Applicability of Western Psychology to African American Culture - Essay Example

Psychology Assumptions Associated With Western Psychology and Its Applicability to African American Culture Universal point of view by the westernpsychology on other cultures is discriminatory. It fails to understand values and culture of other people. This is brought about by the differences in race, ethnic orientation, age and economic status (Belgrave and Allison, 2009). In a society there are many different cultures and each culture has its own values. These values help in running the community. Failure to accept and understand ones value brings in conflict. To be precise there are values that affect other communities negatively. In this case the African Americans are affected negatively in that sharing of resources becomes difficult because of these differences. Discrimination among the African American can not be ignored. This is because among them there are people of different ethnic groups and stereotyping is common. In western psychology problems are addressed at individual level. They focus on addressing such issues at individual level rather than in a collective form. In African American culture this is not suitable as one should include others in addressing these problems. Individualistic nature is also found among the African Americans. These individualistic traits are value for individual confidentiality, competition and uniqueness. According to (Belgrave and Allison, 2009), for someone to offer better services to the African Americans you must convince them collectively but not as individuals. There is more power in convincing a group rather than an individual. Western psychology emphasizes more on prediction and control. For them time is an article of trade to be bought and sold (Akbar. 1991a). Time for them is vital to predict and control what they are doing. Emphasis on prediction and control has brought misunderstanding of cultures that do not exercise prediction and control. This in contrast among Africans where time is not very important and it only exists to fulfill the needs of the people. African Americans have been labeled as people with no orientation for time and future. In western psychology this is viewed as a negative trait. Arriving late for an African American is acceptable and there is no problem with that (Belgrave and Allison, 2009). The western psychology is valid to say that African Americans do not have a proper orientation towards prediction and control. Although they may take this negatively, proper prediction and control is necessary for personal and communal wellbeing. Too much emphasis on the same will look discriminatory to the African Americans. The western people assume that whatever they do is correct and they use themselves as point of reference or a standard. They assume what is right to them is right to everyone. Many scholars especially those of African origin have had a difficult time doing their research work. Their work is subject to the opinions of the whites. Although they may not know much, subjection to ones opinion is a show of insensitivity. Assumption that you are always right makes the other person feel illiterate and inferior (Burlew, 1992). 2. Assumptions Associated With Western Psychology and Its Applicability to Asian American Culture In western psychology health is seen as an individualistic well-being. In eastern psychology health is seen as a harmonious balance between different forces in the person and the society. Problems concerned with thinking, fears, emotions, anxieties and depressions are seen as a form of illness in western culture. Alleviation of these problems is treated with a variety of interventions aimed at curing the symptoms. This is a totally new thing in the eastern culture. These problems in eastern culture are not viewed as illness but as disharmony within the individual. Approach to treatment also differs. The western culture will want to look at each component and analyze it but in the eastern culture this is not so much applicable. Harmony between the self and the society is key thing. How problems are viewed in these two cultures does not bring a unanimous definition of what health and illness is. This may be very conflicting in terms of providing medical services as each has his own point of view. Not all medical services offered in the western world may be applicable in the eastern world and vice versa (Fernando and Keating, 2008). The western world views Asian American people as minorities. Portrayal to the rest of the world is that of a minority group whereas that of the whites superior. This was so during the immigration period into the United States of America. This gave birth to model minority stereotype, a name given to the Asian American community. A model minority is a high achieving Asian American. Those who do not fit in the model minority have a difficult time to match up with those in model minority group. The Asians were branded as a major obstacle towards political and social reforms at that time. Racial discrimination did not deter them from developing as a community. These positive developments led to exclusion of the Asian community from programs specifically formulated to assist Asian Americans. This did not deter them from achieving their goals. People are not happy with their tremendous developments and some are finding it hard to accommodate them (Zane and Lee, 1998). In western psychology they assume that a child has a right to challenge his/her parent. In Asian American culture a child is not allowed to challenge his/her parent. In western psychology this is viewed as violation of personal boundaries. The parent has no power or control over the child. In Asian American culture the parent has control and power, deciding what activities are good for the child. To them active participation in their child’s life is mandatory. The parents are demanding and have higher expectations of excellent academic performance. This is common in area of model minority. In both cases the children do not perform equally academically. The Asian American child performs better that the American child in school. According to Chen (2010), better academic performance is attributed to parent’s involvement in the child’s life. Other than education they also perform better in other spheres of life. 3. Cultural Values of Latino/a Americans The Latino/a originated from the Latin America and their groups maintain connections through ethnic, national roots and identities (Aponte, 2006). They comprise about 15.5 percent of the United States of America population. Latinos have strong family values known as familismo. The family is the main source of identity and protection against hard times in life. Trust is only bestowed to family and close friends. It is very difficult to trust someone who is not a family member or a close friend. A family in Latinos is made up of grandparents, aunts and cousins. It is usually an extended family. People who are not biologically related to the family may be considered to be part of the family. Decision making in the family is collective, an individual decision’s is subject to approval by the family members. Behaviors and decisions are geared towards pleasing the family (Carteret, 2008). Latinos also value respecto that is respect in terms of hierarchy, gender, economic status and others. They highly value respecto when interacting with others. They expect class differences between members of the society which is different from American culture where people have equal rights. Latinos value hierarchy in their families. The oldest male in the family holds the greatest power and they make most decisions for others in the family. They are the breadwinners of the family, and they are expected to provide everything and maintain integrity of the family. Females are expected to manifest respect and submission to their husbands. They are also expected to teach their children Latino culture and religion and help those in need. Fatalismo which means a strong belief in uncertainty is highly held by the Latinos. They take each day as it comes and nothing can be done to alter fate. In times of distress or happiness, Latinos show politeness and pleasantness also known as simpatia. They are more focused on building relationships by way of showing politeness and pleasantness (Carteret, 2008). What are the special features of Latino/a culture that affect parenting, child development and mental health? Parenting The mother is expected to teach the children culture and religion. This may be very cumbersome to the parent especially when she has other duties to attend. Child development A child in this culture is required to uphold respecto. It will be more confusing for the child when he/she hears of equal rights. Mental health The belief in fatalismo will affect the mental health of any member of this society. Some may believe that fate has destined someone to become mad and accessing medical treatment is futile. Treatment for such patients is also difficult as he or she expects the medical practitioner to follow those Latino cultural values. Why are these features of interest to multicultural psychologists? Cultural values are important in the running of societies. When they do not give an equal chance to every member, its effects are negative. For example, a patient seeking treatment may require the medical practitioner to observe all these cultural values. If the practitioner does not follow them, treating this patient is difficult. 4. Reasons why traditional individual psychology is not adequate to fully understand American Indian culture. Variation of environmental factors is not the only determinant of a specific human response, but also includes biological factors. From individual psychology, it is evident that psychological determinants are influenced by the environment within which an individual grows in. the specific character possessed by an individual therefore comes from responses to the prevailing environmental conditions. From the individual’s perspective, the interactions with the environment aim at compensating for negative effects of the environment, resign when overpowered by the environmental factors and some end up being frustrated ending up in overindulgence in compensating for adverse effects. The inadequacy of the theory is due to its concentration on an individual rather that the society at large. Lack of explanation for roles played by biological factors, especially contributed by the native Indians genetic pool is a limitation of the theory (Shepard, 1999). Individual psychology is a cognitive psychology based theory, which has inherent limitation in that the brain has its limitations too. Mental health perspectives explain that the social nature of human beings creates some desire to identity and belongingness and invest a lot of effort in ensuring that they achieve significance before fellow human beings. It is therefore correct to say that human beings strive to avoid inferiority and rejection. To support this theory, interpersonal theory states that human beings rely heavily on the apparent insignificance anxiety to build on their personal strengths aiming at reducing rejection as well as maintaining high self esteem. The environmental aspects of these two theories can be said to be vital driving forces that determine how responsive an individual becomes to social settings. It is inaccurate to generalize cognitive capabilities since the brain has some limited capability to cognition, which varies from an individual to the other. Individual psychology tackles or attempts to answer only one aspect of social psychology, leaving the other relevant aspects unexplained. The limited scope cannot answer questions of social psychology, which also entails social influence, cognitive, interpersonal psychology, descriptive psychology, social dissonance among other. Individual psychology theory suggests that human beings will adapt to the changes in the environment in order to maintain a good relationship with external factors. This fails to offer an explanation why the traditional American Indian community remained conservative for a long time. The community remained conservative despite drastic changes within the Americas, which definitely could have eliminated their traditional cultural practices. Multicultural psychology in context As far as multicultural psychology is concerned, the premise that human beings are similar can comfortably be used to form an acceptable inference on individual behavior. However, a link must be created to other theories to enhance acceptability of the conclusions. Stereotyping could be a big challenge to conclusions drawn, especially where a single theory is used to analyze multicultural psychology. Therefore, for a conclusive study on multicultural psychology, a wide array of psychological theories must be used to enhance accuracy in drawing conclusions. Paradigm Case Formulations (PCF) can be made when using such limited resources to map a wide topic. However, for all such usages, the underlying perceptions must be availed for scrutiny by the information users to assess congruence with their beliefs before placing reliance on the work (Ossorio, 1982). 5. African American Women Participation in Feminism Movement African American women are women who have the American and African cultures. They have therefore embraced these two cultures in their lives. These women have therefore formed feminism movements in order to fight for their rights as well end racism. They therefore face a lot of challenges in their participation in feminist movements. Challenges One of the major challenges that they face is differences in culture, religion .the African American women incorporate both the American and African culture and this makes it hard for them to participate fully in the movement. There is also the division of wealth and power. These women may have common interest but the issue of differences in wealth and powers tends to hinder their participation. This is because some are poor while others are filthy rich. Their contributions therefore, especially in terms of money, differ and once there is no common contribution, the togetherness also weakens leading to reduced participation. Struggle for power is another problem facing this movement. it is true that each one of them wants powers of running the movement but since only a few of them can be given leadership positions, those who are left out happen to participate very passively towards the movement Another challenge is their focus. The African American women feminist movements mainly focus on the middle class women. This therefore seems to discriminate the low income earners and the very rich hence there is no oneness in their activities furthermore there are the working class women and the poor housewives. In reality, these two groups can really mix as one feels superior to the other (Marcus, 2002). The main aim of these movements is to end racism and injustices among themselves. Unfortunately, these are the leading human vices in the modern society. To fight them is therefore very difficult as these women are powerless. Women also face the challenge of gender discrimination. Gender discrimination is also evident in the African American culture. it therefore goes without saying that African American women feminism movements must face a lot of opposition from men. Connection of these issues to the differences between African American culture and the dominant U.S culture Issues discussed above are as a result of differences between the African American culture and the dominant U.S culture. For example, some of them do not want to be considered Africans and hence do not participate in the African American movements. They therefore isolate themselves since they feel as if they do not fit in either group (Macdonald, 2010). On the other hand, wider U.S culture dominates and perceives the African American feminism movement group as inferior. This makes this group to have low self esteem thus lowering their collective participation. The U.S culture is so much westernized that they rarely mix with the African Americans. Conclusion In conclusion, it is evident that the African American participation in feminism movements’ movement is mainly hindered by cultural differences between the African American culture and the dominant U.S culture. The African American feminism movement experiences discrimination from the dominant U.S culture. Therefore, if the two groups can unite and end all forms of racism, injustices struggle for wealth and power, then the African American participation in feminism movements can increased References Akbar N., (1991a). The Evolution of Human Psychology for African Americans. In R. Jones (Ed.), Black Psychology (pp.99-123). Berkeley, CA: Cobb & Henry. Aponte E. D., (2006). Handbook of Latina/o Theologies, Chalice Press. Belgrave, F. Z. & Allison, K. W., (2009). African American Psychology: From Africa to America SAGE Publications London United Kingdom Burlew, K. H. (1992). African American psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice, SAGE. Carteret, M. (2008). Cultural Values of Latino Patients & Families Dimensions of Culture. Retrieved on 24th September 2010 http://dimensionsofculture.com Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today. (2010), Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today. Volume 1 ABC-CLIO: Yoo. Fernando, S. & Keating, F. (2008) Mental health in a multi-ethnic society: A Multidisciplinary Handbook (Ed. 2), Taylor & Francis. Lee, L. C. & Zane, N. W. S. (1998). Handbook of Asian American Psychology (Ed. 2), SAGE. Macdonald R. H., (2010). African American culture, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Marcus J. M., (2002). Effects of racism, Washington D.C: Harvard University Press Ossorio P. G., (1982). “A Multicultural Psychology”, Descriptive Psychology, 3(1):13-44. Retrieved form: http://www.sdp.org/sdp/papers/Multi%20Cultural%20Psych.pdf Shepard K., (1999). The ecological Indian: myth and history, New York: NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc Read More