Between the cup of principle and the lip of practice: ethnic minorities and American psychology, 1966-1980

By 1980, the previously held dichotomy of Black and White racial identity in America had yielded to a mosaic of red, yellow, brown, black, and white. During the 1960s and 1970s, identity, and thus psychological knowledge, were articulated and differentiated in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and class in unprecedented ways. In this article, the author contextualizes efforts to make mainstream American psychology more receptive to ethnic minorities between 1966 and 1980. Advocacy and activism by ethnic minority psychologists forced American mainstream psychology to yield a place at the table to non-White, non-European individuals. He emphasizes the recruitment and retention of ethnic minority graduate students and faculty, and concludes that many individual psychologists were important in forcing changes in these areas.