Excited Delirium:
Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease
By Aisha Beliso-De Jesús
Jesús argues that this syndrome is not legitimate and stems from racist pseudoscience and religious ideas that white and Black people are biologically different and unequal (2024). One reason for this claim is the character of Charles Wetli himself, as his understanding of Afrolatiné religion was one that was clearly rooted in eugenics and racist pseudoscience (Jesús, 2024). This can be seen in just about every corner of his thinking process, which included claiming that Black and Brown people have different biology and pathology, leading to a higher rate of deaths related to drugs and excited delirium.
This idea that each race is biologically different stems directly from the early religious ideas that Black and white people were inherently different and therefore unequal down to a biological level, defended by religious concepts such as Polygenesis (Gould, 1996).
The connection that Charles Wetli makes between excited delirium and sex is also exemplary of the racist tones of this syndrome and how it connects to religion. The sexuality of African people, particularly women, also directly stems from colonizers' early understanding of African religion (Collins, 2005). In the way that African spiritual traditions and religions were infantilized, animalized, and bestialized, the same was done to their sexuality (Collins, 2005). The way religion was practiced in Africa was described as animal-like by the Europeans, or even beast-like. This became the primary way Africans were viewed by colonizers, which included their sexuality. African people, particularly women, were looked at as hypersexual, their sexuality being animal-like and primitive. This dehumanizing perception of religion led to an overall less than human perception of African people from the perspective of the colonizing groups (Collins, 2005).
Black Sexual Politics:
African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism
By Patricia Hill Collins
This clearly had an influence on the theory, as Wetli claimed the syndrome could occur to Black women as a result of combining drugs and sex. It is important to note that the deaths of those Black women were later attributed to a serial killer, and not excited delirium (Foley et al., 2024). Not only were the deaths that he originally developed excited delirium to describe not caused by the syndrome, but they also had nothing to do with sex or drugs. This shows the lack of scientific rigor in the development of Excited Delirium Syndrome, the implementation of racist stereotypes into the syndrome, and the erroneous racism of the syndrome as a whole.
Jim Crow’s Drug War
Race, Coca Cola, and the Southern Origins of Drug Prohibition
By Michael M. Cohen
The idea that the impact of drugs is different for people based on race is reminiscent of the “negro cocaine fiend” myth which was popularized in the early 1900s. It was claimed that Black men were invincible when they did cocaine, were liable to rape white women, and that bullets would even “bounce off” of them, leading many police departments to purchase stronger firearms (Cohen, 2006). This idea that Black and Brown people may have very different reactions to drugs than white people stems directly from racist theories such as Polygenesis, which claim that white and non-white people are biologically different (Jesús, 2024).
The entire concept that Black and white people are biologically different can be traced back to racist religious argumentations such as Polygenesis. This claim that people have significantly different biology based on race is not rooted in truth, but instead stems from a long history of dehumanization and white supremacy, which began with religion.
Evolutionary Biologist Stephen Jay Gould examines the history of eugenics and racism and science, discussing things like intelligence, phrenology, and polygenesis. He argues that this racist history in scientific social measurement has influenced the state of sociology, anthropology, biology, and the present day understanding of race in science and medicine. He asserts that the entire field of scientific measurement of people has caused unjust consequences for Black and all non-white people, and that this racist history still informs much of the field today. Gould also argues that intelligence can't be objectively measured, and dissects things like IQ tests, which were utilized to claim White intellectual superiority over Black people.
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The Mismeasure of Man
By Stephen Jay Gould
This brings us back to Scholar Talal Asad, who argues that the dominating or more powerful group designs a systemic structure to benefit themselves and oppress other groups (1993). Applying this to our example, white people created the IQ test, did better than Black people, used this as evidence for Black "inferiority," however white people only did better because the systemic structure was built to specifically benefit them.
Other Relevant Academic Literature
American Medical Association. (2021, June 14). New AMA policy opposes “excited delirium” diagnosis.
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Cole, K. (2019). The State and the Spirits: Voodoo and religious repression in Jim Crow New Orleans. The Aquila Digital Community.
https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/658/
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Keel, T. D. (2013). Religion, polygenism and the early science of human origins. History of the Human Sciences, 26(2), 3–32.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695113482916
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Physicians for Human Rights. (2022). The deadly impact of a baseless diagnosis. In Executive Summary.
Sarfo, F. O. (2023). Perspectives on the Challenges of Christianity and African Traditional Religion throughout the Ages to Contemporary Times, 29(6), 30–49.
https://doi.org/10.56557/jobari/2023/v29i68576 ​
United Nations. (2012, May 8). ‘Doctrine of discovery’, used for centuries to justify seizure of Indigenous land, subjugate peoples, must be repudiated by United Nations, Permanent Forum told | Meetings coverage and press releases.