Thomas Jackson, American Renaissance, September 1997

The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, Frances Cress Welsing, Third World Press 1991, 301 pp.

Frances Cress Welsing, a black psychiatrist and pediatrics professor, is the originator of a “unified field theory” that purports to explain every detail of the wicked behavior of whites. Over the years, she has written on various aspects of the problem, and her book, The Isis Papers, is a collection of her basic writings. Needless to say, her theories run from the goofy to the grotesque, but evidence plays only a minor role in black explanations of white “racism.” After all, black Muslims presumably believe that whites were created 6,000 years ago on the island of Patmos by the mad black scientist Yacub.

Is it worth the bother to look into the nutty ideas of eccentric blacks? Unlike other nutty books AR has reviewed, The Isis Papers does not even have the respectability of a mainstream “white” publisher. Nevertheless, the book has been reprinted seven times in six years, and has stayed for years on the Blackboard African American Bestsellers List. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times praised Dr. Welsing for being “the first scientist to psychoanalyze white racism.” In the early 1990s, the rap group Public Enemy acknowledged her as an inspiration and sent music reviewers copies of her work along with advance tapes of their new album, “Fear of a Black Planet.” Black student groups frequently invite Dr. Welsing to speak on college campuses, where she is reportedly received with standing ovations. Moreover, she was one of the early proponents of what has come to be called “melanin theory,” which is now so popular that even the squeamish white media can no longer ignore it.

Mutant Albinos

According to Dr. Welsing, the basic trouble with whites is that they are “genetic mutant defectives,” the despised albino offspring of Africans. They appeared by mistake thousands of years ago, were abandoned by their horrified black parents, and migrated north to Europe. They have since discovered that not only are they a numerical minority in the world, their traits are genetically recessive.

As a result:

The white global collective . . . lives each day and each minute of every hour in the continuous fear of white annihilation by the global majority of genetic dominants. This fundamental fear of albino isolation, abandonment and genetic annihilation, is at the core of Western civilization — a civilization structured to ensure white genetic survival.

“Western civilization” is just another word for white supremacy, which is what whites must practice to avoid “genetic annihilation.” A “kill or be killed” sentiment explains why whites control and oppress all non-whites.

Curiously, the oppressive mission of the “white global collective” is not motivated by a sense of superiority but by one of deep inferiority. Consciously or unconsciously, whites know they are defective mutants. They know they suffer from “an inadequacy rooted in the inability to produce melanin.” What is more:

The destructive and aggressive behavioral patterns displayed throughout the world by white peoples towards all non-white peoples is the evidence of the inner hate, hostility and rejection they feel towards themselves and of the deep self-alienation that has evolved from their genetic inadequacy.

This is the heart of the “unified field theory” of white wickedness. Whites are envious of the ability of non-whites to produce melanin, and compensate for their own deficiency by oppressing non-whites. This is why they deny jobs to blacks, stuff them with drugs, put guns in their hands, give them bad schools, claim they have low IQs, infect them with AIDS, kill them, etc. etc.

But why does Dr. Welsing think whites unconsciously want to be black? She points out that they expose themselves to the sun so as to burn away their disgusting whiteness. They use makeup to tint their colorless faces. When they want to feel tough and manly they dress in black leather. When they want their women to look sexy they dress them in black underwear. Whites also acknowledge the superiority of melanin when they clothe in black their most respected people — judges, priests, nuns, and academics in robes. Therefore, the more whites degrade blacks, the more they are projecting their own inadequacies onto people they know to be superior.

At the same time, whites have perversely arranged the world in such a way as to maintain their fleeting and defective whiteness. Because the child of any white/non-white union is non-white, they have set up elaborate mechanisms to hold at bay the greatest threat of all to white existence: the black man. Any non-white man is a threat, but since blacks have the most melanin and are the most sexually potent they are the most dangerous. They are also therefore the most attractive, and white men have an “intense fear of the Black male’s capacity to fulfill the greatest longing of the white female — that of conceiving and birthing a product of color.” (Dr. Welsing likes to write “black” with a capital B while leaving “white” in lower case.)

Moreover, the reason whites have built elaborate taboos around sex and think it “dirty” is that for them it produces only “albino mutants.” Non-whites do not think sex is dirty because it brings forth new generations rich in melanin.

At a more prosaic level, it is because whites lack melanin that they are “unable” to live among non-whites: “[T]his inability is seen as the apparent psychological discomfort experienced by whites in situations where, in confronting their neighbors of color, they must face their color inadequacy daily.” Whites herd together so as not to have to lay eyes on their superiors.

Melanin deficiency also causes “sexism,” which is a distinctly white problem: “Feeling inferior to “non-white’ males and females, the white male said to the white female, “Well, at least I am going to be superior to you.’” [emphasis in the original]

Symbols of Sex

Virtually every chapter of The Isis Papers says something about sex, and Dr. Welsing sees sex and its symbols everywhere. For example, the Washington Monument, the tallest structure in Washington, DC, is obviously a great white penis meant to assert white mastery. Bull fighting is a ritual of white resistance against non-white sexual and genetic superiority, in which a white man kills a black bull and cuts off its tail or ears in an act of symbolic castration. Smoking is nothing more than the manipulation of phallic symbols, in which small white cigarettes and large black cigars correctly symbolize white fears. Smoking can never be banned in America because whites cannot give up the habit of manipulating the symbols of their genetic and genital inadequacy.

A fascination with guns (more phallic symbols) is another way whites compensate for inadequacy. The white man likes to go hunting — he especially enjoys killing animals with dark skins — and thereby “stays in physical and psychological readiness for killing Black and other non-white males . . .” Guns, too, cannot be banned in America because whites are psychologically dependent on them.

Sports are a rich source of symbols, since ball games are sublimated versions of the great genetic and genital world power struggle. Dr. Welsing emphasizes that the big balls for basketball and football are black or brown while the small balls for golf, tennis, and ping pong are white. When whites are young and vigorous, they try to play with the big black balls, but are defeated by big black men. In old age, whites console themselves with small white balls. In bowling, a giant black ball scatters helpless white phallic symbols.

Basketball and football also symbolize white fear and fascination at the prospect of black men having sex with white women. The brown basketball goes into a round, white, vagina-like net, and brawny players kicks the black football through the symbolic, upraised legs of a white woman.

Chocolate candy is, of course, a symbol of sweet sex with black people. White men give it as a gift in the hope that their wives and girlfriends will be satisfied with an edible substitute, but also in the hope that some of the glamour and potency of blackness will be transferred to them.

Christ on the cross is one of the most complete and powerful symbols of white supremacy. The cross, which is almost always black or brown, is an abstract representation of the feared black man’s genitals. A weak and dying white man is crucified to the giant genitals, but since the latter are removed from the body, they symbolize castration. Thus the crucifix is a symbol both of the central threat to white survival and its solution. The Ku Klux Klan burns crosses because it wants to cut off and burn black genitals.

Of course, Christ was a black man, and whites secretly know this. When they celebrate the Eucharist and eat the body and blood of Christ they are trying to cure their own whiteness by ingesting part of Christ’s blackness.

The story of Adam and Eve is the story of the origin of the white man. Eating the “poison” apple is the equivalent of the genetic mistake that produced albinism. Adam and Eve were then embarrassed by their white skin and tried to cover it. Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is expulsion from Africa. This was “the fall” of the white man, and his albinism and the sex act that reproduces it are “original sin.”

Dr. Welsing’s imagination knows no bounds. Romulus and Remus are symbols of the defective, mutant whites who were kicked out of Africa, and had to be suckled by a wolf after they had been “left to the dogs.” Fleece is what grows on the woolly heads of Africans and gold is the color whites think they become when they bake in the sun, so Jason’s hunt for the golden fleece was really a search for melanin. The alchemist’s hope of turning things into gold was also a quest for melanin. For his entire existence, the white man has been tortured by his own pale inadequacy.

Melanin Theory

But what is so great about melanin, anyway? References to its powers are disappointingly sketchy and come late in the book. Apparently it keeps those who have it in tune with the vibrations of the universe and, in effect, gives them a sixth sense. Dr. Welsing concedes that some non-whites have lost this sense because they have been taught by defective whites, but melanin-virtue can be cultivated. It was the melanin in George Washington Carver’s dark skin that helped him communicate directly with plants and make wonderful discoveries.

It is the absence of melanin that makes whites evil. The absence “critically impairs the depth sensitivity of the nervous system.” It is why whites have invented white supremacy, which is “the greatest known evil on Earth.”

What is to be done? Dr. Welsing writes often about “eliminating” or “neutralizing” this great evil, but she is vague about how to do it. Logically, if whites crave melanin, why not just give it to them? Why not offer to give them the mulatto children they secretly want? The new generation of “people of color” would presumably be a huge improvement over undiluted whites. However, Dr. Welsing never recommends this, and seems to look down on whites who have sex with blacks.

Are whites simply to be eliminated? At one point she writes, “Black manhood does not mean macho or money, but instead it means warrior or soldier against white supremacy, embracing everything that the words warrior or soldier imply,” [emphasis in the original] but this is her only flirtation with violence.

With far greater consistency, Dr. Welsing strikes an entirely different theme. “It is much easier for white supremacy to control female-headed households,” she writes, so blacks should form stable couples and take great care in child-rearing. She urges blacks not to have children until they are at least 30 years old, and to have no more than two! This is good advice, but it will not rid the world of albino mutants.

Of one thing, Dr. Welsing is quite sure. No matter what they say or do, whites never help non-whites or treat them fairly. “Blacks and other non-whites have failed to understand that if white people were to do this, it would mean active white participation in white genocide.”

Thus, despite the craziness of almost all of her book, Dr. Welsing does recognize certain truths about race that very few whites understand. Non-white immigration and differential birth rates do threaten whites with “genetic annihilation.” By encouraging their own dispossession whites do “participate in white genocide.”

This is why race-chauvinist blacks can never understand white behavior. They cannot imagine it being different from what theirs would be if the racial roles were reversed. Blacks would undoubtedly make short work of any group that was, to them, the social and racial equivalent of what blacks are to whites. No matter how earnestly whites try to advance the interests of non-whites, racialist blacks will always find some way to discredit their motives.

After all, whites are basically simple creatures. Dr. Welsing quotes someone named Needy Fuller who, in 1969, had one of the key insights on which she bases her “unified field theory:”