HOW I KNOW WHITE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY AND OTHER STORIES

A disgruntled psychologist reviews the impact of racism on his life.

In a prologue, clinical psychologist Lassiter, who defines himself on multiple occasions throughout the book as a “Black, same-gender-loving man with a chronic illness,” deplores the fact that Black men make up fewer than 1% of the psychologists in the United States. He establishes a definition of “whiteness mindset,” which “privileges white ways of understanding the world and concentrating power among white people,” as opposed to “the mindset, originating among the peoples of East Africa, southern Africa, and the Nile Valley regions,” that highlights “a harmonious relationship with the Earth, resources, and other human beings.” He then proceeds, moving systematically through his life from childhood on, to blame whiteness mindset for pretty much everything that has gone less than perfectly in his life. His (Black) father is unhappy that Lassiter is gay? Whiteness mindset. He didn’t get the position for which he thinks he did an “amazing job” at the interview and which went instead to a “fair-skinned Latina”? Whiteness mindset. Lassiter’s targets are legion, but one of the most frequent is the “nice white women” who, he says, “make up 55 percent of the psychologist profession.” “I hate niceness,” he says. “Nice people are fake.” The memoir does make some valuable points: Certainly many people seeking help from psychologists would benefit from being able to work with a Black male psychologist, or a gay psychologist, or a psychologist familiar with the impact of sickle cell disease. And it’s impossible to dispute that Lassiter’s professional and personal life has been impacted by racism. But the continual and frustratingly vague evocation of “whiteness mindset” reduces a complex experience to jargon.

A potentially intriguing memoir flattened by bombast.