Throughout psychology’s history, many psychologists have supported harmful policies against people of color.
A call from APA members to address critical societal issues amid a reckoning on race in America led the association to examine racism in psychology’s past against communities of color and to develop a commitment to dismantling systemic racism in the present and the future. The first step was a formal apology from APA taking responsibility for how it has affected the field and providing science-based recommendations to remedy racism’s many harms.
The apology—the first of its kind since the association was formed in 1892—is part of an effort to confront the past harms against people of color and institute new guidelines to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in science, education, and clinical practice. Many psychologists, particularly those from communities of color, have been doing this work for decades, and it is through their leadership, advocacy, and scholarship that the apology and recommendations are possible. The apology represents a historical turning point for APA and the discipline when it comes to infusing equity throughout the field of psychology.
“There’s a Yoruba proverb that says, ‘The axe forgets what the tree remembers,’” said clinical psychologist BraVada Garrett-Akinsanya, PhD, who has long advocated for psychologists and the association to better address racial discrimination. “In many ways, APA has been the axe, and those of us who have stood like trees remember the injuries because we live them every day.”
The apology, which passed unanimously by APA’s Council of Representatives on Oct. 29, 2021, calls on psychologists to use the discipline and psychological science to dismantle systemic racism and advance health equity.
“The governing body within APA should have apologized to people of color before today,” it reads. “APA, and many in psychology, have long considered such an apology, but failed to accept responsibility.”
Psychology’s past harms
APA’s first president, G. Stanley Hall, described First Peoples as childlike, calling for “civilizing programs” that destroyed their culture, language, and spiritual life. Throughout the 1900s, prominent psychologists argued against interracial marriage, claiming it would produce a “race of submen” and that biracial individuals were mentally defective. Other APA leaders actively supported eugenics for decades, calling for sterilization initiatives for “unfit and inferior races.”
Psychological research has helped to create policies that supported the justification for incarcerating people of color, writing anti-miscegenation laws, adopting forced sterilization, and creating military and educational segregation.
Well into the 1960s, some psychologists continued to present research claiming that Black people cannot reach the intelligence levels or abilities of White people.
Throughout the years, APA often remained silent when opportunities arose to make a difference in the lives of oppressed racial groups. In response to this silence, 75 Black psychologists left APA in 1968 to form the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), citing APA’s failure to address poverty, racism, and other social concerns during the civil rights movement. Other ethnic psychological associations (EPAs) emerged in the early to mid-1970s, namely the Association of Psychologists por la Raza, the Asian American Psychological Association, and the Society of Indian Psychologists. The mission of EPAs today is to amplify and elevate the traditions in their communities in the field of psychology.
In 1979, Martha Bernal, PhD, the first Mexican American woman to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology and who helped establish the National Hispanic Psychological Association, examined the curricula of APA-accredited clinical psychology programs and found them woefully inadequate when it came to the treatment of multicultural populations.
The field still struggles with a stunning lack of diversity. In 2019, Black psychologists represented just 3% of the workforce, Asian psychologists 4%, and Hispanic psychologists 7%, according to APA’s Center for Workforce Studies. Two percent were American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or people of two or more races. The field is dominated by White people—at 83% of the psychology workforce as compared with 60.1% of the total U.S. population.
The apology illustrates psychology’s early use of science to justify racism and the eugenics movement and how the use of that science helped contribute to the systemic oppression of people of color. It also links that early history to the ongoing centering of White perspectives in psychological science, scholarship, and practice, and it spells out how that framework has marginalized psychologists of color.
“We need to be aware that history repeats itself if we do not actively disrupt generational cycles,” said APA Chief Diversity Officer Maysa Akbar, PhD, ABPP. “It’s important that we fully embrace the good, the bad, and the indifference that has existed in our field—with full awareness that we should understand what it means to represent the discipline of psychology, and that we continue to dismantle all types of racism, discrimination, and hate.”
The discipline’s history shows the efforts of psychologists of color to challenge White research and testing norms, to enter the field despite obstacles, to form their own psychological associations, and to contribute and shape policy change.
“One of the things that was really eye-opening was to understand how powerfully our field has been shaped by destructive ideologies and forces,” said Brian Smedley, PhD, APA’s former chief of psychology in the public interest, who co-led the team that developed the apology. “When you understand that history, you start to realize that not only do I, as a psychologist, have personal and professional responsibilities, but my discipline and my association have responsibilities as well.”
In its apology and accompanying resolutions, APA identified more than 50 recommendations the association and discipline can follow to help dismantle systemic racism within the field. It emphasizes the fact that APA must reflect on its own contributions to racism before it can work to dismantle it in the field and in society at large.
The association has begun the work of completing a comprehensive inventory of the EDI and anti-racism work currently under way to help identify areas where energy is currently focused, where psychology is making the greatest progress, and where there are gaps that need to be addressed.
The apology also calls on APA to focus on addressing health inequities and disparities. It pushes APA to comprehensively evaluate the recruitment, retention, and admission processes to increase training and career pathways for students of color, and to advocate for more and sustained federal and private funding for research on health inequities, said 2021 APA President Jennifer F. Kelly, PhD, ABPP.
“I believe the entire discipline has a role to play in achieving a society in which all its members can benefit from psychology’s best practices, research discoveries, and training practices,” Kelly said. “Until we achieve health equity, we will not be a free and just society.”
The apology does not account for every harm, and dramatic changes need to be made going forward, according to some critics. ABPsi President Donell L. Barnett, PhD, believes the apology stops short of fully admitting that APA represents and upholds just one of many potential versions of psychology: that is, a White Eurocentric one.
“Black psychology arose out of a recognition that psychology writ large is rooted in a particular cultural reality,” Barnett said. “The apology misses the mark because it doesn’t recognize that APA is the agent of a single version of psychology.” Given a world with immense inequities, needs, and cultural differences, “to the degree that APA is the arbiter of psychology around the world,” he added, “the implications of missing the mark are incalculable.”
