It came as a shock to many in the Pan-Afrikan World when the news of the sudden death of one of our great intellectuals, the author and behavioral psychiatrist Dr. Frances Cress Welsing was announced.  Apparently, she suffered a major stroke on January 2, was taken to intensive care in critical condition and transitioned to the Honored Ancestors hours later.  For many of us, she provided the first scientific explanation of the psychology of White Supremacy; her landmark work The Isis Papers is considered required reading in many a Pan-Afrikan organization.

Rather than enter into a detailed biography of Dr. Welsing’s career (I could not do it justice anyway), I shall, for now, offer a few quotes from her seminal work, The Isis Papers, as a brief tribute.  We also invite you to visit her Memorial Page on Facebook.

from The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors. Third World Press (1990), ISBN 0-88378-104-2.

“Functional Definition Of Racism = White Supremacy = Apartheid: As a black behavioral scientist and practicing psychiatrist, my own functional definition of racism (white supremacy) is as follows: ‘Racism (white supremacy) is the local and global power system and dynamic, structure, maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; which consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action, and emotional response, as conducted, simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war); for the ultimate purpose of white genetic survival and to prevent white genetic annihilation on planet Earth – a planet upon which the vast and overwhelming majority of people are classified as non-white (black, brown, red and yellow) by white-skinned people, and all of the non-white people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetic recessive white-skinned people.’ ”

“No matter how much you may shrink the size of your nose, no matter how many doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, scholars you may produce, no matter how many Einsteins, Freuds, Marxes, or Rubensteins you produce, no matter how much money, diamonds, and gold you may obtain, if you are classified as “non-white” under the conditions of white supremacy domination, when the hammer of white supremacy falls, you will be under that hammer.”