ABSTRACT
I start by examining how the western academic establishment, particularly within the discipline of psychology, has historically construed the black subject in ways that have stereotyped and derogated black people, and so upheld white supremacist regimes. I argue that the reliance of both mainstream (white-dominated) and black psychology1 on the postEnlightenment philosophical assumption of the human subject as a rational, unitary and fixed entity is responsible for the narrow and simplified constructions of ‘the Negro’ and ‘the Black’. The subject of colonial and white-dominated psychological discourses concerning the African and the Negro are deconstructed, revealed to be not an objective scientific truth but rather a product of wider social conditions and the unequal power relations that have characterised white supremacist discourse and practice. I then examine the newer theorisations of identity developed by contemporary black American psychologists: theorisations that I argue have done much to redress psychological racism but that have been limited by their remaining within the empiricist paradigm.
