I've been spending the evening trying doing some reading. One of things I was working on was an article called
Freud's Negro, which takes Freud to task on the issue of race.
One of the first things the author, Claudia Tate, mentions is that since psychoanalysis always seems to boil down to is sex regardless of race. As I have only read some of Freud, I would have to take Tate's word on it, but I suspect this has been an advantage, since Franz Fanon applied Freud's sexual theories to race and race relations in his book
Black Skin, White Masks. (He has two chapters dedicated, for instance, on inter-racial relationships. He stipulates that Black men favor White women as partners because they perceive it as a way to have something the White man usually has, thus themselves becoming white. He also asserts that White men favor Black women as partners as a roundabout way of dominating Black men. This theory is also, I believe, based on Foucault. But I digress.)
There is lots of troubling (but also enlightening) information about Freud. Apparently Freud told racist jokes. I can't help but roll my eyes here. Tate goes on to break this joke down, depicting it as a remaking of the master/slave relationship.
I am hoping that psychologists who do work with Freud's theories are aware of this, because psychologists don't exist to be masters in a master/slave dichotomy. They exist to as a guide, like Virgil was to Dante, so that the patient, regardless of race, can have mastery over their life again.
That said, I like this article a lot. It gives a good backbone to an argument that I'm assuming as been expanded elsewhere. Her work on Freud and race (White, Black and Jewish) and gender are interesting. There's a scene early on in the novel
The Book Thief where a young white German boy, Rudy, puts on blackface in an attempt to costume himself as his hero, Jessie Owens. (The book, set in Nazi Germany, would be at around the same time Jessie Owens won at the Olympics, which were held in Nazi Germany.) Rudy then runs to the nearest track and runs around, pretending to be Owens, having just won another race. His father find him and immediately removes him, dragging him home and instructing him not to wear blackface again. I think this part of the novel, and the actual events surrounding Owens's win, would be an interesting situation to analyze in the context of this theory, which juggles three races.
