Racism Is Not a Mental Illness
Racism Is Not a Mental Illness: A Black History Month Statement
Black Connect
February 27, 2026
On the last business day of Black History Month, we’re taking time to highlight the importance of clarity and precision.
Black History Month is not only about remembrance. It is about recognition — recognition of truth, of harm, of resistance, and of the systems that required that resistance in the first place.
At Black Connect, our mission is to close the racial wealth gap through entrepreneurship, legal access, and economic infrastructure. That mission requires clarity. Because you cannot dismantle what you misdiagnose.
Recently, I’ve seen social media posts describing racism as a “mental illness.”
It is not.
Precise language matters when discussing racism — especially during Black History Month, when we recount centuries of deliberate policy, extraction, and exclusion.
Racism is not a diagnosis.
It is not a disorder.
It is not a neurological malfunction.
Racism is a moral and structural system of power.
Mental Illness Is a Medical Condition. Racism Is an Ideology.
Mental illnesses are recognized clinical disorders defined by diagnostic criteria in publications like the DSM-5-TR by the American Psychiatric Association.
Depression. Bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia. PTSD.
These conditions:
Have diagnostic criteria
Are researched clinically
Can be treated or managed
Often impair daily functioning
Racism does not appear in any diagnostic manual.
Because racism is not a malfunction of the brain.
It is a belief system that ranks human value — and historically, it has been profitable.
Mental Illness Impairs Function. Racism Often Consolidates Power.
Mental illness can disrupt a person’s ability to function socially or occupationally.
Racism has structured economic systems. It has influenced:
Housing access
Business lending
Contract enforcement
Education funding
Workforce opportunity
Policies like Jim Crow laws and practices like Redlining were not psychiatric episodes.
The transatlantic slave trade was not the product of untreated trauma.
It was an economic and legal system.
These were codified systems tied to wealth extraction and power.
When something is written into law and defended in court, we are not dealing with illness.
We are dealing with design.
Evil Does Not Require Mental Instability
It Requires Justification — and Permission Without Consequence
Evil does not require mental instability.
It requires justification.
It requires narratives that make harm feel reasonable:
“Protection of standards.”
“Market forces.”
“Risk mitigation.”
“Preserving tradition.”
“Merit.”
And it requires permission without consequence.
When discriminatory systems operate without accountability, racism persists — not because systems allow it.
Because power protects it.
Because consequences are minimal.
Medicalizing Racism Removes Accountability
If racism is labeled a mental illness:
The aggressor becomes the patient.
The system becomes unfortunate.
The harm becomes incidental.
Racism is not a psychiatric disorder.
And distinguishing racism from psychiatric illness does not mean that individuals who engage in racist behavior cannot have diagnosed conditions. It means that racism itself is not a psychiatric disorder and does not require psychiatric impairment to function.
Racism has been upheld by individuals widely regarded as rational, educated, and professionally competent — judges, legislators, professors, physicians, corporate executives.
The system does not require impairment.
It requires permission.
The target shifts.
Or more accurately, the target disappears.
There is no perpetrator — only someone “struggling.”
There is no architecture — only symptoms.
Once the target disappears, accountability disappears with it.
And that is not progress.
Mental Illness Deserves Compassion. Racism Demands Confrontation.
Mental illness is not evil.
It is not a character defect.
It is not a moral failure.
Conflating racism with psychiatric conditions stigmatizes people who live responsibly while managing real diagnoses.
Precision protects everyone.
Why This Matters — Especially During Black History Month
Black History Month chronicles resistance to systems — not recovery from pathology.
It tells the story of communities confronting:
Legal exclusion
Economic sabotage
Physical violence
Capital restriction
The fight has always been structural.
Which means the response must also be structural.
At Black Connect, we do not approach racial inequity as a misunderstanding to be counseled.
We approach it as infrastructure to be countered.
We help build:
Businesses
Legal literacy
Capital networks
Institutional partnerships
Independent platforms
Because systems change when power changes.
In Closing
Mental illness deserves compassion, research, and care.
Racism deserves accountability, structural disruption, and consequences.
They are not the same.
When we blur that line, we distort the problem — and undermine the solution.
Worse — we move the target.
Or more accurately, we remove the target altogether.
Empathy without accountability becomes permission.
Permission without consequence becomes continuation.
But continuation is not inevitable
When you understand that racism is not disorder but design,
you stop mislabeling the problem —
you start insisting on consequences —
and we start building alternatives.
At Black Connect, we help build alternatives that foster economic independence, because economic power creates leverage that leads to consequences.