Africentric

Africentric Psychology

Connectedness is a primary tenet of the Africentric worldview. Contrary to the Western or Eurocentric perspective, which vales objectivity, the Africentric worldview recognizes the interconnectedness of the affective (feeling), cognitive (knowing), and behavioral (acting) domains. The African Self-Consciousness Scale is a measure that encompasses dimensions related to an individual's awareness of a collective sense of relationship to African people and resistance to forces of oppression. African self-consciousness is related to cultural and racial socialization among African Americans.

In the Africentric paradigm, the consequences of oppression manifest in the psyche of African people and are evident in behavior. The Africentric psychologist views cultural orientation as related to well-being. When African people adopt a foreign or Eurocentric worldview, maladaptive behaviors and psychopathology result. Thus, an Africentric framework explains the often-cited disparities between European Americans and African Americans in educational, health, or mental health outcomes as a consequence of oppression and detachment from the cultural source. Africentric psychologists and educators have designed culturally relevant interventions, such as youth rites of passage programs, to help counter the impact of racial oppression.

Challenges to Africentric Theory

One major challenge to Africentric theory is that within this framework, race is constructed as an essential characteristic. Africentric scholars have been critiqued for focusing on racial classification as deterministic rather than acknowledging the dynamic aspects of culture and the diversity of individual expressions of ethnicity. Some scholars of European classicism have challenged the veracity of some of the [Page 30]claims made within the revised analysis of African people in ancient civilizations throughout the African diaspora. Other critiques address some Africentric scholarship that makes arguably sexist or homophobic assertions about interpersonal relationships in an authentic African cultural context.

Conclusions

This entry offers a brief review of Africentric perspectives on knowledge production, meaning making, and behavior. Although Africentric theory has gained more attention in recent years, this intellectual tradition is evident historically throughout Black scholarship in the diaspora. Africentric theory in psychology provides a framework for understanding the context of human behavior liberated from Western cultural biases regarding mental health. An Africentric paradigm transforms the analysis of how cultural worldview affects micro- and macro-level outcomes.

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