ABSTRACT
The overwhelming weight of available evidence shows that fewer Negroes commit suicide than Whites and fewer women than men. Such evidence does not in itself establish that Negroes and women have greater natural immunity to suicide. For one thing, the scope of available statistics is limited and for another the observations are restricted to European and American data. The notion that it has anything to do with race and sex cannot be rejected out of hand, since suicide is a social, and not a congenital fact. The average suicide rates by race and sex in Durban for the two periods 1940-60 and 1962-70 do not establish a correlation between high social status and high suicide rate; nor do they establish a correlation between high integration and a low suicide rate. The African male suicide not only suggests low integration in the White system, but also a recoiling from its impersonal definition of his role.
