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The history of race and ethnicity in North America is long and complex. It has been fraught with racism and various forms of oppression—intellectual, social, and physical—and defies easy analysis. This article examines the history of race and ethnicity in the United States, and how it played out in the field of psychology. Although other articles in this issue examine the specific impact of racism and internal colonialism on racial and ethnic minorities, this article places these events within an international context, specifically the post-World War II era when oppressed peoples around the world sought liberation from colonial oppressors. The article suggests that the struggles and successes of racial and ethnic minority psychologists may provide the best opportunity for American psychology to connect with emerging indigenous psychologies in other parts of the world, which represent the future of psychology in a globalizing world.
The difficult and complex history of race in the United States and its more recent history in American psychology are exemplified in the following example. In 1970, Joseph L. White (1970/1972) became the first psychologist to use the term Black Psychology in print. His use of the term appeared in an article in Ebony magazine. In the article, he laid out some of the then critical issues facing the Black community and the problematic view of the Black community held by many American psychologists. In a poignant passage, he wrote,
Most psychologists take the liberal point of view which in essence states that black people are culturally deprived and psychologically maladjusted because the environment in which they were reared as children lacks the necessary early experiences to prepare them for excellence in school, appropriate sex role behavior, and, generally speaking, achievement within an Anglo middle-class frame of...