I remember one time I was on a college campus, and a white girl raised her hand, and she said, I try to be friendly to the Black students, and they treat me terribly. They don't talk to me. I think they're hostile. And what's the matter with them? They won't say, hello. I said, well, what do you do? I mean, you say you talk-- oh, she says, I walk down here and say, what's happening, man?

I'm serious, she said that and didn't understand why the Black students thought she was a fool. I mean, you don't do that. You don't try to relate to someone by-- I mean, sometimes, I'm around whites and I try to tabulate the number of "mans" that come out of their mouth, hey, man, you, man. Because they're trying to hook into something.

And then that becomes a stress. I say, well, you know, what are you trying-- and then it limits me, you see? Then it becomes a limitation. And then you can't have natural free discussion because you can feel the tension, and they're trying to relate to you in that way. And then they may even give you compliments and stuff. It gets very tricky, and it's disturbing.

I mean, I was working with this white teacher in Boston, and we were having lunch, a male teacher. And he liked me. And he thought I was nice. And he looked at me and smiled, and he said, Dr. Poussaint, you know, it's Blacks like you who should have a lot of children.

AUDIENCE: Ooh!

ALVIN POUSSAINT: Now, the man thought he was giving me a compliment. So you understand what I'm saying? And if he's in charge-- say, he's in charge, and I got upset and angry, he wouldn't understand. He'd say, what's the matter with that Black guy? Is he oversensitive? So he would define me as having the problem--

AUDIENCE: Right on, professor.

ALVIN POUSSAINT: --not himself. And since he would be in charge, and all his colleagues see it the same way, I would be defined as ill. And then I would have to-- am I really disturbed? Am I oversensitive? What should I do? And I would just be all stressed out, and it's his problem.

But since they control, you have to do that. And so there's these little micro things. Maybe it's different in Minnesota, but I don't know if it's so different, because we're all in it, right? And then some of it you can't escape. Maybe when I die, some of you will escape it.

But when I go to a restaurant, and they sit me by the kitchen, I get nervous. I get anxious. And I can't enjoy my meal. And I have to sit there, now, did he do this because I'm Black, or did he-- so I don't want to do that. So I say, please change my table, and he changes my table. Then a white couple comes in, and he sits them at the table by the kitchen. The guy may not have been doing anything to me, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem for me.

See, that's why you have to know the cultural differences, you see? You have to be alert. If you go-- a Black woman goes into a store, and she's dealing with a white clerk, and the clerk's nasty, now, she stops for a minute. She says, now, is this clerk being nasty to me because I'm Black, or is this just a nasty white clerk?

[LAUGHTER]

You see, they all know. You see, they're laughing. They know the psychology of it. But I wouldn't wind down. Anyway, getting away with the minority psychology, that also has built in it, sometimes, I think, passivity, particularly when you feel overwhelmed, right?

Like, Blacks right now feel very overwhelmed by what's happening in the society, cut backs, there are fall back in all areas. Education is just, phfft, it's going down like that. And that can increase the passivity, because you feel overwhelmed that you can't effectively fight back.

But I want to leave with a kind of quotable quote from Reverend Jesse Jackson about this. It has a general message about the society and what Black students-- and any students, but Black students, and Native American students, and others who have to deal with some of these psychological things, what their psychological approach should be.

Reverend Jesse Jackson, when he was preparing to run for the nomination, a lot of people told him not to run. What are you doing that for? You don't stand a chance, et cetera, et cetera. It's foolish. And Reverend Jackson said, "You know, if I run, I may win or I may lose." He said, "But if I don't run, I am guaranteed to lose."

Well, that's true about a lot of things, particularly in a democratic society. If you say nothing, you are guaranteed to lose. If you protest, you may win or you may lose, but you have a chance. So that there's always more power, potential power. There's always more mental health in protest and assertion than there is in passivity.

And that's even true about how you approach your studies. If you make the effort, you may win, you may lose, you may succeed, or you may fail. If you don't make the effort, you are guaranteed to fail. And so you have to face up to the effort part and the possibilities of failure, making your best effort and putting in your best time.

But a minority kind of psyche, sometimes, is too tentative. It's more like, may I? Can I? Will you let me? Do I have the ability? And the majority kind of psychology is much more forceful and in charge. It says, yes, I can. Yes, I can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]