Dr.. Frances Berro Welsing * ESCUCHE AQUÍ *

Washington, D.C.-based psychiatrist and race theorist Frances Cress Welsing rocked the fields of cultural and behavioral science with her 1970 essay The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy). This striking theory of the origins of racism is rooted in the effects that varying degrees of melanin–the color-producing pigment in skin–can have on racial perception and development. “The quality of whiteness is a genetic inadequacy or a relative deficiency or disease based upon the inability to produce the skin pigments of melanin which are responsible for all skin color,” she explained in the essay, añadiendo, “The majority of the world’s people are not so afflicted, suggesting that the state of color is the norm for human beings and [its] absence is abnormal.”

In her essay, Welsing contends that because of their “numerical inadequacy” y “color inferiority,” white people may have defensively developed “an uncontrollable sense of hostility and aggression” towards people of color which has led to “confrontations” between the races throughout history. Repressing their own feelings of inadequacy, blancos “set about evolving a social, political and economic structure to give blacks and other ‘non-whites’ the appearance of being inferior.”

The second of three girls, Welsing was born on March 18, 1935, en Chicago, Illinois, into a family that had already produced two doctors. Su padre, Henry N. Cress, now deceased, was a medical doctor, as was her grandfather. After receiving her bachelor’s degree at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, en 1957, and her M.D. at Washington D.C.’s Howard University College of Medicine five years later, Welsing siguió una carrera en psiquiatría general y el niño. Su ensayo Berro teoría fue publicada mientras ella era profesora asistente de pediatría de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Howard. Según Welsing, causó tal revuelo que su permanencia en la universidad no fue renovado en 1975.

Además de su papel como educador, Welsing pasó casi dos décadas y media de su larga y distinguida carrera trabajando como médico personal del Departamento de Servicios Humanos en Washington, DC, y se desempeñó como director clínico de dos escuelas existen para los niños con problemas emocionales. Un especialista en el niño y la psiquiatría general, comenzó su práctica privada en el distrito en 1967 y se ha ganado la aclamación particular por su trabajo con los jóvenes.

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