Racism and mental illness

We know much more than we used to about the neurobiological roots of racist behavior.

Another mass shooting in the US, and another round of debating whether it was caused by racism or mental illness. This time around, after a white gunman murdered three black victims in Florida, it seems impossible to deny that racism played a major role. The perpetrator sent his father multiple racist screeds before the attack and yelled racial slurs as he pulled the trigger; the gun itself was engraved with swastikas.

One might think that the overt reference to the Nazis would settle the debate once and for all, but if we take left writing on twentieth century fascism seriously, we may want to revisit some of this argument’s assumptions. Of course the shooter was a racist — but can we not, following the old Frankfurt School argument, think of racism itself as a form of mental illness?