Black Psychology
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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 an
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d its ruling on social science knowledge as much as law. Further, the response of the American Psychological Association (APA) was muted regarding the significant work done by Clarke that served as the foundation for illustrating the pseudoscience upon which Plessy v. Ferguson was based. As Benjamin (et al. 2002) maintains, that the council made no mention or formal recognition of the decision in the four years after which it was made showed ôracism was no less present in psychology as an integral part of American societyö (44).
Psychologist Gail Wyatt maintains that mythology based on early psychological interpretations of Blacks continues to impact both Blacks and whites in the modern era. This is particularly true with respect to Black sexuality. Studies by Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin and others included Blacks in their research, but samples were small and select. Further, once more psychological measures and tests were misapplied in the sense that in such studies Blacks were compared to white norms or standards, something Wyatt maintains leads to misleading conclusions and invalid science. As she notes of these studies:
They did not explore the many dimensions of Black female sexuality and usually supported the mythology tha
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2975
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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