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05/26/2022

'The Way Things Were'

How the APA used history to make progress

When a large organization like the American Psychological Association (APA) takes a bold step—such as apologizing for the organization’s contributions to systemic racism, which it did last fall—the effort can require a lot of hands along the way.

Some of those hands belonged to historians. To help build a meaningful apology that was grounded in truth, APA decided to bring in a task force specializing in historical research.

“It was critical for us to do our research, so that we would understand how the field of psychology was used as a conduit to displace, dispossess, and in a lot of ways also exploit communities of color,” said APA Chief Diversity Officer Dr. Maysa Akbar. “There were opportunities we saw to really highlight this history.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.

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