African/Black Psychology

Wendi S. Williams & Julie R. Ancis

African/Black psychology is a system of knowledge grounded in the perspectives of African-descent persons and designed to describe their personalities, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors. This system of knowledge is based on an African cosmology and corresponds to African conceptions of the social universe. Essentially, it is a science of exploring the lives of African-descent persons from a perspective that is centered on their experiences. Although African psychologists acknowledge the existence of an African/Black psychology derived from the development of early African civilizations in Egypt and Ethiopia, formal study and articulation of African psychological concepts, theories, and models have only recently begun to take shape. This formal development is marked by three pivotal moments in history: (1) the work of Francis Cecil Sumner, (2) the founding of the Association of Black Psychologists, and (3) Wade Nobles's publication on the philosophical basis of African psychology in 1986. In 1992 and 1996, Chancellor ...

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