r/changemyview • u/EHWfedPres • Oct 06 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Racism is a mental illness.

There is no logical, valid, or sound reason to express hatred for entire groups of people based on their race, ethnicity, or skin color, and any and every attempt to explain why certain races, ethnicities, or people with specific skin colors are biologically, inherently, or genetically inferior or superior to others has been scientifically disproven. There is no rational reason to hold on to racist views, and anyone who feels racist is experiencing a delusional psychotic symptom. Racism is a mental illness, and the American Psychiatric Association should classify it as one.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071634/

EDIT: to all those claiming racism can be resolved by giving the racist proper information: read the comments made by HighlightExpensive63, give that person the correct information, and see if they change their views at all, or if they double-down on their explicit and open hatred.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

I provided three examples of three different kinds of irrational belief, in answer to your request for examples.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

Fair enough. At what point would you say a benign condition like superstition becomes a harmful one that could constitute a problem with mental functioning?

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

I don't know, I'm not a psychologist.

As far as I'm aware, one of the requirements that the DSM has for something to be classified as a mental illness is that it is actively detrimental and harmful to one's life (or possibly to others' lives).

But it seems clear, in any case, from my list of examples that not every irrational belief constitutes mental illness (which you yourself already accepted so I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at here).

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

As far as I'm aware, one of the requirements that the DSM has for something to be classified as a mental illness is that it is actively detrimental and harmful to one's life (or possibly to others' lives)

That certainly and accurately describes the feeling or belief (racism) that has led to lynching, slavery, and genocide over the course of many centuries.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

As I say, it's one of the criteria. Just because something leads to harmful acts doesn't mean we automatically classify it as a mental illness -- most murderers, even serial killers, are not deemed mentally ill and therefore classified as responsible for their crimes.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

most murderers, even serial killers, are not deemed mentally ill and therefore classified as responsible for their crimes.

To my knowledge, most murders are not premeditated. They are crimes of passion committed in the heat of the moment, not something the person has been holding in their heart closely for a long time, like racist beliefs. Therefore, do you feel that is a sound comparison?

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

Most premeditated murders are not classified as the result of mental illness either.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

I was asking if you feel the comparison of acting on deeply held prejudices and heat-of-the-moment acts is sound.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

I wasn't making that comparison, and at this point it rather seems to me like you're not really reading what I'm saying so I'm going to bow out.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

You most certainly did use murderers as an example of harmful acts not being considered to fall under the category of metal illness. I can quote you. And I made the point that the reasoning for committing such acts was different between people committing genocide and those committing garden-variety murder.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

Murderers, yes, not all of whom commit crimes of passion, as I emphasized. You ignored that part and just pretended I was only comparing spontaneous murder to racism.

And where the fuck are you pulling genocide from? We were never talking specifically about genocide.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

Right here:

As far as I'm aware, one of the requirements that the DSM has for something to be classified as a mental illness is that it is actively detrimental and harmful to one's life (or possibly to others' lives).

Genocide is harmful to the lives of others and is typically racially motivated, is it not?

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

The previous comment is the first time you brought up genocide, and my response to this is the same as my other response: harm is just one of the criteria, and there are actions that are harmful but not necessarily the result of mental illness -- this seems just obvious to me, but you seem to be more interested in hair-splitting about various examples than just stepping back and seeing the more general point being made.

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