Individual Differences in Response To the Struggle for the Liberation of People of African Descent

Abstract

In the personality literature, a variety of perspectives exist on the psychology of people of African descent. Early psychological thought and research in this area was embedded in a reactive and restricted mode. Specifically, the research focus was on the debilitating effects of racism, discrimination, and prejudice on the psychological makeup of African Americans (Mosby, 1972; Pettigrew, 1964; Morland, 1978). While, on another level, other investigators (Parker and Kleiner, 1966; Mischel, 1961) assumed or accepted that Black people's personality, motivational, and behavioral deficits represented the effects of their proximal cultural environment. The post civil rights period spawned the emergence of a somewhat different reactive approach to psychological inquiry. In this era, analysts have been examining the movement's effects on the psychology of Blacks. Here, the emphasis has been on looking at the development of racial awareness, racial identity, and racial pride in African Americans (Cross, 1971; Thomas, 1971; Toldson and Pasteur, 1975; Dansby, 1980). In the early 1970s, several social and behavioral scientists (White, 1970; Akbar, 1973; Baldwin, 1976; Nobles, 1976, among others), argued that traditional psychology was responsible for establishing the assumption of Black inferiority, but failed to pro-