(This post was co-authored with Almas Talib)

Over the last ten years, many British universities have increased their efforts to attract Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students. But seduced by the idea that fair access to higher education would automatically translate into equal opportunities, only some institutions have followed-up on their BME students’ progression rates and academic success. The limited data available indicate, however, that many BME students have to fight much harder than their white peers for sustained academic and personal growth upon entering university.

While hideous instances of blatant racism still contribute to this circumstance, they are unlikely to solely account for it. Even in (allegedly) post-racial educational environments that strongly endorse race equality policies, BME students tend to report feelings of marginalisation and isolation. Although these feelings occasionally reflect the experience of being a minority member (which often comes with noticing a lack of BME peers and lecturers in one’s courses), they can be further strengthened by the exposure to a university curriculum that is entrenched in whiteness.

Common symptoms of white curricula are courses that primarily (if not exclusively) discuss the ideas of white thinkers, reading lists that ‘overlook’ the contributions of BME academics, the use of depictions of humans (e.g., drawings, photographs etc.) that are limited to white bodies, and the delivery of race-sensitive teaching as ‘optional’. To highlight the fact that racially diverse voices, histories, narratives, and displays tend to remain missing from British universities, students from the University College London previously launched the ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ campaign.

The campaign demands the revision of predominantly white curricula with the ultimate goal of dismantling the master’s house. Though it does not rest on the assumption that BME students are unable to learn from writers or thinkers who transcend their own racial or cultural backgrounds (as occasionally implied by those critical of the campaign), it does call out British universities for giving the impression that the successful pursuit of knowledge is primarily the domain of white men. So, should this discipline-independent campaign also inform the teaching of psychology?

Especially if your initial response to this question is ‘but all the important psychologists are white men’ the decisive answer is yes. As any psychologist will be well aware, the human mind can be incredibly skilled at hiding its very own blind spots and at rationalising the status quo. Equipped with this knowledge, however, psychologists should be in a great position to get over their own ignorance and/or defensiveness when it comes to white curricula and, subsequently, strive to adequately present the racial diversity of their discipline when teaching about it.

Many online resources provide help with preparing race-aware lectures. Dedicated race equality toolkits or inclusive knowledge databases are at hand to challenge ‘pale, male, and stale curricula’. Additionally, various professional bodies list reading recommendations on their webpages to facilitate race-conscious teaching. Last but not least, there exist numerous journals and books in psychology that are published with the specific purpose of highlighting racial diversity in the field. Together, these resources provide ample opportunity to discover outstanding psychologists who are of racially diverse backgrounds, work with racially diverse samples, and/or address race-related topics. Why not invite some of these colleagues to our classrooms, if not in person then at least by using their writings or video footage?

But to avoid mere tokenistic mentions of race, lecturers in psychology must also clearly communicate why the issue of diversity is of particular disciplinary relevance. Though the field has always striven to establish itself as an objective science, one must not forget that those who have shaped and maintained it lived (and continue to live) in deeply racialized societies themselves. In consequence, the pursuit of an ‘objective truth’ has frequently been the pursuit of a truth deemed relevant (and worthy of financial support) by white ‘Westerners’. Thus, to overcome the discipline’s inherent racialized position and ensure its development towards a less limited notion of objectivity, the inclusion and amplification of BME voices is an urgent necessity.

One remaining sign of disciplinary bias, for example, is the widespread assumption that many psychological constructs can be studied without considering their geopolitical and historic contexts. The unwarranted abstraction of psychological findings, however, can easily pave the way for their inadvertent abuse. Above all, de-contextualized studies can come to imply the existence of fixed and essential racial categories. Take, for instance, the widespread notion that ‘Easterners’ are more collectivistic than ‘Westerners’. A quick glimpse into historical context could reveal the fluidity of this observation: In the post-Mao era the Chinese state (whose citizens are often studied as ‘typical Easterners’) deliberately revived Confucianism (i.e., a philosophy linked to collectivism) in a response to ‘Western’ cultural and economic hegemony.

Unaware of these and similar contextual circumstances, however, many students – and even some lecturers – tend to simply speculate about the possible origins of cross-cultural differences. Whenever such speculations settle on assumptions of inexplicable racial, or inert biological, differences between large groups of people, the engagement with psychological research can easily turn into a pseudoscientific activity that is much more likely to perpetuate racial prejudice than evidence-based insight. In fact, de-contextualization in psychology usually erases the histories, views, and experiences of those who hold marginalised identities (e.g., people of colour who can rarely afford the same level of context-blindness than most white people). So without proper contextualization, even the consideration of non-white samples or ‘non-Western’ cultures by white ‘Western’ researchers risks to be inherently reductionist and to promote well-known ethnocentric biases (such as widespread Orientalist ideas of the ‘East’).

To sum up, there is little doubt that the main purpose of higher education in psychology (and beyond) lies in overcoming students’ mere intuitions about the world around them. But many lecturers in psychology still rely on their own biased intuitions and that of the field as a whole, when planning and delivering their courses. This approach often lacks the effort to actively diversify teaching in psychology and results in curricula that are incomplete (at best) or willingly racially biased (at worst). Such colour-blind teaching simply fails to resist a racialized understanding of human psychology and remains a long way from capturing the human experience in a holistic manner.

So why not take the responsible step towards asking ourselves and our students, what are we still missing in our curricula?

Recommended Readings:

Chakkarath, P. (2010). Stereotypes in social psychology: The “West-East “differentiation as a reflection of western traditions of thought. Psychological Studies, 55, 18-25.

Gjerde, P. F. (2004). Culture, power, and experience: Toward a person-centered cultural psychology. Human Development, 47, 138-157.

Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., Mendoza‐Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L., & Keltner, D. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor. Psychological Review, 119, 546–572.

Mills, C. W. (1997). The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Okazaki, S., David, E. J. R., & Abelmann, N. (2008). Colonialism and psychology of culture. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 90-106.

Parameswaran, G. (2014). Are evolutionary psychology assumptions about sex and mating behaviors valid? A historical and cross-cultural exploration. Dialectical Anthropology, 38, 353-373.

Salter, P., & Adams, G. (2013). Toward a critical race psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7, 781-793.