Women and African Americans in Psychology Myrna D. Washington University of the Rockies Abstract Throughout the history of psychology, the contributions of minority theorists, such as African Americans and females, have often been overlooked. This paper analyzes these omissions and discusses how they have affected the field of psychology. Women and African Americans in Psychology American psychology is a microcosm of the American macrocosm; it reflects the culture in which it was created and developed in that it is dominated by “middle and upper class white males” (Goodwin, 2008). Like American society, American psychology has historically oppressed and disenfranchised both women and minorities, specifically, African Americans. Indeed, American history reflects that women’s rights and civil rights have developed side-by-side as women and minorities have also faced significant barriers in becoming educated and employed not only within the field of psychology, but in the American workforce, in general. Women, for example, were prejudiced by gender-centric biases such as “women’s sphere” (an integrated set of concepts based on the belief that women were created for created for the purpose of perpetuating family by getting married, having and raising children, and being content in their roles), periodic function (the widespread belief that men were intellectually inferior to men because they were incapacitated during menses), and the variability hypothesis (based on the belief that men had a greater degree of variability than women on a number of traits, including intelligence) (Goodwin, 2008). Although some opportunities managed to surface despite these barriers, women were, nevertheless, relegated to studying subjects that “suited” them (i.e., home economics, teaching, or nursing) and limited to matriculation at “normal schools” (colleges created specifically for the purpose of teacher training), or “women’s colleges”, elite colleges created for women only (i.e., Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Smith) (Goodwin, 2008). African Americans experienced substantially more limitations than women from the residual effects of systemic slavery and the widespread belief that African Americans were intellectually inferior to European Americans. This belief was so entrenched in American society and American psychology that it encouraged psychologists to skew the results of their studies in favor of white superiority. For example, in one early study, Bache (as cited in Goodwin, 2008), misinterpreted the slower reaction times of white subjects as “reflective” and labeled the faster reactive times of African Americans and Native Americans as “intellectually backward impulsiveness” (Goodwin, 2008). Other consequences of prejudice and overt racism against African Americans included segregation (in which schools that were supposed to be “separate but equal” were actually inferior to white schools), limited or reduced educational opportunities for higher education, (focusing mostly on teacher training), and, even worse, limited prospects for employment following graduate school, with the only recourse for African American psychologists being to teach at black colleges where conditions included heavy teaching loads, no benefits, minimal salary, and poor research facilities (Goodwin, 2008). If the contributions of African American and female theorists had not been overlooked by discriminatory and prejudicial practices, psychology would have benefitted from the works of Francis Sumner (1895 – 1954), Mary Whiton Calkins (1863 – 1930), Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847 – 1930), Kenneth B. Clark (1915 - ), Tracy Seedman Kendler (1936 – 2001), and Margaret Floy Washburn (1871 – 1939) (Goodwin, 2008; Kendler, 2003; Phillips, 2000). Francis Sumner, for example, was an African American psychologist from Pine Bluff, AR, who received his doctorate from Clark University (a predominantly-white, male-dominated university) in “race psychology” in 1920. In addition to dispelling stereotypical beliefs about the intellectual-inferiority of African Americans, Sumner also mastered and pointed out the limitations and defects of great authorities in the psychology such as Freud and Adler (Goodwin, 2008). Another African American psychologist whose contributions might have been lost by prejudice and discrimination within America and American psychology is Kenneth B. Clark, best known for his research on racial self-concepts in Black children, his profound yet often obscure vision of integration, his views on the role of empathy and respect in education, his views on the effects of racism on whites, his election as the first and only Black president of the APA, and his important contributions to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund’s (NAACP-LDF) battle for an end to legalized racial segregation in the United States Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 (Phillips, 2000). Clark is considered one of the most important early figures in both social psychology and Black psychology (Phillips, 2000). Although women were becoming educated in increasing numbers in the late nineteenth century, higher education for them continued to receive skepticism from America’s male-dominated society (Goodwin, 2008). One of the most famous female pioneers in psychology, one whose contributions might have been missed because of gender discrimination, was Mary Whiton Calkins, a Clark- and Harvard-educated psychologist who became a distinguished memory researcher and the first female president of the American Psychological Association. (APA) Two of Calkins’s contributions to psychology include paired-associate learning, which later became a standard method in cognitive research, and self psychology, which Calkins saw as a means of resolving disputes (conflict resolution) (Goodwin, 2008). If psychology had not embraced racial, ethnic, gender, and diversity in sexual orientation, it would also have tragically missed the works of Christine Ladd-Franklin, a Vassar- and Johns Hopkins-educated psychologist and mathematician whose contributions include a theory of color vision that was grounded in evolutionary theory (an influential theory for several decades) and outspoken opposition to the “men only” rule of the Experimentalists (Goodwin, 2008). An ethnocentric, male-dominated psychology would also have missed out on the works of Tracy Seedman Kendler (1936 – 2001), who published more than 60 articles and one book in the areas of learning theory, cognitive development, neobehavioristic methodology, and developmental psychology (Kendler, 2003). Additionally, psychology would have missed out on the contributions of Mary Floy Washburn, an experimental psychologist who earned her degree from Cornell in 1894 to become the first woman to earn a doctorate in psychology. Her contributions to modern psychology include studies of the effects of visual imagery on tactile sensitivity, publishing in the areas of perception, imagery, “social consciousness” (empathy and helping behavior) and the development of a motor theory of consciousness (Goodwin, 2008). Her most notable contribution, however, was a well-known text entitled The Animal Mind, which focused on the cognitive processes of perception, attention, and consciousness (Goodwin, 2008). Finally, analyses of the efforts to make American psychology more inclusive of ethnic and racial minorities suggests that, without advocacy and activism, American psychology will not be able to include non-White, non-European individuals (Pickren, 2004). Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the U. S. Census Bureau reveals that the U. S. population is more ethnically- and racially-diverse than ever before (Pickren, 2004). Findings reveal that only two thirds of the American population self-identify as White, while the remainder identify as African American (13%), Hispanic (13%), Asian/Pacific Islander (4.5%), American Indian or Alaskan Native (1.5%), and other (7%) (Pickren, 2004). Unfortunately, American psychology has not experienced the same diversity. In 2001, findings from the National Center on Education Statistics (as cited in Pickren, 2004) revealed that 77% of doctoral degrees in psychology were still received by whites, with only 15% held by minorities (i.e., African Americans [5%], Hispanics [5%], Asian/Pacific Islanders [4], and American Indian/Alaskan Native [<1%]). If psychology is a microcosm of the American macrocosm, the APA’s membership also reflects this. As of 2002, only 5.8% of APA members were ethnic minority psychologists (2.1% Hispanic, 1.7% Asian American, 1.7% African American, and 0.3% American Indian) (Pickren, 2004). And, although differences in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. have become a major focus and have been embraced by the field of psychology, identity and psychological knowledge continue to be articulated and differentiated by gender, sexual orientation, and class (Pickren, 2004). References Goodwin, C. J. (2008). A history of modern psychology (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ/ Wiley & Sons. Kendler, T.S. (2003). A woman’s struggle in academic psychology (1936-2001). History of Psychology, 6(3), 251-266. PsycArticles DOI: 10.1037/1093-4510.6.3.251. Phillips, L. (2000). Recontextualizing Kenneth B. Clark: An afrocentric perspective on the paradoxical legacy of a modern psychologist-activist. History of Psychology, 3(2), 142-167. PsycArticles DOI: 10.1037/1093- 4510.3.2.142. Pickren, W.E. (2004). Between the cup of principle and the lip of practice: Ethnic minorities and American psychology 1966-1980. History of Psychology, 7(1), 45-64. PsycArticles DOI: 10.1037/1093-4510.7.1.45. Minorities in Psychology 7 Running head: MINORITIES IN PSYCHOLOGY 1