Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a psychiatrist and author who helped to expand on the understanding that racism is a pathology that cannot effectively be legislated away or dealt with by protests alone, died on Feb. 24 at his Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, home; he was 90 years old.
According to The New York Times, Poussaint got his start assisting civil rights protestors straight out of medical school in the 1960s before he started producing scholarships in the 1970s that straddled the line between addressing systemic racism and advocating for Black Americans to embrace personal responsibility and traditional family structures.
In addition, Poussaint is believed to be the model for disgraced actor Bill Cosby’s defining role on The Cosby Show as Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable, a role which earned Cosby the title of “America’s Dad.”
Although Poussaint denied being the inspiration for the character, he was a script consultant for the show and often sent notes to the show’s writers regarding avoiding stereotypes or deepening storylines.
Poussaint often argued that the sexual assault accusations against Cosby should not overshadow the messages presented in The Cosby Show, as he told Ebony Magazine. “(The Cosby Show) dramatically altered the image of blacks as poor, downtrodden, yet happy-go-lucky clowns. The Huxtable family help[ed] to dispel old stereotypes and to move its audience toward more realistic perceptions. Like Whites, Blacks on television should be portrayed in a full spectrum of roles and cultural styles.”
Poussaint also worked behind the scenes on another show that centered on a Black family, Family Matters, which introduced America to Steve Urkel, a brainy, goofy teenager portrayed by Jaleel White.
Regarding the character’s reflection of Black Americans in the larger society, Poussaint told The New York Times in 1991, “The fact that he’s a nerd and very bright may be a step forward, accepting that a Black kid can be bright and precocious and might end up in an Ivy League school.”
Poussaint’s focus on families and sometimes
on fatherless children fit well with the conservative views of Cosby, which were infamously put on display in his much maligned 2006 “pound cake” speech, part of a tour series Poussaint went on with the actor during the 2000s in which he interviewed Black men and families.Conversely, Poussaint’s message that racism is partly a mental disorder drew criticism, in contrast to his earlier scholarship which established that racism is largely embedded in the psyche of white American culture itself, not necessarily a disorder, which he reflected on to The Boston Globe in 1996.
“When
I was involved in the civil rights movement in the South, I believed, like a lot of the people I was working with, that we were going to turn this around in 10 or 20 years; we were going to eliminate racism. Afterward, I began to understand how deeply it was embedded in American culture: It was part of the way the country saw itself, the way people behaved and established their own sense of worth, using blacks and some other groups as scapegoats,” Poussaint said.Dr. Poussaint is survived by Tina Young Poussaint, his wife, a daughter they shared, a son from a previous marriage to Ann Ashmore, and his sister. One of the great tragedies of his life involved his older brother, Kenneth, who died in 1975 of meningitis after battling drug addiction.
According to Bernard Chang, the dean of the Harvard Medical School at Harvard University, which honored Poussaint with a Diversity Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, Poussaint’s work had a tremendous impact on medicine and civil rights.
“Dr. Poussaint’s life and work had an immeasurable impact on the profession and practice of medicine in this country, the social movements for civil rights and human rights, the representation of people of color within our institution and in medical education more broadly, and our collective understanding of the impact of racism on the health and lived experiences of Black Americans,” Chang said.
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