Psychology evolves in a historical context. As such, African American or Black psychology is a historical concept. The history of African American people in the United States is a journey that includes physical and psychological oppression and travels through specific intergenerational efforts to improve the condition of a race that has face slavery, poverty, racism, discrimination and basically powerlessness across all sectors of American society. In contrast to these often horrific realities of the Black experience in the U.S., stand many inspiring examples of Black lives that demonstrate significant resiliency and psychological strength that offer hope and possibility within the concept of the ôAmerican Dreamö.
Such a harrowing history of experience for African Americans in U.S. society often led to a comparative psychology applied to Blacks, comparing Black psychology with the psychology of whites without regard for environment experiences. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon discusses the misapplication of psychoanalysis with respect to African Americans, claiming ôIt will be seen that contrary to Freudian belief the black manÆs alienation is not an individual question. Besides phylogeny and ontogeny stands sociogenyö (Wallace 2003, 73). Fanon is describing how quite often in history the unlike concepts of the white and Black experience have been compared in the social sciences, without regard for the environmental influences and experiences Black Americans have been subjected to that influence psychology.
In other words, many historical assumptions and theories of psychology applied to African Americans have failed to separate the context of the groupÆs particular experiences as a factor. One notorious example is the book The Bell Curve, whose authors attempt to demonstrate that African Americans are psychologically (i.e. intellectually) inferior to Americans of European descent, based on statistical inf...