Psychology’s Racist Legacy… and What We Must Do to Right This
As an aspiring therapist, current student of psychology, and Stillpoint employee, I consider myself more than a little psychologically curious. The drive to understand ourselves and one another, and to use that knowledge to improve our communities, organisations and lives seems to be deep within most people working in the industry. However, when delving into the history of psychology, I was shocked to find out that that doesn’t always seem to have been the case. Since its inception as a standalone field in the late 1800s, psychology has been used to justify discrimination on the basis of (amongst other things) race.
Prior to the advent of science, racism — and before that, slavery — was seen by many white Europeans as the natural order of things, in accordance with “God’s plan” (1). Around this time, theories of natural selection were coming to the fore; with this came the theory of genetic inheritance. What ensued was a difficult period of relinquishing many old beliefs and values for new ones. It was clear that old explanations for why things are the way they are no longer held. Yet, as tends to be the case, those in power were reluctant for things to change. How could the theory of evolution be used to maintain the status quo of justifying white superiority?
Enter psychology. In the late 1800s, Francis Galton (cousin of Darwin and eminent psychologist and polymath) postulated that intelligence and other qualities are genetically determined (2). Around this time, the first intelligence test was invented in France, again with a shady history. These tests were first used to determine which children in an orphanage were intelligent enough to be “worth” educating. Their use soon spread; the results of such tests were quickly taken as fact.
However, these tests were designed by upper class, white men, and many studies have since shown that they are useful to determine only the kind of intelligence that is valued in the culture and class within which they were created. Even worse, they did not take into account important environmental factors, such as the role of formal education and familiarity with exams. Unfortunately, the damage was already done. When applied to other classes and particularly races, IQ tests indicated that Black, Indigenous or People of Colour had, on average, a lower IQ compared with white people. This psychological finding provided further “proof” of white superiority and justification for discrimination (3, 4). Other pseudo-scientific findings of the time included the claims that white people had larger skulls and brains than other races supposedly indicative of their superior intellect. This is blatantly anatomically incorrect.
This marked the beginning of the Eugenics movement, the idea, promoted by many psychologists of the time, that those with a higher intelligence should be encouraged to reproduce, in order to maximise the potential of the human race (2). In contrast, those deemed “undesirable” were discouraged from reproducing (sometimes forcibly, as we’ll see later). We all know where this idea led by the middle of the century (5).
Unfortunately, psychology’s role in both supporting and promulgating racism doesn’t stop there. Many policies across the Western world were based on oft-repeated psychological “research” claiming that Blacks and other ethnic groups were inferior to their white counterparts. For instance, both segregation and apartheid were fuelled by psychological accounts of the genetic difference between Black and white peoples. Religion played its part too — old habits die hard (6). Furthermore, IQ tests were used by the USA throughout the 20th century to determine which immigrants were desirable and those who were not. Unsurprisingly, people with less shared cultural knowledge and fewer English language skills fared worse on these; such people were turned away in far greater numbers than those from backgrounds deemed more acceptable.
Finally, until the 1970s many countries, including the United States and Australia, had government-enforced policies sanctioning the sterilisation of “undesirable populations”, often without their knowledge or consent (7). You guessed it: those populations tended to be Black or Indigenous. The reason why? Once again, certain attributes were assigned to these racial groups; lack of intelligence, criminality and, shockingly, a predisposition to rape (5). Scarily, some psychologists to this day continue to repeat these claims (for instance, see (8) and the past decade has shown a frightening increase of both overt and implicit racism, and not just from those on the fringes of society (9).
So, what can psychology do now?
Clearly, discrimination against billions of people is morally wrong. What’s more, for decades psychology has reinforced the idea that racism is natural and based on genetic differences between races. It must now make it known just as loudly that these claims are unfounded. Countless studies have shown that race is a social rather than genetic construct (10, 11); whilst a person may have white or black or brown skin, there is no evidence for a distinct genetic grouping that could be considered racial. To claim that Black people are of one race and white and Asian are others due to a vague similarity in physical features, and in particular to claim that various other characteristics are linked to race (intelligence, for instance) is as ridiculous as claiming that all green-eyed people are funny.
Elaborating on this point, studies have shown that there is often more variability between the genetic makeup of two Black people picked at random than there is between a Black person and a white or Asian person; hardly surprising when you consider the sheer vastness of the African continent. Given that psychologists have known this for years, there is no excuse that such disinformation still exists. Psychologists have a duty to actively discredit such discriminatory and damaging claims where they arise in public discourse, where so many still take them as fact.
Furthermore, psychology and its related disciplines, like psychotherapy and counselling, are both largely white professions (13), and should be working much harder to attract and support more BIPOC practitioners and academics into the field. This would help us avoid continuing to repeat the mistake of biased research and clinical practice (14) and would better represent our diverse world. People of Colour, who may have racialised trauma to work through, are drastically underrepresented in this space and would very likely benefit from more representation of those with similar ethnic backgrounds and experiences (13).
Finally, psychologists need to work harder to inform people about their own biases and develop effective strategies to overcome these, at an individual level as well as within larger groups, such as the workforce. This kind of applied psychology enables people of different races to better understand the history and legacy of racism, including the way this has benefitted or disadvantaged them. Understanding this is the first step in a long journey of ending racism, a feat which psychologists must recognise as essential to righting the wrongs that the field has enabled for decades.
Alex Grunnill works for Stillpoint Spaces International, and is based in London, UK. She is studying for her master’s in psychology with the University of Glasgow. She hopes eventually to train as a psychotherapist. You can find her on Linked In.
To mark the sad anniversary of George Floyd’s death, Stillpoint Spaces are holding an online event with Dr Dwight Turner during which we will look at what we have learned about ourselves as therapists, counsellors, and individuals in light of this racial trauma. This event will take place on Saturday 12th June 2021, and will be part presentation and part experiential exploration of either the racial trauma we still have, or the racialised learning that is still endemic in our culture.
Book your tickets.
References:
2. https://intelltheory.com/galton.shtml
3. Miller, L. (1995). The Origins of the Presumption of Black Stupidity. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, (9), 78–82. doi:10.2307/2962640
4. Winston, A. S. (2020). Why mainstream research will not end scientific racism in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 30(3), 425–430. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354320925176
5. Smith, H. (2006). From Darwin to Hitler. Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. Central European History, 39(1), 142–144. doi:10.1017/S0008938906260060
7. https://psychology.org.au/publications/inpsych/2013/august/augoustinos
8. Rindermann, H. (2013). African cognitive ability: Research, results, divergences and recommendations. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(3), 229–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.06.022
9. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/evolutionary-psychology-grapples-with-racism-and-anti-semitism/
10. Yudel, M., Roberts, D., Desalle, R. & Tishkoff, S. (2016). Taking race out of human genetics. Science, 564–565.
11. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history/2019/02/race-and-ethnicity-explained
12. Choudhury, A., Aron, S., Botigué, L.R. et al. High-depth African genomes inform human migration and health. Nature 586, 741–748 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2859-7
