The Way of The Mindful Teaching Practitioner: The counter to bias in ed psychology
Theodore Ransaw
Theodore S. Ransaw, Ph.D. C.B.T. is an Outreach Specialist, in the Department of K-12 Outreach, College of Education, Michigan State University [Literacy, Equity, Parent Involvement]
Theodore S. Ransaw, Ph.D.
The American Psychological Association, A.P.A. acknowledges that mainstream psychology is founded on White Eurocentric perspectives and that BIPOC scholarship has been systematically discounted the field of psychology, academic institutions, and the publication process (American Psychological Association, 2021). Specifically, 83% of the editors-in-chief of top-tier cognitive, psychology developmental psychology and social psychology academic journals were White and only 5% were people of color and there has never been an editor that was a person of color in the two journals of cognitive psychology (Roberts, Bareket-Shavit, Dollins, Goldie, Mortenson, 2020). Additionally, the top tier human psychology and behavioral science journals typically include research participants taken from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies (Henrich, Heine & Norezayan, 2010).
At first glance, it may not seem that the exclusion of people of color as editors, researchers, authors and as research participants in psychological journals is significant. However, the exclusion of Blacks in the field of psychology has resulted in the fact that psychologists once thought that Blacks enjoyed being enslaved so much that if they tried to run away, they must have had a mental disease called Drapetomania (Cartwright, 1858).
African influence on studying the mind is not invisible – but overlooked just as the assumption that White Europeans founded psychology is not even debated but accepted as the rule. Subsequently, Blackness is embedded in psychology but hidden from history just as anything dark is associated with evil and undeserving of being seen, just as Whiteness is embedded in society and considered the norm. Throughout history, Blackness has been used as a metaphor for evil, and Whiteness has been synonymous with goodness.
When people think of the word vanilla, they think of Whiteness, even though the vanilla bean is Black, both inside and out. Even the seeds of a vanilla bean are Black. The stems of a vanilla plant are green, and the flower is yellow and anything but White. Moreover, the vanilla plant is grown in Mexico on the other side of the world from Europe. The vanilla plant was almost unknown in Europe until a 12-year-old French Black slave figured out a technique to pollinate the vanilla plant by hand (Chow, 2014). So why the association of vanilla with Whiteness? Vanilla is so ubiquitous that it is common and standard; it is considered universal, just like Whiteness is regarded as THE cultural, intellectual archetype in psychology (Chow, 2014).
The saturation of European framed perspectives on history as the exemplar of the norm and the later projection of Whiteness on history, science, and medicine, including mental health, has left many researchers and scientists with cultural amnesia about the origins and influences of African metaphysics, psychology, and philosophy (Browder, 1996; James, 1992). Subsequently, obfuscation of African inclusion in critical conversations and academic research has left the world with knowledge gaps. People of African descent have influenced many areas of psychology, including the study of duality, consciousness, and cognition. As you can imagine, considering cultural knowledge and perspectives in the classroom can be an almost magical experience to students of color.
When you go to a movie, read a magazine, or open a book and you ask yourself, why does everything have to be about race? That is what students of color say when they open most of their textbooks and none of the content is reflective of them.
References
American Psychological Association. (2021). Equity, diversity, and inclusion framework. Washington, DC. APA.
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Brescó de Luna, I. (2017). The end into the beginning: Prolepsis and the reconstruction of the collective past.
Culture and Psychology, 23(2), 280-294–294. https://doiorg.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/10.1177/1354067X17695761 Currie, M. (2006). Narrative fiction and the philosophy of time. Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
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Guillory, J., G. (1968). The Pro-Slavery Arguments of Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, 9(3), 209-227. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/4231017.
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