African American Psychology

The purpose of the article” Shades of Difference: theoretical Underpinnings of the Medical Controversy on Black-White Differences in the United States, 1830-1870”, was to show a difference between beliefs and sound theory’s that are based on medical debates on slavery, racial differences and disease, and black inferiority. Throughout the article conflicting doctors raised the same scientific findings but let their predisposed assumptions, reach biased conclusions. From 1830 to 1850, doctors argued the legitimacy and clarification of their conclusions.

These women faced several societal constraints and long held beliefs about the role of women in their era. At that time the societal belief was that women where intellectually inferior to men and responding to this judgement, male psychologists attempted to develop theories about what could happen to women if they did try to enter higher education.

Prior to 1939, the rules and regulations for becoming a member of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology was extremely difficult. But in 1895 a young man born by the name of Francis Cecil Sumner, was about to have a huge impact in the field of psychology. A young man who was schooled at home was getting ready to embark on a rollercoaster of trials and tribulations. Before 1939 some of the circumstances for being a member of the Southern School for Philosophy and Psychology (SSPP) were. For Non-American Psychological (APA) members even with endorsements and payments of dues, had to be voted in by the membership. Sumner, a young black man who was the first African American to have earned a PhD in psychology was held back and delayed numerous times. Could this be due to the color of his skin? He was about to see for himself.

Hoffman’s Opinion was that “every statistic or expert testimony was scientific proof of inferiority and degeneration… the colored race is showing … all indications of a race on the road to extinction” . He was not alone in this belief that African American “inferiority” was genetic, other writers such as Harry Vrooman, R.M Cunningham and Walter Wilcox shared his beliefs also. Muhammad disagreed with this notion and so did other historians such as Ida B Wells, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and M.V. Ball. One explicit opinion that they all agreed on was that Hoffman’s work was an “unscientific use of statistical method.”

As slavery became a more divisive subject in American politics, justification was required for both sides to advance their interests. Much of the research by whites into the nature of black people in this time led to what is now known as scientific racism. With “discoveries” from both sides of the debate around slavery changing the way white people viewed blacks, both Thomas Jefferson and Johan von Herder present their case using nature, among other aspects to either reinforce or alter the view of slavery and black people in general.

1.) In chapter 1, Black women slaves were defined as either a “jezebel” or “mammy”. In detail define the characteristics of a “jezebel” and “mammy”. Why were black women defined in these two extreme ways? By contrast, how were Southern white women characterized?

The Eugenics movement in the United States began in the early 1880’s through the ideas of Charles Darwin and Sir Frances Galton. Darwin proposed that evolution occurred through the process of natural selection or ‘survival of the fittest’. Galton was inspired by Darwin’s work and subsequently interpreted Darwin’s ideas and devised the term ‘Eugenics’, Eu, meaning good and genics meaning born. His definition of Eugenics was “The science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage.” This resulted in both

The history of rape is a rather bleak one. For as long as America has been America, the subject of rape has been sketchy at best. For much of the United States history, a person, preferable a white male, could legally own another human. This right didn’t just include African American males and females but also white women in the form of marriage. In fact, it wasn’t until quite recently that a man could legally rape his own wife. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation website, the former definition of was, “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” (www.fbi.gov) this definition excluded many criminal offenses including the rape of a man’s wife, male rapes, and oral and object penetration. The new definition

Black psychologists faced many unique challenges in their quest for inclusion and voice in the professional and academic community of Psychology. However, the Civil Rights movement began an era of transformation that impacted several sectors of society, including the professional and academic spheres. Both the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) and the Black Students Psychological association (BSPA) played a significant role in challenging the American Psychological Association’s (APA) discriminatory actions towards the Black community and the general lack of awareness of the field’s exclusively White and euro-centric framework. The ABPsi was established at the APA convention of 1968, where they disrupted a meeting of the APA Board of Directors meeting to present their concerns with the establishment. During this formal protest, they declared that “Members of the Association have pledged themselves to the realization that they are Black people first and psychologists second. Accordingly, they will not continue to ignore the exploitation of the Black community” (Williams, 1974).

Throughout history, people have consistently tried to prove that groups with inborn qualities can either vastly improve or degenerate different races over time. This rhetoric has been proven multiple times throughout the course of the last century in the United States and Nazi-reigned Germany. Supposedly, this rhetoric has been disproven throughout the United States; however, there are proven accounts that the United States government has recently supported this theory of sterilization of minorities by supporting the eugenics movement, which was not only in Nazi Germany, but also on United States soil. The topic of improving the genetic makeup of different races has not only just become a common theme for many modern day countries to use to make their societies more genetically fit. However, it has adopted the basis for current racism that is clearly apparent in today’s society. If improving genetic fitness was not a concern to past societies, then people in general would be a lot more open to interracial and cross-cultural relationships rather than completely disregarding the idea of dating someone that is visibly genetically different.

Moreover, he wanted to find out the extent to which color and sense of own race affected their self-esteem or judgment about themselves. It was in rural Arkansas where Dr. Kenneth got disturbed when he conducted his experiments. He asked one of the black children which doll was similar to him on basis of color. The child pointed at the brown doll with a smile on his face. In addition, the child said that the doll was a nigger just like him. This was disturbing to the doctor, as other children in Massachusetts would respond to the question by crying and running away. The interpretation of the results was that they were good and reliable evidence that stigmatization by segregation and discrimination caused internalized racism.

The study of the psyche of African Americans first began by a African American psychologist by the name of Dr. Francis Sumner. Sumner was the first of his kind—studying the black mind. Since this groundbreaking action numerous psychologists of African American decent have come about, yet there is still a major problem with understanding the psychology of the African American mind. Dr. Sumner began his work in the 1920’s and since then there have been multiple social events that involve African Americans and that definitely have made profound impact on their psyche.

One of the first African Americans to work with psychological topic was Charles Turner back in 1867. He studies in a small group on animal behavior. Turner worked very hard and for a very long time. He had over 70 publications on psychological topics. With this kind of experience, you would think a good job at a research based university would be easy to find. Charles came the closest to this when he was a finalist for a spot at the University of Chicago, but unfortunately was not hired because of his race.

Here the sociological work carried out by the Chicago scholars and their successors, and the continuously powerful voice of Du Bois, combined with the insights and research of a growing number of progressive racial observers. To name but a few other important influences: the Boasian shift in anthropology, which refocused that discipline from physical to cultural preoccupations and had widespread effects in popular culture, was certainly significant. The association of fascism with eugenics -- a movement that had developed strong bases both in Britain and the U.S. as well as in Germany -- forced choices upon democratically and progressively inclined publics, both intellectual and political. The "retreat of scientific racism" was the result of

The Mental Traits of Sex: an experimental investigation of the normal mind in men and women by Dr. Helen Bradford Thompson is a book written about Thompson’s experimental investigation into the minds of men and women. In the introduction, Thompson writes that she discusses both her experiments and previous experiments that have been conducted in order to bring a more accurate view of differences between the sexes (Thompson, 1). Thompson wanted to make sure that her studies provided the best data for comparing males and females because in the past the data used to compare the sexes were from studies that originally had nothing to do with finding differences. She sought out to find men and women that at least had the same amount of education, so she chose upperclassmen from the University of Chicago as participants. The participants were not told about why the studies were being conducted and each participant put in around twenty to twenty-three hours into being tested (PAGE).