Race and Excellence: My Dialogue With Chester Pierce

Chester Pierce's list of accomplishments was second to none: graduate of
Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, president of the American Board
of Psychiatry and Neurology, president of the American Orthopsychiatric
Association, founding national chair of the Black Psychiatrists of America, and
namesake of the American Psychiatric Association's Human Rights Award. Moreover,
his musings about racism as an environmental pollutant, of the daily microtrauma
that racially oppressed individuals endure, are foundational to modern mental
health.

But who was the man behind the numerous professional achievements
and seminal theories? And what can knowledge of his life, when evaluated in
conjunction with his profound impact on psychiatry, reveal about the Black
experience?

First published in 1998 and reprinted here with a new
introduction, this collection of interactive discussions between Ezra Griffith
and Chester Pierce takes readers on a journey through different stages of
Pierce's life, including the following:

His upbringing in the Long
Island community of Glen Cove His undergraduate years at Harvard, including his
athletic pursuits, membership in the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, and early
married life with Patsy Blanchet His training at the University of Cincinnati
and experiences as a Navy psychiatrist His time at the Oklahoma Veterans
Administration Hospital

What emerges is more than just a portrait of one
particularly determined and talented man's path to achievement in the face of
individual and institutional obstacles. We find distinct methods of managing the
stress of racial discrimination. There is also a new way to approach narratives
about Black lives. Anyone interested in gaining a greater understanding of how
to evaluate the salience of race matters in people's lives and develop
therapeutic approaches to coping with the stress will find this a particularly
revelatory resource.