In a recent article in the American Psychologist, Leoandra Rogers and colleagues argue that psychology’s adherence to postpositivist principles, which prioritize the scientific method as an ideology-free, neutral pursuit, has obscured the field’s complicity in upholding racial inequalities.
Put another way, the enforced norms and standards that guide researchers to produce science that is good—neutrality, generalizability, and falsifiability—may be sidelining the type of science that does good. The authors write:
“By asserting that the scientific method could ascertain objective truths that are neutral—and explicitly not ideological—while using this method to sanctify the ideology of white supremacy, racism was woven into the very fabric of how we do psychological science…without disrupting the norms of ‘good’ science, psychology will continue perpetuating harm.”
Although explicitly racist science—the kind that once provided incontrovertible “hard” evidence of a racial hierarchy—is no longer mainstream, Leoandra Rogers and colleagues propose that the same research norms and methodologies that originally tethered the field to white supremacy remain intact, under a guise of neutrality, and are enforced by a narrative about what is “good” science. To dismantle racism in psychological sciences, they argue that we must reimagine what is “good” science and critically acknowledge that no science can be neutral in a decidedly unequal society.
By questioning the narrative of “good” science, they propose three epistemic imperatives that could help dismantle these legacies: embracing humanizing methodologies, centering marginalized populations in research, and recognizing resistance as essential in contexts of oppression. Their work suggests that until psychology reconsiders its foundational assumptions, it will continue to perpetuate the very harms it seeks to address.
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I don’t know how I entered this maze of maths, office furniture and legal terms. All I remember is I erupted as a cry of terror which opened my eyes, and I saw a red world. I had to find food and run from predators. I was scared and sometimes would become enraged by another animals. It was all about finding food and the confused gropings of love making which at first felt like an illness I needed to understand. But then I got stronger and wiser and the world turned orange. I was becoming a successful forager and hunter and would play with my animal siblings and sought a mate with passion and interest for the first time. And then I was a successful breeder and the world turned yellow, and I would fight for my place at the top of the hierarchy and compete with all those of the same gender as me. And then when I was at the top of the hierarchy and leading the pack, I felt peace and joy, and my world turned green, and I melted into Mother Earth. My world was the happenings in the forest and I was a happening in the forest so everything was one. And then I had to sing for joy and my world turned turquoise, and songs filled the air and paintings filled the cave and words started to spring out of my mouth magically and spontaneously. These were the workings of the free animal spirits inside of me. And then when my brain begun to understand all these creative voices and songs and sounds and images of spirit all whispering over each other and the world became blue, as I began to understand what this magical animal was, which was me, and the thing inside of me which is above all clouds and beneath all seas. But then my brain started to try and act purposely and towards goals with all this insight, and made infinite mistakes that made the blue world go purple. And then I saw the sadness and the dark night, and heard the voices of the dead and the silent messages of the angels. I was lost in the spirit world and couldn’t remember the Great Mother of all things: I longed for her in my sleep and in my waking. And then everything went black. There were the white lines and the demonic multicoloured spider treading the webs of the mind. This is the era of spiritual vampires who dress like office furniture and take turn making bacon burn. A vampire army of architects, business executives and doctors take over woman kind in a sprawl of plastic wires and leather coffee. Then the sky cracked like an egg. Out of it came a golden sun which she threw out into the night. It filled the Universe with daylight, and it was God everywhere and nowhere. We called this an explosion of love.
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“to reimagine psychological science as a justice-making endeavor,” the psychologic industry would both need to stop functioning as a funnel into the scientific fraud based psychiatric industry … as well as end their “dirty little secret of the two original educated professions,” faustian systemic child abuse and rape covering up deal with the mainstream religions.
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