The African American Experience Quotes

“In a provocative 1997 interview on 60 Minutes, Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor, and civil rights activist, when asked how he was able to cope with his anger, frustration, and disappointment stemming from constant discrimination and harassment during the civil rights movement, responded with a one word answer: “Psychoanalysis!”
― Salman Akhtar, The African American Experience: Psychoanalytic Perspectives

“Issues about race run deep and rarely rise to the level of reflective consciousness; nevertheless, they inform and impact our individual and collective psyche in terms of our cultural beliefs, our communications, and what we perceive about what is ‘true’ about the other and ourselves. On the surface, our current dialogue is infused with post-racial and race-fatigue language. However, we have rarely as a society dealt with race, so it lingers like metastatic cancer or the national debt.”
― Salman Akhtar, The African American Experience: Psychoanalytic Perspectives

“The misuse of African Americans by the medical establishment at large is well known. (for a recent compendium of pertinent facts, see Washington, 2006). The infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments of past and Henrietta Lock’s story of the current times have made many Black people suspicious of the intent of health providers. They doubt that their issues will be taken seriously, sensitively, and respectfully (Jones, 1981; Skloot, 2010). In addition, for many African Americans, non-medical problems including depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and marital discord are perceived not as emotional disorders but as disjunctions from faith, or”
― Salman Akhtar, The African American Experience: Psychoanalytic Perspectives

“The subject matter of psychoanalysis is intrapsychic conflict. The vectors involved in such conflict are instinctual desires, personal morality, realistic opportunity, and the models of ideal behavior upheld by the individual and the group around him. Most of these variables are shaped by the given constitutional strengths and weaknesses as well as the fortunate and unfortunate events that occur during childhood development. However, the transgenerationally transmitted dynamics of one’s parents and indeed all one’s ancestors come to play a role here as well. The complex interplay of such individual and collective factors in determining the psychosocial destiny of a person and even that of a group has been convincingly demonstrated by the”
― Salman Akhtar, The African American Experience: Psychoanalytic Perspectives

“Generally, the shows and skits would be comprised of the same stereotypical characters (Painter, 2006): • The stupid, lazy hayseed. • The cheating chicken-stealing thief and/or the grinning, watermelon-eating dullard. • The sharp-dressing city slicker. • The pleasant, care-taking mammy. The stereotypes perpetuated by minstrel shows made African Americans appear as useless figures worthy of nothing but distain, punishment, restriction, humiliation, and scorn. ‘Jim Crow’ changed from a smiling, laughing onstage figure to a system of severely limiting laws and rules governing African Americans well into the twentieth century. Blacks were made”
― Salman Akhtar, The African American Experience: Psychoanalytic Perspectives