Cannot be unseen

I'm studying Abnormal Psychology now.

It's been a while since I touched psychology.

And I'm shocked.


The textbook... is so subtly racist.


I don't know why I didn't realise this earlier.

Maybe back then I was not thinking like a sociologist.


For example.

To make themselves seem more multi-cultural, the authors of the textbook include pictures of people from all sorts of races.

This is a good thing.

But which races do you think end up portraying the negative examples?

Not the whites of course.

This picture above is nice. Racial minorities in America enjoying a meal together. They are smiling and laughing together. It looks so positive.

If not for the subtext that points to this picture as an example of substance use.

Are you kidding me? This is the best shot you got for the chapter on alcoholism?

Even when whites are used to highlight things like aging, it is done in a way that makes it seem like it is not that much a bad thing. The subtext makes all the difference.

"Studying people as part of a group sometimes masks individual differences."

I wonder what individual differences they are talking about. I'm pretty sure it's not an issue of height or gender, so... what could it possibly be?


And of course most obviously... Which race do you think the therapist will be in the book?

This worries me greatly.

Most of our psychology knowledge comes from America, and if it's so inherently racist, I'm worried about how students of psychology will see the world.

We're not students of psychology... We're students of American Psychology.