Describe something from the reading that surprised you, challenged you, piqued your interest, or made you curious. Step 2: Explain why it impacted you in this way. QUOTE: Identify a

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African-Centered Psychology in the

Modern Era

DEFINITIONS

Those who have not had the benefit of reading the first, second, or third edi- tions of The Psychology of Blacks, or who are otherwise unfamiliar with the con- cept of a Black psychological perspective, may be asking themselves “What is this discipline called Black or African-American psychology?” As such, perhaps the most logical place to begin this fourth edition is with a definition of the con- struct (psychology of Blacks) and with a discussion of why an African-centered psychological perspective is necessary.

Nobles (1986) reminds us that in its truest form, psychology was defined by ancient Africans as the study of the soul or spirit. He writes:

A summary reading of our ancient mythology reveals that ancient Egyptian thought can be characterized as possessing (1) “ideas of thought” which represent the human capacity to hay “will” and to invent or create; (2) “ideas of command” which represent the human capacity to have “intent” and to produce that which one wills. Parenthetically these two, will and intent, are the characteristics of divine spirit and would serve as the best operationalization of human intelligence. (Nobles, 1986, p. 46)

Nobles further asserts that the psychology that was borrowed from Africa and popularized in Europe and America (so-called Western psychology) in some respects represents a distortion of ancient African-Egyptian thought. What the an- cients believed was that the study of the soul or spirit was translated by Europeans into the study of only one element of a person’s psychic nature, the mind.

In a similar vein, Akbar (1994) has persuasively argued that the Kemetic (so-called Egyptian) roots of psychology bear little resemblance to the modern-day

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 6 . P s y c h o l o g y P r e s s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 5/31/2022 1:59 PM via PRINCE GEORGES COMMUNITY COLLEGE AN: 1081379 ; Thomas A Parham, Adisa Ajamu, Joseph L. White.; Psychology of Blacks : Centering Our Perspectives in the African Consciousness Account: s8994265.main.ehost

constructs. Akbar explains, for example, that the term sakhu represented in its original form illumination and enlightenment of the soul or spirit. However, this perspective lost its meaning when the Greeks reinterpreted it to mean behavior and created a discipline to quantify, measure, and materialize the construct ob- jectively.

Thus, the term “psychology” (in a Western context) is constructed from the words psyche (meaning mind) and ology (meaning knowledge or study of) and is generally assumed to be a study of human behavior. What is fascinating to see, even as we write this fourth edition text, is how little has changed in traditional psychology’s coverage of its African psychology roots. Over the past decade, there are dozens of new and revised introductory and general psychology texts that have been written, and still we find coverage of African psychology and its discipline’s Kemetic roots conspicuous by its absence. Nevid (2007), for example, in the several hundred page text, continues to define psychology in ways that not only avoids the soul or spiritual elements, but does not differ appreciably in its definitions from other text books from years past. Ironically, Myers (2010), in his magnificent 717-page introductory psychology text that many consider a standard in the field, defines psychology as “the science of behaviors and mental processes” (p.6). Behaviors in that context are defined as “anything an organism does (as an observable action),” while mental processes are defined as “internal subjective experiences we infer from behaviors (sensations, perceptions, beliefs, feelings).” Despite the fact that he does a wonderful job of desegregating the text with pictures of African-American adults and children, includes pictures and men- tion several well-known African-American psychologists from history’s past, and includes a brand new section of one chapter on the variable of culture, the entire book never discusses the notion of an African-centered psychology or an African cultural reality in the discipline. What makes this omission curious is the timeline of people and events in psychology that frames the beginning of the Myers text. It includes Francis Cecil Sumner (the first African American to receive a Ph.D in psychology in 1920), Kenneth and Mamie Clark (and their groundbreaking work on doll preference and racial self-identification that was used in the Brown 1954 Supreme Court decision), Inez Proser (the first African-American woman to re- ceive her Ph.D in America at the University of Cincinnati in 1933), and the fact that psychology differs across cultures. However, there is no mention of any cul- turally specific psychology or the plethora of literature on multiculturalism (Ponterotto, Casas, Suzuki, & Alexander, 2001; Sue, Ivey, & Pedersen, 1996; Sue & Sue, 2003), African psychology (Nobles, 1986; Myers, 1988; Kambon, 1992 Asante, 2003; Ani, 1994; Akbar, 2004; Neville, Tynes, & Utsey, 2009; White, 1972, 1984), and cultural competence (Pope-Davis, Coleman, Liu, & Toporek, 2003; Ivey, D’Andrea, Bradford-Ivey, & Simek-Morgan, 2002; Constantine & Sue, 2005) that dominate much of the counseling landscape. Within these realms, you find exten- sive references to psychology’s true origins, yet those students being introduced to the discipline for the first time find no such mention or coverage in their intro- ductory coursework. This is but one of the many reasons this text is so necessary.

As previously noted, psychology has been around for thousands of years and dates back to ancient KEMET (sometimes illustrated as KMT)

Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era 15

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16 Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era

(African-Egyptian) civilizations (Nobles, 1986). However, as a discipline, psy- chology, like history, anthropology, and many other fields of study, has fallen victim to the attempts by many to both: (1) destroy and/or otherwise erase its historical connections to ancient Africa and (2) transplant its roots into European civilization. We are reminded by Nevid (2007) and Myers (2010) that traditional psychology, as we know it in this country, was assumed to extend back only as far as the laboratories of Wilhelm Wundt in Germany around 1879. In its simplest form, traditional psychology was an attempt to explain the behaviors of the Europeans from a European frame of reference. After becom- ing popularized in America, Euro-American scientists began to engage in the same practice of defining and understanding the behaviors of various Euro- American peoples.

In their attempt to understand the mind and behaviors of their people, many European and Euro-American scholars began to develop theories of human behavior (i.e., Freud, Jung, Rogers). Theories are sets of abstract con- cepts that people assign to a group of facts or events in order to explain them. Theories of personality and/or psychology, then, are organized systems of be- lief that help us understand human nature and make sense out of scientific data and other behavioral phenomena. It is important to realize, however, that theo- ries are based on philosophies, customs, mores, and norms of a given culture. This has certainly been true for those theories that emerged out of the Euro- American frame of reference.

In their attempt to explain what they considered to be “universal human phenomena,” Euro-American psychologists implicitly and explicitly began to es- tablish a normative standard of behavior against which all other cultural groups would be measured. What emerged as normal or abnormal, sane or insane, rel- evant or irrelevant, was always in comparison to how closely a particular thought or behavior paralleled that of White Europeans and/or European Americans. For many White social scientists and psychologists, the word different (differences among people) became synonymous with deficient, rather than simply different.

The presumptive attempt at establishing a normative standard for human cognition, emotion, and behavior was questionable at best for obvious reasons. The philosophical basis of this body of theory and practice, which claims to ex- plain and understand “human nature,” is not authentic or applicable to all human groups (Nobles, 1986). White (1972) in his article “Towards a Black Psychology” speaks to this issue clearly when he contends that “it is difficult if not impossible to understand the lifestyles of Black people using traditional psychological theories, developed by White psychologists to explain White be- havior.” White further asserts that when these theories are applied to different populations, many weakness-dominated and inferiority-oriented conclusions emerge. The foundation for an authentic Black psychology is an accurate un- derstanding of the Black family, its African roots, historical development and contemporary expressions, and its impact on the psychological development and socialization of its members. One has only to examine the psychological lit- erature as it relates to Black people to appreciate White’s point.

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Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era 17

Appreciation of White’s (1972) perspective is enhanced when one looks first at the so-called science of psychology and then at the resulting conclusions that emerge from these research practices. In commenting on the science of psychology, Boykin (1979) argues that there are inherent biases and subjectiv- ity in the investigation and application of scientific principles despite their claims to the contrary. Thus, he believes that biases inherent in Eurocentric per- spectives render research investigations and resulting conclusions invalid at most, or at least, inappropriate.

It is important to note, however, that questions of bias could be dealt with in less confrontive ways if one believed the intent of scientists and psychologi- cal scholars to be honorable. When one considers that scientific intent was and is supported by racist ideologies (Guthrie, 1976; Hilliard, 1997; Nobles, 1986; Thomas & Sillen, 1972;), then challenging and confronting those biases become even more important. As such, one can now better appreciate the critique of science and psychological (scientific) inquiry provided by Nobles (1986), who argues that research has been used as a tool of oppression and represents a form of “scientific colonialism.”

The construct of colonialism harkens back to times of old when many European countries/nations (but not exclusively so) sought to conquer and control the human and natural resources of a certain country or region of the world. In essence, they were acquiring by force the people, land, and both natural and economic resources belonging to a particular nation. The term “scientific colonialism” then represents the political control of knowledge and information, in order to advance a particular group’s agenda and/or prevent another group from advancing its own. According to Nobles, scientific colonialism is operationalized in several ways. These include:

Unsophisticated Falsification: deliberate attempts to erase and/or oth- erwise disguise the African origins of an idea or the historical contribu- tions of African people;

Integrated Modificationism: assimilation of a known concept into ex- isting ideas such that the result is a distorted version of the original mean- ing and intent; and

Conceptual Incarceration: where all information is viewed from a sin- gle perspective to the exclusion of other world views or frameworks.

As a consequence of this biased and inappropriate method of inquiry, much of the research and scholarship written by European Americans about African Americans is severely tainted. Let us now turn our attention to the out- comes and resulting conclusions of that science.

HISTORICAL THEMES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Historically, research on minorities in general and Blacks in particular has shifted focus several times. In fact, Thomas and Silen (1972) and Sue (1978) concluded that it is difficult to fully understand and appreciate the status of

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18 Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era

ethnic minority research without reference to several general themes or models. These models include: (1) the inferiority model, (2) the deprivations/deficit model, and (3) the multicultural model. Table 2.1 provides a conceptual outline of these research trends, and a brief review follows.

Inferiority Models

The inferiority model generally contends that Black people are inferior to Whites. Its focus emerges out of the theories of genetics and heredity, which contend that the development of the human species is determined by heredity and views this process of development as “in the blood” or encoded in the genes. This model apparently afforded for some a scientific basis for viewing Blacks as inferior. Examples of these assertions of racial inferiority, as reported by Clark (1972) were heard as early as 1799 when Professor Charles White spoke of the Negro as being “just above the ape in the hierarchy of animal/human development, having a small brain, deformed features, an ape- like odor, and an animal immunity to pain.” These inferiority assertions contin- ued into the mid-1800s, when studies on cranial capacities showed that a European skull held more pepper seed than an African skull, and thus con- cluded that Blacks have inferior brains and limited capacity for mental growth (Clark, 1972). These assertions of racial inferiority continued well into the 1900s and were promoted by many leading Euro-American psychologists. In fact, a comprehensive examination of the literature related to the history and systems of psychology would reveal that in every decade encompassing 1900 to 1970, there was a prominent American psychologist (many of whom were presidents of the American Psychological Association [APA]) who was a proponent of the genetic inferiority hypothesis (Guthrie, 1976, 1998). Although such facts may be

TABLE 2.1 Historical Themes in Black Psychological Research

Inferiority Deficit-Deficiency Multi-Cultural

Definition Blacks are intellectu- ally, physically, and mentally inferior to Whites

Blacks deficient with respect to intelli- gence, cognitive styles, family structure

All culturally dis- tinct groups have strengths and limitations.

Etiology of Problem

Genetics/heredity, Lack of proper environ- mental stimulation; racism and oppressive conditions, individual

Differences viewed as differ- ent; lack of skills needed to assimilate

Relevant Hypothesis and Theories

Genetic inferiority, Eugenics

Cultural deprivation, Cultural enrichment

Research Examples

White (2010) Morton (1839) Jensen (1969)

Moynihan (1965) Kardiner and Ovesey (1951)

J. White (1972) Nobles (1972; 1981)

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Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era 19

new information for many students in psychology, certainly most students and laypersons are aware of the well-publicized assertions of racial and intellectual inferiority by Arthur Jensen (1969).

Deficit-Deficiency Model

The deficit-deficiency model began to emerge around the late 1950s to early 1960s, and suggested that Blacks are somehow deficient with respect to intelli- gence, perceptual skills, cognitive styles, family structure, and other factors. Unlike the inferiority model, the set of hypotheses suggested that environmen- tal rather than hereditary factors were responsible for the presumed deficiencies in Blacks. Dhe deficit model arose in opposition to the inferiority model and was formed by more liberal-minded psychological and educational researchers who sought to place on society the burden for Black people’s presumed men- tal and intellectual deficiencies. For example, it was somehow concluded that the effects of years of racism and discrimination had deprived most Black peo- ple of the strengths to develop healthy self-esteems (Kardiner & Ovesey, 1951) and legitimate family structures (Moynihan, 1965). From this deficit model came such hypotheses as “cultural deprivation,” which presumed that because of the inadequate exposure to Euro-American values, norms, customs, and lifestyles, Blacks were indeed “culturally deprived” and required cultural enrichment.

Implicit in the concept of cultural deprivation, however, is the notion that the dominant White middle-class culture established that normative standard discussed earlier in these writings. Thus, any behaviors, values, and lifestyles that differed from the Euro-American norm were seen as deficient. By and large, the model of the Black family that has received the most attention has been the deficit-deficiency model. This model begins with the historical assumption that there was no carry over from Africa to America of any sophis- ticated African based form of family life in communal living. The assumption further indicates that either viable patterns of family life did not exist because Africans were incapable of creating them or they were destroyed beginning with slavery in the separation of biological parents and children, forced breed- ing, the slave master’s sexual exploitation of Black women, and the cumulative effects of three hundred years of economic social discrimination. The deficit- deficiency model assumes that as a result of this background of servitude, depri- vation, second-class citizenship, and chronic unemployment, Black adults have not been able to develop marketable skills, self-sufficiency, future orientation, planning and decision-making competencies, and instrumental behaviors thought to be necessary for sustaining a successful two-parent nuclear family while guiding children through the socialization process.

A variation of the deficit-deficiency model was the Black matriarchy model. In a society that placed a premium on decisive male leadership in the family, the Black male was portrayed as lacking the masculine sex role behav- iors characterized by logical thinking, willingness to take responsibility for oth- ers, assertiveness, managerial skills, achievement orientation, and occupational mastery. In contrast, the Black female was portrayed by this model as a matriarch

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20 Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era

who initially received her power because society was unwilling to permit the Black male to assume the legal, economic, and social positions necessary to be- come a dominant force within the family and community life. Having achieved this power by default, the Black female was portrayed as being unwilling to share it. Her unwillingness to share her power was presumed to persist even when the Black male was present and willing to assume responsibility in the family circle, since she was not confident of the male’s ability to follow through on his commitments. Confrontation over decision making and family direction was usually not necessary because either the Black male was not present in the household on any ongoing basis or he was regarded as ineffective by the fe- male when he was present.

Multicultural Model

The rise in the multicultural model has been stimulated by the contention that behaviors, lifestyles, languages, and so on can only be judged as appropriate or inappropriate within a specific cultural context (Grier & Cobbs, 1968; White, 1972; Pedersen, 1999; Sue, Ivey, & Pederson, 1996; Ponterotto et al., 2001; Sue & Sue, 2003; White & Henderson, 2008). The multicultural model assumes and recognizes that each culture has strengths and limitations, and rather than being viewed as deficient, differences among ethnic groups are viewed as simply dif- ferent. More recent contributions to the multicultural literature have followed in these same footsteps and continue to contribute to a more enlightened under- standing of culturally different people generally (Hall, 2010), African American (Jones, 2003; Hilliard, 1997; Parham, 2002), Latinos (Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, & Gallardo-Cooper, 2002), Asian Americans (Loo, 1998), and even persons with disabilities (Stone, 2005). Although the multicultural model is the latest trend in research with respect to minorities in general and African Americans in particular, and is certainly a more positive approach to research with culturally distinct groups, it is by no means immune to conceptual and methodological flaws that have plagued psychological research efforts both past and present.

In some respects, this new emphasis on ethnic pluralism has helped re- searchers focus on culture-specific models in a multicultural context. African psychology has been the forerunner of an ethnic and cultural awareness in psychology that has worked its way into the literature on child development, self-image, family dynamics, education, communication patterns, counseling and psychotherapy, and mental health delivery systems. The blossoming of African- centered psychology has been followed by the assertion on the part of Asian American (Sue & Wagner, 1973; Sue, 1981), Chicano (Martinez, 1977), and Native American (Richardson, 1981) psychologists that sociocultural differences in the experiential field must be considered as legitimate correlates of behavior. The development of an ethnic dimension in psychology suggested that other non-White Americans wanted to take the lead in defining themselves rather than continuing the process of being defined by the deficit-deficiency models of the majority culture. The evolution of the ethnic and cultural perspective enlarged

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Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era 21

the scope of psychology. It served as a corrective step that reduced psychol- ogy’s reliance on obsolete and inaccurate stereotypes in defining culturally dis- tinct people. This movement has now exploded onto the field of counseling psychology as more and more professionals recognize, as Sue, Ivey, and Pederson (1996) so rightly acknowledge, that traditional theories of counseling and psychotherapy inadequately describe, explain, predict, and deal with the richness of a culturally diverse population. Their admonition is echoed by a host of new and exciting research and scholarship that speaks to the necessity of culturally specific and culturally diverse theories, assessments, and therapeu- tic practices in the areas of Latino(a) psychology (Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, & Gallardo-Cooper, 2002), Asian psychology (Loo, 1998), traditional healing practices (Moodley & West, 2005; Mc Neill & Cervantes, 2008), and even disabil- ity studies (Stone, 2005).

Black Behavioral Norms

Given the negative conceptions of Black people and Black behavior that emerged from the Euro-American frame of reference, it was clear that an alter- nate frame of reference was not only appropriate, but absolutely necessary. Whether one considers the awarding of Sumner’s degree in 1920, the establish- ment of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in 1968, or the era in ancient KMT, as the marker for the establishment of the discipline of Black psychology, is an interesting debate (Nobles, 1986). What is undebatable, however, is the recognition that general psychology had failed to provide a full and accurate understanding of the Black reality. As such, the discipline of Black psychology and the new emergence of an African psychological perspective can be defined as a discipline in science (continuing to evolve) that is attempting to study, analyze, and define appropriate and inappropriate behaviors of Black and African people from an Afrocentric frame of reference.

A second point made by White (1972) in his article that is reinforced by White and Parham (1990) and Parham, White, and Ajamu (1999) is that Black psychology as a discipline should emerge out of the authentic experiences of Blacks in America. On the surface, White’s contention seems absolutely logical. However, I believe that this premise requires closer scrutiny. For years, Black psychologists in the discipline of Black psychology have concerned themselves with trying to combat negativistic assumptions made about Black people by White society in general and traditional psychology in particular. In doing so, many of the writings have been reactionary in nature in their attempts to com- bat the racist and stereotypic assumptions perpetuated by the Euro-American culture. In that regard, Black psychology has served a vital purpose in the evolution of thought about the psychology of African-American people. In their attempt to negate the White middle-class norm and to assert the necessity for analyzing African-American behavior in the context of its own norms, Black psychologists have been attempting to establish this normative base that is uniquely Afrocentric. In developing that norm, however, new questions are now being raised about whether or not the behavior of Black people in

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Reactionary

Narrow Conception of Black Behaviors, Thoughts,

Lifestyles Weakness Dominated Inferiority Oriented

Conclusions about Black People

Emerges from an African Frame of Reference; Does not validate in

Comparison to White Normative Standards

African Centered

African American

Euro-American Ghetto- centric

Need for a Worldview That Emerges from an African-Centered Frame of Reference

Problem: • Normative Standard • Generalizability of Norm • Difference Equals Deficiency

22 Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era

America constitutes a reasonable normative standard of what appropriate and/or inappropriate behavior should be. In fact, if one examines the research related to Blacks, the normative standard that developed emerged for the most part from the analysis of behaviors and attitudes of Southern-born, working- class, ghetto-dwelling Black people (Akbar, 1981). Although this norm was cer- tainly more valid than the Eurocentric perspective, it introduced biases against large numbers of Blacks who did not fit the newly developed stereotype of what a “real” Black person should be. Figure 2.1 attempts to illustrate how ghetto-centric norms are indeed based on a relatively small sample of Black people, and are influenced by a Eurocentric perspective of what Black norma- tive behavior should be.

One can readily see the problem in adapting this ghetto-centric norm to all Black people in the criticism being shown at “The Cosby Show” in televi- sion during the late 1980s and early 90s, and to some extent, shows like “My Wife and Kids,” which stared Damon Wayans and Tisha Campbell in the 2000- 2005. Much of the negative press about “The Cosby Show,” and more recently “My Wife and Kids,” that has emerged from the Black community has to do with the assumption that the characters and/or the shows themselves are not “Black enough.” Many assume (inappropriately so) that you cannot be Black, middle-class, have two professional parents working, and have a loving fam- ily that displays caring concern, strength, and character, all in a single episode. Fast forward twenty years from those 1980s, and with the explosion of cable news shows, you now have networks like CNN developing and air- ing shows like “Black in America I & II” in spring and summer 2009. These

FIGURE 2.1

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Chapter 2 • African-Centered Psychology in the Modern Era 23

documentary-oriented stories help to chronicle both the challenges that con- front African-descent people, as well as the successes that result from stable families, hard work, and perseverance through adversity. However, even de- spite the premier and re-run episodes of these shows on national and interna- tional television, the biases this country and the world continue to harbor to- ward people of African descent are quite remarkable, even as they seek to create and sustain a “Black Norm” of what the typical African American is like.

Not surprisingly, many Black psychologists continue to recognize, what others have decades before, which is the difficulty that these historic and con- temporary shortsighted perspectives have created for Black people. Akbar (1981, 2004) has

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