Rex Murphy: Why did Yale host a lecture called ‘The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind’?
Rex Murphy #RexMurphy
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Yes, Yale University, one of the most prestigious in all America sponsored this
Author of the article:
Rex Murphy
Publishing date:
Jun 08, 2021 • 6 hours ago • 3 minute read • 630 Comments 
Yale University School of Medicine. Photo by Tim Clayton /Corbis Via Getty Images Article content
In very recent days it is all to easy and all too frequent to read references to “white” people and the extremely tendentious and newly fashioned concept of “whiteness.” The references are always in a negative, dismissive, and sometimes even threatening context. The message seems to be that “white” is a term of abuse, that it signifies certain moral degradation. This is no exaggeration.
How far is this attitude going? Well, what if you read the following statement somewhere on the internet:
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a f**king favour.”
Or this one: “This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil.”
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In a normal world, you might think these are the wild and manic outpourings of some street orator shouting at passersby, who lower their eyes and scuttle away in embarrassment as quickly as possible.
Well they are not. They are from a lecture. A formal lecture. And it was not to some underground cult. It was delivered, as usual in these times, over Zoom to — prepare for it — Yale University’s School of Medicine. It was delivered by a fully credentialed psychiatrist, Dr. Aruna Khilanani. Its title was as explosive and offensive as the quotations: “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.”
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Yes, Yale University, one of the most prestigious in all America sponsored this and until it was interred by some internet reviewer, there was not a peep of regret, apology, or shame for having done so.
Are such vile statements about fantasies of “unloading a revolver into the head of any white person who got in my way” now acceptable speech whether from an “academic” or not. Is such vile unqualified animosity for any entire set of people, determined only by skin colour — white, part of the new anti-racism?
I’ll dare the lecturer or professor anywhere in North America to deliver, on Zoom or in person, at any university in all of North America, a lecture on “The Psychopathic Problem of the — choose, Black, Brown or any other skin colour — Mind. All hell, and likely parts of Purgatory too, would break loose, and they would be right to do so.
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Most of us have grown up with urgings from parents, teachers and religious leaders never to make judgements of individuals based purely on the shade of their skin. We were admonished that this was not just one, but the definitive characteristic of racism.
How come it is that the adjective “white” so easily carries an undeniable stigma, accompanied by intense hortations for “white” people to stay out of certain discussions, to “stand aside,” to mute their presence when others are present? And when “white” is connected with “male,” it is time to call in the exorcist.
There are some lessons so fundamental, so deeply true, that they can never be superceded. And one of them has been learned by most people, and by most people abided and that is: Do not make judgements on people based on their skin colour. That’s the basic lesson. Within that lesson there was never a carve out to say — “except of course if we’re talking about white people.”
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So how comes it that now that in so many public forums, in “anti-bias” and sensitivity “training courses,” in universities and even in schools there is this emphasis on whiteness and its perils, instructions of how to unpack that troublesome idea of “white privilege,” sessions where students of employees face demands that their whiteness be “acknowledged” as hurtful to all those who are not white.
I propose as an axiom that racism cannot be fought and uprooted by branding all people of one colour as deplorable, or “supremacists” or “privileged” or caught up innately in ineradicable bigotry because their skin is white. That’s simply shifting the counters on the table; the game is identically the same.
As for that spiteful psychiatrist — physician, heal thyself.
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