Resisting Racism and Sexism in Academic Psychology: A Personal/Political View

Abstract

The article discusses resistance to racism and sexism within academic psychology. Its contents are linked together by the chronology of my own experiences, presenting a personal/political view. Focusing upon Social Identity Theory in particular, I point out that even critical perspectives in the social psychology of prejudice and discrimination tend to neglect black people's experiences of racism and represent an impoverished approach to the social construction of `race'. I pay special attention to the culturally pervasive problem of new racism, and to psychology's commitment to a purportedly apolitical professional identity and value-free science. Both are implicated in academic psychology's lack of a clear commitment to anti-racism, as illustrated in my account of the British Psychological Society's handling of the call for an academic boycott of apartheid South Africa. I touch on various ways of moving forward to an anti-racist psychology in respect of theory, research and the institution of psychology. One possibility is to work within a version offeminist standpoint epistemology which seeks to re-vision knowledge by starting from the multiplicity and diversity of women's experiences and conditions of our lives.

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