Toward moving ‘race-acting’ research into a global perspective

Abstract

This brief article lightly critiques the research of Burrell and colleagues that examines an innovative theory for understanding the low academic achievement scores of African-American adolescents compared to those of their White peers. It goes on to raise some hitherto muted emotive but attainable scholarly issues about cognitive repertoires and achievement dispositions of the Dark Continent – Africa – its race and Diaspora peoples. It forcefully muses over what and how African-American scholars can contribute to uplift “race-acting” and “acting White” research to a global Black scholarship platform, not in isolation but within scientific communities with the objective of enriching and extending global research trends with humanity’s experiences from Black peoples. This stance is premised on scientific psychology as a racialized discipline that has subverted and continues to exclude or trivialize the social historical experiences and psychological profiles of Black peoples, which are an obvious endowment of human knowledge. It is the onerous task of Black scholars in Africa and its Diaspora to transcend their awful history and fragmented perspectives to research and input, within leading-edge global scholarships, the timeless wisdom and ingenuities intrinsic in Africa’s heritages into global knowledge systems. The terrible circumstances of Black peoples must no longer be allowed to define them; rather they must be applied to define where they want to be in a globalized world. It is incumbent on Black researchers worldwide to evolve science-based actionable vistas of how to attain that desired, respectable end.

Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape

“…The author understands there is an incomprehensibly high level of complexity to the human and social experience. The author also understands there are many places where language, ethnicity, and nationality are the primary means of categorizing people instead of race (Nsamenang, 2013;Okonofua, 2013). However, when situations relate to racial identity, race becomes a more important part of one's identity, which justifies the existence of this and other theories that focus primarily on race (Benjamin, Choi, & Strickland, 2010;Shelton & Sellers, 2000).…”

Identity and acculturation: The case for Africa

“…Their primary argument is that personal values, aspirations, and goals, as well as relationships with others and the roles individuals fulfil; would have a major influence on the extent to which individuals adopt another culture into their own . In addition, African scholars (Adams, 2014;Nsamenang, 2010;Nsamenang, 2013;Serpell, 2002) have argued for the continued need to include in particular how context specific aspects of socialisation would inform identity development from an African perspective . Taken together, this would have consequences not only for the acculturation outcomes, but also people's psychological well-being and social functioning (Adams & Van de Vijver, 2015) .…”

“…Secondly, the diversity of many African countries does not allow for the unidimensional model of acculturation because very few African countries have a single dominant local culture (Nsamenang & Dawes, 1998) . While one cannot deny the impact of the Western culture, either through globalisation or colonisation (Nsamenang, 2013); studies of acculturation would need to consider incorporating the contextual diversity created by multiple interacting cultures . Thirdly, applications of the unidimensional model have focused on social aspects, which, when viewed from an identity perspective, introduces an emphasis on social identity and an underrating of interpersonal and personal aspects of identity .…”