PSY 200 Readings in Black Psy (AFR)

Prerequisites: SOC/AFR 132 Race in America, HIS/AFR 165 Introduction to African American History, or permission of instructor.

The disciplines of Psychology and Psychiatry began with a strongly anti-African and anti-Black bias. These biases reinforced White justifications of both chattel African enslavement and the violently segregationist ("Jim Crow") system within the United States. The "White Supremacist" ideology which emerged remained the mainstay of the U.S. and several other "western" societies, well into the 20th century. This course offers students a clearer picture of the historical conditions in which Blacks were mired, while addressing how Black health professionals such as: Francis Sumner, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, Amos Wilson, and Francis Cress-Welsing, explained and confronted the mental health consequences of anti-Black thought upon Black people.