Dr. Frances Cress Welsing Dies at 80

[Kind of Blue]

I didn't agree with some of Dr. Welsing's theories but she was fearless and I loved listening to her vast wealth of knowledge.

Thank you, Dr. Welsing

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a psychiatrist whose ideas about racism and society sparked years of debate and controversy, has died at age 80, according to the Washington Informer, which cites confirmation from her relatives.

Welsing had been hospitalized in Washington, D.C., this week after suffering a stroke. Announcing her death Saturday morning, activist and radio host Harry Allen wrote, "The void she leaves has no boundary."

As news of Welsing's death emerged, she was mourned by many – including musician Chuck D, who credits her with the intellectual inspiration for the 1990 Public Enemy album Fear of a Black Planet.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/02/461765446/activists-mourn-race-theorist-dr-frances-cress-welsing

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. I've read so much of her work ...

She pissed off so many with her assertions that most of western conflict can be explained through a recognition the European's fear of genetic annihilation, i.e., Fear of a Black Planet .

[Kind of Blue]

6. Yeah, Dr. Welsing analyzed the fear

thoroughly. She was the first one that gave me somewhere to start in understanding the core of supremacy.

[1StrongBlackMan]

10. Yes. It DID give me something to think about ...

specifically, WHY the hatred is/was so deep ... it is a matter of survival, literally.

But when one thinks about it/listens to what white supremacists have been saying since ... forever, i.e., the Quiver full Movement ... the talk of "white genocide", etc.

[Kind of Blue]

13. "saying since...forever..."

I just remembered a documentary viewed years ago on the history of the KKK. What was really new to me was there were many blacks in this '30s rally held by a klan member. What he was saying was that blacks should join the klan because miscengenation was going to not only wipe white people out but blacks, as well. The fear was that deep that desperately trying to recruite blacks into their organization seemed like a viable option to them. So crazy.

[rbrnmw]

2. RIP Dr. Welsing

[Kind of Blue]

7. ...

[BumRushDaShow]

3. I missed this over the weekend

How sad!!

I have her book "Isis Papers" and reference it often. I have watched her many lectures on youtube (she was still travelling and lecturing at various events this past year). She also used to call Joe Madison's SiriusXM talk show at least once a week for years, offering her commentary on current events. I also know that one thing that bugged her the past couple years (that she also discussed when she called), was a playground across from her house in metro D.C. and the increasing noise levels and her attempts at engaging and suing the city... After that, her calls slowly dropped off from Madison's show (although she did apparently contribute to other shows) and then I didn't hear much from her anymore on the radio. She was still lecturing over the summer but I expect she was in declining health during the fall.

In any case, I was so sorry to see this. As a practicing psychiatrist (and there are still only a very few black ones out there - I used to live next door to one years ago), hers is a loss as a voice in the discussion and dissection of some of the most dysfunctional behaviors going on in the United States today surrounding race and the sociological impacts of it on the populace.

R.I.P. and condolences to her family.

[Kind of Blue]

8. When Dr. Ben died earlier in 2015

I immediately thought of who among the educators of my youth are still around. Of course, Dr. Welsing came to mind though I hadn't actively followed her in a while, and having moved from the D.C. area years ago. So her death came as a shock. Thanks, BumRushDaShow, for expressing how you, a fellow psychiatrist, still reference The Isis Paper.

[BumRushDaShow]

19. As a note

I'm not a psychiatrist but I lived next door to one growing up and was friends with his kids. Since his family was originally from D.C., I expect he may have known her (although he would have been over 10 or so years her senior).

It's sad but inevitable that a generation is leaving us... but then that means some of the next generation has to step up and fill the void!!! The Karengas and Asantes and Jeffries are still around!

[Kind of Blue]

20. Yes, there are some

filling the void! I've been following Lewis Gordon lately and getting into Franz Fanon specifically. From Gordon's FB page, Professor of Philosophy & Africana Studies, with affiliations in Judaic Studies, El Instituto, and Asian and Asian American Studies at UConn, Studied Philosophy at Yale University. http://www.lewisrgordon.com/audio-video/video/

Thanks for the clarification!

Watching his TEDxUCONN his video "Lewis Gordon speaks on ways in which deconstruction is often confused simply with criticism and some considerations from Black Existentialism with regard to philosophical anthropology, freedom, and metacritiques of reason."

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[BumRushDaShow]

21. Interesting that you mention Fanon

as that was a name bandied about in my household growing up. My mom had his "Wretched of the Earth" and talked about his "Black Faces, White Masks".

Have bookmarked to watch that video...

[Stellar]

4. Just heard about it...

[Kind of Blue]

9. Thanks for the link, Stellar.

I haven't listened to her for a while.

[Chitown Kev]

5. This woman's rabid homophobia is what I found

in much of late 80's black nationalism and turned me away from the crowd forever.

"If Dr. Freud was a neurotic colored woman", as the late great gay black poet Essex Hemphill called her...

She was correct in some of her theories about white anxiety but other than that...even in death, I can only toss her shade.

[1StrongBlackMan]

11. I hear you. People, even academics, are so complicated. eom.

[Kind of Blue]

14. Indeed! Some of my heroes, like

Carl Jung and Mahatma Gandhi, I've had to remove from pedastals.

[1StrongBlackMan]

15. All have Feet of clay ...

when we look at the whole person.

[Kind of Blue]

16. Yup! n/t

[Kind of Blue]

12. That is a part of Cress's theory

I've disagreed with from the git-go. I don't know if that's shade but if it is, I might as well toss one to Dr. King for considering homosexuality a "problem." Both Drs. Welsing and King fit in with a tremendous swath of people in this country who had "solutions" for the "problem." I put neither on a pedastal.

[Chitown Kev]

17. King wasn't even as bad as Adam Clayton Powell

Homosexuality as a sort of a disease of the bourgeois and the upper class is one of the reasons I toss shade at classical Marxism (although that had a lot more to do with Engles)...but church folks will be church folks

Heaven help someone who struggled with their sexual identity (and I was sent to a psychiatrist for that reason on one occasion, in part when I was 16) who ever received treatment from that woman.

[Kind of Blue]

18. I'm so sorry, Chitown Kev!

Yeah, I read Powell used everything he could to remove Baynard Rustin from Dr. King's circle.