Race and Excellence

My Dialogue with Chester Pierce

Ezra Griffith
American Psychiatric Association Publishing
220 pages
ISBN: 9781615374830
September 2022

Founding chair of the Black Psychiatrists of America, Chester Pierce has profoundly affected American psychiatry and the thinking of African American psychiatrists during the last two decades. In this book, Ezra Griffith, also an African American professor of psychiatry, engages Pierce in a dialogue with the goal of clarifying the inter-connection between the personal and the professional in the lives of both black scholars. The text melds the story of Pierce's life and his achievements, with particular attention to his theories about the predictable nature of racist behavior and the responses of oppressed groups.