African-centered Psychology
Despite the fact that he does a wonderful job of desegregating the text with pictures of African-American adults and children, includes pictures and mention several well-known African-American psychologists from history’s past, and includes a brand new section of one chapter on the variable of culture, the entire book never discusses the notion of an African-centered psychology or an African cultural reality in the discipline. What makes this omission curious is the timeline of people and events in psychology that frames the beginning of the Myers text. It includes Francis Cecil Sumner, Kenneth and Mamie Clark (and their groundbreaking work on doll preference and racial self-identification that was used in the Brown 1954 Supreme Court decision), Inez Proser (the first African-American woman to re- ceive her Ph.D in America at the University of Cincinnati in 1933), and the fact that psychology differs across cultures. However, there is no mention of any cul- turally specific psychology or the plethora of literature on multiculturalism, that dominate much of the counseling landscape. Within these realms, you find exten- sive references to psychology’s true origins, yet those students being introduced to the discipline for the first time find no such mention or coverage in their intro- ductory coursework. This is but one of the many reasons this text is so necessary.
