(African) American psychology

Abstract

Some people have said that African psychology was developed by Africans in America. I first came across this notion, stated in this manner, in the ‘Foreword’ to the book Handbook of African American Psychology edited by H.A. Neville, B.M. Tynes and S.O. Utsey (see Cross 2009). The Foreword was written by the African American social psychologist William E. Cross Jr. Cross is known for having developed the psychological nigrescence model of black racial/ethnic identity development. The Cross model of the process of becoming black proposed that the development of black racial/ethnic identity passes through a number of stages in a movement from negative, white normative standards to positive, authentic self-perceptions, namely: pre-encounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, internalisation and internalisation/commitment (Cross 1978; Parham 1989). About African psychology, Cross has suggested that as a more or less coherent body of knowledge, it has emerged to address the aim of understanding the influences, struggles, conditions, costs and achievements of people of African descent in the US. From this perspective, African psychology arose out of efforts by black American psychologists not only to recognise and produce psychological knowledge that differed from white American psychology, but also – and primarily – to oppose the racist assumptions, theories and research conclusions about black behaviour, feelings and thoughts that are found in this psychology. According to Cross, African psychology was thus not an invention of African psychologists on the continent of Africa, but rather a psychology developed in America by black American psychologists. Underlining this point, he defines African psychology thus: [It is] an invention, a social construction hammered out by Black intellectuals in the Americas – especially the United States. It is a formulation derived from the imagination of Blacks living outside Africa – descendants of slaves lacking direct contact with Africa for over 100 years – who are looking ‘back’ to Africa for solutions to predicaments, problems, and dilemmas enveloping Blacks throughout the Diaspora and especially the United States. (Cross 2009: xi) I swallowed it whole. I went on to repeat it. It is not always true, though. There is much I agree with in these sentiments about what African psychology includes. However, African psychology was not invented by black Americans, however much I admire black American psychologists like Cross, Na'im Akbar, Joseph Baldwin, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, Asa Hilliard, Harriette Pipes MacAdoo, Linda Meyers, Wade Nobles, Thomas Parham and many others.