Book Nook - How I Know White People Are Crazy? And Other Stories

 New York City-based clinical psychologist Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter works primarily with Black, LGBT, and other marginalized patients who are often overlooked and underserved by the field of psychology — an issue he writes about in his forthcoming essay collection HOW I KNOW WHITE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY (Legacy Lit; November 4, 2025).  

HOW I KNOW WHITE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY AND OTHER STORIES is at once a pointed critique of racism in the mental health field and a vivid recollection of growing up Black and gay in a world that privileges the white, straight, and wealthy. 

From childhood experiences of racism in Augusta, Georgia, to alienation within San Francisco’s queer and straight communities, Lassiter weaves personal narrative with professional insight, exposing systemic barriers facing Black and POC psychologists and patients. Throughout, he challenges the dominance of the “whiteness mindset”—a worldview rooted in competition and individualism that has long shaped American psychology. With incisive humor, bursting-at-the-seams urgency, and a deep love of hip-hop and R&B, Lassiter’s essays are a call to reimagine psychology so that it wholly meets the needs of POC, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities. To do so, he argues for expanding the field beyond Freud and his peers to include long-overlooked healing traditions from Africa, Asia, and Latin America—practices centered on unity, balance, and collective well-being.

A powerful, provocative debut, HOW I KNOW WHITE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY asks, What would mental healthcare look like if it centered lived experience and healing over hierarchy?

You can learn more in this Q&A.

This book gives voice to your frustration with how psychology, as it’s commonly taught and practiced, neglects patients who aren’t white, straight, and/or able-bodied. The essays, however, touch on subjects as wide-ranging as the racism you endured as a child in Georgia to your disillusionment with San Francisco’s gay community. How do these varied experiences illuminate the broader problems in psychology and the state of social justice in this country?

The stories put a human face on a problem, “the whiteness mindset,” that is wreaking harm on our society and the field of mental health, past, present, and potentially future. The whiteness mindset is believing and behaving as if “there is not enough to go around,” one must “divide and conquer” and “kill or be killed.” This mindset protects certain people, their dominance, their position–but it also hurts them, and not just people who look like me. This book looks at how all of us are affected by this mindset. The stories provide an emotional anchor for a psychological and philosophical ill. 

The stories also illustrate how the mindset, when it runs rampant, impacts not just society’s mental health but also the politics around us. Let’s look at the civil unrest happening now: they can only arise when  a society embodies and perpetuates the whiteness mindset. The whiteness mindset has convinced past immigrants, poor people of all races, and other would-be allies that a scapegoat – “illegal immigrants” – are their enemies and are taking away resources from them. They don’t see one another as being part of a growing community but as competition and a threat who must be eliminated.

The field of psychology, with its foundation in Western Europe, is steeped in this culture. How can we change that? 

The whiteness mindset predominates now but such has not always been the case. We change that by embracing a more ancient mindset–one rooted in the original societies of African, Asia, and South America–that embraces unity, balance, harmony, and justice. We change the field of psychology by putting these mindsets front and center and not making them electives or special topics but the core of how we understand and practice healing and how we engage in our relationships.

Throughout the book your voice and humor shine through. In one essay you share a darkly funny story about an internship where each participant had to spend two hours in a setting where they would be a minority. They sent you, a gay Black man, to a sports bar because you don’t like sports—and then they failed you. How does this story encapsulate how mainstream psychology struggles to meet psychologists and patients with different lived experiences? 

That story exposes psychology’s cultural limitations and myopathy, since western psychology only focuses on European and white ways of understanding and being. Even when discussing mental health problems, psychology only understands them from white perspectives. This narrowness reduces psychology from being a study of the human mind to a study of the white human mind. It cuts off potential non-western ways of healing that could be beneficial to everyone, including white people. Furthermore, the whiteness mindset in psychology ensures that people of the global majority are at best seen as problems to be solved, deviations from a white norm, and never as mental health professionals with legitimate ways of healing outside of European and white standards.

In the book you write, “to understand, appreciate, and promote multiculturalism requires a lifelong process. I would de-emphasize diversity and center cultural humility.” What does cultural humility look like and how do you think diversity initiatives fall short?

Cultural humility looks like understanding that culture deeply influences everything we do and how we make sense of the world. It also requires that we understand that culture is not something to be mastered or manipulated. We must be continually cultivating a non-judgmental curiosity of how we and others believe, behave, and make sense of the world. Cultural humility is a lifelong process, not an endpoint. Current diversity initiatives often feel like a box to check off.

In all sorts of settings, most Black people have experienced being the only Black person in the room. You write, “when you are Black, cultural paranoia—also known as a distrust of white people in predominantly non-Black spaces as a defense against racism—is a healthy thing.” How do you guide clients through alienating situations like this?

I first validate their concerns and normalize that they are not alone in feeling this way. I emphasize that these culturally isolating–and often hostile–spaces are the problem, not them. When working with clients experiencing cultural paranoia, one priority is to help them understand their suspicion as a strength they can harness while ensuring it does not override their ability to think and function. I help them to meet their emotions where they are, anticipate potential consequences, and then set boundaries so they don’t have to take these things home. We also work together to build in moments of rejuvenation and joy.

When seeing Black patients, where do non-Black psychologists most often fail? What do they miss about Black history, culture, and experiences that keeps them from providing the best possible care?

In general, non-Black psychologists do not know Black people or Black culture. They may know of them, but they don’t know them. Lacking a nuanced understanding of the history, culture, and experience is a barrier. Furthermore, without cultural humility and non-judgmental curiosity, Black patients become a set of symptoms to be solved instead of whole human beings to understand and with whom to take a healing journey.

Jonathan Mathias Lassiter, PhD is a polymath whose mission is to help others heal and thrive. He is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, speaker, and educator. Dr. Lassiter has been featured in NBC, PBS, Sirius XM, Forbes, and more. His psychotherapy practice is based in New York City.