Black psychology
[2][3] Overall, the field combines perspectives from both Black studies and traditional psychology encapsulating a range of definitions and approaches while simultaneously proposing its own framework of understanding.
[4][5] In practice, Black psychology exists as both an academic and applied discipline, which focuses on furthering the well-being of people of African descent through more accurate knowledge.
[1][6] Based on different definitional systems, developments in Black psychology tend to utilize a range of approaches.
[1][11] While some theorists (such as William David Smith, Robert Chrisman, and Halford Fairchild) broadly define Black psychology as any attempt to characterize the understandings and experiences of people of African descent, other theorists (such as Joseph Baldwin, Na'im Akbar, Daudi Azibo, Amos Wilson, Shawn Utsey, Asa Hilliard, Wade Nobles, Linda James Myers, and Cheryl Grills) specifically define Black psychology through the lens of African philosophy and heritage.
[12] However, despite varying definitions, perspectives, and approaches in the field, as a whole, Black psychology focuses on the study of the thoughts, behaviors, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, interactions, and well-being of individuals of African descent.
[17] It is also believed that Ma'at "absolutely requires social solidarity for its realization", highlighting the importance of a cohesive community in the application of this concept.
Moving away from secret night schools held during the time of slavery, a variety of learning centers and colleges began to open.
[21] The first African American woman to receive a PhD in psychology was Inez Beverly Prosser from the University of Cincinnati in 1933.
[21] Prestigious universities like UCLA, Cornell, and Harvard just to name a few, did not offer African American students the opportunities to receive a PhD in psychology during the 1960s.
The survey revealed that fourteen of fifty colleges had a department in psychology and that theoretical and lab courses were rare.
[26] This can be demonstrated in the incidence of "hyperexplanation", wherein an instructor provides lengthy explanation without recognizing affirmative gestures that do not include vocal backchannels such as "I understand you."
[26] Between 1920 and 1970, black colleges around the nation produced more than 1,300 bachelor's degree graduates who eventually earned a doctorate in psychology.
Clark University was the foremost in graduating black scholars at the time; its notable alumni include Sumner and J. Henry Alston.
Beyond acceptance or provisions that required black students to take on an extra year of undergraduate work to prove their caliber to attending white schools, finances was the most troubling factor.
Fees toward tuition, living maintenance, and other expenses caused many to delay or to give up pursuing graduate studies for dependable wages in menial positions.
[28] For example, Edward Johnson stressed in The Role of the Negro in American Psychology that "the black psychologist will regard himself more and more as an agent of social change.
[30] Entire fields arose from these views, such as phrenology, which was the study of cranial shape and size and their relationship to mental abilities.
[30][1] Pseudosciences like these led to the belief that Westerners were physically, mentally, and intellectually superior compared to Black people.
Along the same lines, Black psychologists like Guthrie argue that the discipline of psychology was also developed from a predominantly White framework.
The authors propose three methodological approaches: Deconstructionist, Reconstructionist, and Constructionist, to organize the evolution of major concepts and theories of Black Psychology since the origin of the ABPSi.
There was a deconstruction movement in the ABPsi that included addressing three challenges that black psychologist were dealing with, and offering suggestions to the American Psychological Association (APA).
[39] In Even the Rat Was White, Guthrie addresses that Judge Robert Peckham found California to be in violation of the Civil Rights Act due to the use of standardized psychological tests that were culturally biased, racially-biased, and invalid for the purposes of wrongfully placing students into classes intended for students with intellectual disabilities.
[39] In addition to the past challenges, there is a western socialization process that paints Eurocentric psychology as the gold standard for diagnosing and treating mental health issues in the world today.
[7] Furthermore, the deconstruction method is used to craft therapeutic techniques that align with the Optimal Conceptual Theory, a theory of human development that is based on African thought and tradition, and led to the freedom of black people from things such as the school to prison pipeline and high infant mortality rates.
[7][41] William Cross proposed a prominent model of Black racial identity called the Nigrescence theory.
[41][42] Lastly, the reconstructionist approach examines the ways in which racism influences interactions between Black and White people.
[7] Black psychologists working under the reconstructionist framework like Arthur Whaley, Jerome Taylor,[43] and Francis and Sandra Terrell proposed the term cultural mistrust as a replacement to the older term cultural paranoia to refer to the ways in which Black people have developed mistrust towards White Americans due to years of oppression and racism.
[45] Notable black psychologists who ground their work based on an African worldview and ethos include Linda James Myers (optimal worldview),[46] Kobi Kambon (Cultural Misorientation),[47] Shawn Utsey (Africultural coping),[48] James M. Jones (the TRIOS Model),[49] Na'im Akbar (alien-self disorder),[50][51] and Cheryl T. Grills (The Africentrism Scale).
It is a healing justice organization that actively works to transform mental health for queer and trans people of color in North America.[importance?
