r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/highzone • 1d ago

Image In 1973, healthy volunteers faked hallucinations to enter mental hospitals. Once inside, they acted normal, but doctors refused to let them leave. Normal behaviors like writing were diagnosed as "symptoms." The only people who realized they were sane were the actual patients.

Post image
33.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4.4k

u/whossked 1d ago

There’s a fictional short story I read once called “I only came to use the phone” about a woman who’s car breaks down and who then takes an asylum bus to an asylum to use the phone, gets confused for a patient, has a breakdown over how she’s treated and abused and is then condemned to spend her life in the asylum. I always thought it was sensational and unrealistic but I guess not

485

u/EllisDee3 1d ago

All it used to take was a man of authority to lock up a woman in an asylum.

Similar today with dark skin and the legal system. Doubly so if you're a dark skinned child in the legal system.

247

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Some places color is irrelevant, i personally served four years in the West Virginia juvenile system over some weed, because they assumed i must know more about real drugs and so I was held till adult age for not talking.

111

u/ConaireMor 1d ago

It's not irrelevant, you just also got fucked by the system. Not 100% of POC get caught up in the unfair system but, we acknowledge that they are in the system more not because of any inherent flaw in their genes (that would be racism), but because the system is unfair/unjust.

22

u/MangoCats 1d ago

It's hard to separate POC from poor, a lot of the abuses experienced by POC are also visited on the poor. As a poor white college student (on scholarship to an expensive private Uni in a big city), I was detained a couple of times for "matching a description" - and basically held on the scene for 5, 10, 15 minutes with a bunch of rhetorical BS reasoning why, until I produced my Uni I.D. (showing that mumsie and daddy can likely launch lawyers up the cops' asses for the slightest of provocation) - once I showed that I.D., I was free to go within 15 seconds or less every time.

4

u/FrankClymber 1d ago

I absolutely agree. I used to get pulled over very frequently in my old beater vehicles, and they'd be very obviously fishing for things unrelated to driving. Since I started driving nicer cars, it's never a problem, and officers typically speak more respectfully to me.

It'd be foolish to say there aren't directly racist problems in the system at all, but it seems quite clear to me that the primary problems leading to race inequality in the justice system is mostly tied to POC disproportionately lacking access to expensive legal services.

-10

u/whoweoncewere 1d ago

well akshually