January 31, 2010

Racism and Mental Illness

Bettmann, CORBIS

Many “unruly black men” who were arrested during the 1967 race riots in Detroit were later sent to a notorious psychiatric hospital in Ionia, Mich., writes Jonathan M. Metzl.

By Kacie Glenn

Cecil Peterson was arrested in September 1966, following a fistfight with a man on a street in Detroit. Peterson, a young black man with no history of arrest or psychological problems, claimed that the other man, white, had glared at him and insulted his mother. He was jailed for assaulting the police officers who intervened, and a year into his prison sentence was labeled "homicidal" by a psychiatrist who had noted his increasing hostility and suspicion of white people.

Soon after,