Racialized violence in the lives of Black people: Illustrations from Haiti (Ayiti) and the United States

Notwithstanding the cessation of the transatlantic slave trade in the 19th century and the end of "classical" colonization in African and Caribbean nations in the last century, racialized violence persists and continues to adversely impact the lives of African-descended people throughout the world. In this article, racialized violence involving Black people refers to physical acts and structural processes that prove injurious or deadly to Black people as Black people. The structural manifestations of racialized violence include unjust laws and normative practices that constrain the fulfillment of Black people's basic needs (like safety) and diminish their pursuit of liberation from persistent oppression. Using Nicolas's systemic and long-standing work in Haiti (Ayiti) as an illustration, we describe how the objectives of ending Black racialized violence and achieving genuine liberation from racism are integral to Black psychological health. Highlighting how racialized violence "works" in maintaining societal racism over the course of history in 2 settings-Ayiti and the United States, we urge psychologists worldwide to improve their practices with Black people by (a) instituting (new) norms that unsilence Black voices in treatment and research, (b) (re)committing to a process of peace promotion that forcefully disrupt the systemic perpetuation of racism, and (c) advancing an agenda of every-day activism aimed at increasing the health and life chances of Black people within and across the diaspora

Decolonization and liberation psychology: The case of psychology in South Africa

This chapter focuses on psychology in South Africa as a discipline and profession embedded in a history of colonialism and apartheid. It a describes South African psychology as a site of epistemological contestation shaped by historical racial identities and relations of power and asserts that liberation psychology is central to the contribution of the profession to eliminating human rights violations and fostering well-being. National student protests in 2015–2016 called for the “decolonization” of the curriculum, bringing into sharp focus the decades-long debate about the relevance of psychology and the need for transformation. While the focus is psychology in South Africa, the chapter broadens the discussion of decolonizing the field to other nations plagued by histories of racial oppression such as Australia and the United States. Changes in the decolonizing process are not without their challenges, yet in a field of study that is one of the most popular among students, a cogent move toward decolonizing the psychology curriculum entails the invention of new voices and theories as well as liberation psychology practices that center squarely on the needs for equity, violence prevention, and social justice

On Pan-Africanism, Feminism, and Psychotherapy: The Perspectives of Three Black Scholar-Practitioners from the U.S., Uganda, and St. Kitts/U.S

Three African-descended psychologists discuss the case of a psychotherapy dyad in which the first author, a U.S. national, and a Caribbean student who had immigrated to the U.S. served respectively as therapist and client. We discuss the relevance of Helms’ racial identity development theory to the cultivation of psychological health among African-descended women, proposing that this form of health is intimately tied to our association with other African-descended people. With particular focus on the client’s disclosures about certain groups of Black people in stereotypical ways, what we term “othering by the other,” we offer a conceptualization that knits together issues of personal vulnerability, the reproduction of structural violence, and racial identity development. We conclude by presenting our views on the process and outcome of the therapeutic case and the significance of the theory to addressing the violence that continues to disrupt the lives of Black men and women around the world

A study of Ugandan children’s perspectives on peace, conflict, and peace-building: A liberation psychology approach

Bulhan (2015) urged psychologists to advance their research and practice by attending to metacolonialism, a structural phenomenon built on a history of violence and oppression that assaults all manner of individual, community, and societal well-being. In line with this urging, a primarily Ugandan team of researchers conducted a study of primary schoolchildren’s perspectives on conflict, peace, and peace-building. In the original study, which is briefly reviewed in this manuscript, the children were drawn from 2 Ugandan schools, one located in the northern region and the other in the central region. At each stage of the research process, the team members sought to recognize and resist the reproduction of metacolonialism while move toward more emancipatory practices. In this theoretical article, we explain how we applied a liberation psychological approach to the design, conduct, and analysis of the study. We also show how the findings of the study contribute to our ongoing work in fostering structural changes in one of the schools, its surrounding region, and the nation as a whole