CYP3003

Community
Psychology
Nkechinyelum Chioneso, PhD
Florida A&M University
 COMMUNITY COALITION
5 COMPETENCIES/CHARACTERISTICS TO BE DEVELOPED

Effective
Organization Team Work
Communication

Professionalism Punctuality
 Lack of punctuality
Not dependable
SUPERVISORS’
EVALUATIONS: Lack of initiative

Top 7 Negative Lack of creativity

Comments Did not perform duties with excellence
Not helpful
Lack of commitment
FROM GHETTO TO COMMUNITY
(2001)

CHAPTER 3 - EPILOGUE
 THE US
CULTURAL CHAPTER 3
ENVIRONMENT
 • Examine the impact of the cultural
environment in the US on AiA
• Issues that influence the collective
affect the individual
Goals • Issues that impact individuals
determine the behavior of the
collective

• Psychological Taxation

• Ending Psychological Taxation

• 8 dichotomies within US society
 • America exacts a price, or tax, from AiA above the
monetary taxes levied by local, state, and federal
Psychological governments
Taxation: • Tax is the price of living in a society characterized by
Definition greed, racism, and discrimination

• Tax is in all areas of human activity:

• Health, education, enterprise and livelihood
• Politics, law and justice, interpersonal
relationships

• Taxed without representation

 Mass Media

• Limited perceptions of AiA

Psychological • Men portrayed as criminals not loving human beings
Taxation: • Entertainers not scholars are constantly highlighted

Examples Limited Access to Healthy Food

• Food deserts
• Low quality foods and higher prices in communities
with large AiA populations

Employment

• Discriminatory hiring practices

• Lower wages; fewer promotions
 Negative responses

Psychological • Apathy, self-condemnation, self-hatred

• Appeasement and surrender to dominant
Taxation: culture
Responses • Turning backs on AiA communities
• “Doing me; ” "Looking out for me/myself/I”

Positive responses

• Efforts to organize communities

and institutions focused on AiA needs and
interests
 • What is required?
• Focus and address the 8 dichotomies within
Ending US society
Psychological
Taxation • Dichotomy: Definition
• A division into two contradictory groups
• A contrast between two things that are or are
represented as being entirely different

• Dichotomy: Synonyms
• Contrast, difference, division, separation, split
 • 8 dichotomies within US society
Ending 1) Wealth vs. Income
Psychological 2) Production vs. Consumption
Taxation 3) Individualism vs. Collectivism
4) Race vs. Culture
5) Conservative vs. Liberal
6) Orature vs. Literature
7) Integration vs. Pluralism
8) Equality vs. Parity
 • Dominant culture promotes notions of the primacy of the
individual
Dichotomy #3: • Pull yourself up by the bootstraps
• The American dream
Individualism • Work hard as an individual
vs.
Collectivism • Dominant culture engages in “talk” of individual primacy
• Acts “collectively” to support members of the
dominant culture

• Talk of individual primacy becomes reality

• There is collective mechanism in place that works on
behalf of many EAs

• AiA preoccupied with individualism

• Neglect instruments of collectivism (i.e., institutions)
 • Race
• Refers to immutable (unchanging) physical
characteristics
Dichotomy #4: • What collective name should we call ourselves?
Race vs. Culture • African
• Black
• People of color
• People of African descent

• Human-made concept used to oppress groups of

people for another group’s individual and collective
gain

• Racism is a war without declaration

 • Culture
• Individual and collective behavior that
enables a group to survive and prosper
Dichotomy #4:
Race vs. Culture • Behavior dependent on quantity and
quality of information
• Dominant culture has greater access to
information

• Informational asymmetry enables those with

information to dominate/steal from those
who are at an informational disadvantage
 • Integration
• A major source of psychological taxation for AiA
Dichotomy #7:
Integration • Intellectual decline
vs. • Brown vs. Board of Education connected
to losing control of AiA education
Pluralism
• Disintegration of AiA communities and long-
standing institutions

• Falsely believed dominant cultural institutions

would assume responsibility for hopes and
aspirations of AiA
 Segregation
Dichotomy #7: • Blamed for AiA problems
Integration • Real issue is lack of power
vs.
Pluralism Integration
• Does not address the issue of power
• Encourages assimilation and acceptance of dominant
institutions
• Discourages maintaining or creating AiA institutions
• US is not an integrated society
• Those in positions of power oppose any ideology or
approach that might undermine their advantages
 • Pluralism refers to:
• Interaction and competition between groups or
cultures within a society
Dichotomy #7: • A desirable condition of harmony and parity
Integration between groups; an even playing field
vs. • Coexistence
Pluralism
• Balance needed in US society and the world
• No group should dominate others

• AiA must become competitive through

• Awareness, innovation, organized action
• Tireless pursuit of parity
 • The term “equality” is problematic
Dichotomy #8: • Equality does not exist in nature; trees,
flowers, etc.
Equality • Unique, but not inferior, just different
vs. • Cannot be forced, legislated, or brought
Parity (Equity) about by human actions

• Nature reflects diversity and balance which is

exhibited in pluralism and parity
• Parity is ideal relationship between cultures
in a pluralistic society
Dichotomy #8: Equality vs. Parity (Equity)
 • Parity
• The process of establishing realizable cultural
goals for a collective
Dichotomy #8:
• Baseline indicator of a society’s successes or
Equality failures
vs. • AiA should be represented proportionally in all
Parity (Equity) aspects of society

• Need to dismiss call for “equal opportunity”

• Replace it with mechanisms to ensure freedom of
opportunity and parity

• Equality is an unrealizable goal

 • What AiA must do
Dichotomy #8: • Macro-cultural level strategies required
Equality • Implement an African-centered knowledge system
vs.
Parity (Equity) • Develop institutional infrastructures that engage,
challenge, and negotiate with dominant cultural
institutions

• Create meaningful work and rewarding employment

opportunities

• Shape the environment to meet the interests of AiA

communities
 INSTITUTIONS
BUILD STRONG CHAPTER 4
COMMUNITIES
 How are the hopes and aspirations
of a group of people translated into
Key sustained human actions?
Questions
How is human behavior modulated
so that a people reap the rewards
and fruits of life?
How do we minimize those things
which would contribute to our
ineffectiveness or our demise?
 • Relationships or behavioral patterns of
importance in the life of a community or society
Institutions:
Definition • The rules of the game in a society

• The humanly devised constraints that shape

human interactions

• A higher order of organization concerned with

molding behavior
 Rules or conventions that reduce uncertainty

Can be formal or informal

Institutions:
Characteristics Scope can be narrow or broad

May be public, private, or philanthropic

May exist as local, state, national, or global entities

Free individual from certain thinking or tasks

Promotes self-determination (Kujichagulia)

 Reduce uncertainty by
Guide to human
providing structure to
interaction
everyday life
Institutions:
Functions
Define and limit the set Support the totality
of choices of (breadth and depth) of
individuals a community

Orders society and

facilitates
communication,
cooperation, and
coordination
 • Survival and prosperity of a people depends on:
Institutions: • Having essential information
What Makes
Them • Having a context for that information
Effective?
• Having a mechanism for conversion of
information into useful human knowledge

• Ability to apply knowledge as sustained

human action
 • Must be able to translate law into action
Institutions: • Enforcement function: possess mechanism to
What Makes maintain, change, or modify behaviors
Them
Effective? • Can use reward or punishment
• Religious institutions maintain some
believers through moral persuasion or
coercion
• Fear of going to hell
• The reward of going to heaven
 • Culture
Institutions • Sustained/maintained though institutions
&
Culture: • Mr. Vance defines “culture” as
• The embodiment of a group’s survival and
What is the prosperity goals
Relationship? • How ethnoracial groups coexist and establish
harmonious relationships

• Segregation kept AiA communities together

• While pursuing integration, should have
maintained AiA institutions
 • Institutions
Institutions • A cultural group’s primary mechanism for shaping
individual and collective behavior
&
Organizations: • Manage information

What is the • Produce knowledge

Difference?
• Apply knowledge for the betterment of the human
condition

• Institutions are like leagues

• Address the collective; define the rules of the game
• Example: Major League Baseball
 • Organizations
Institutions • Represent lower order of human interactions compared to
institutions
&
Organizations: • Organizations are like teams
• Address individuals
What is the • Teams operate within a set of rules with the goal to
win
Difference? • Example: Winners of the 2021 “World” Series, Atlanta
Braves

• AiA
• Have many organizations: Teams
• Have very few institutions: Leagues
• Example: Prior to integration, the Negro Baseball League
was a prominent institution
 • Suffering from information overload
• Prevents us from keeping track of and being responsive to
all information impacting AiA survival and prosperity
Institution-Building:
Dilemma for AiA • Collective consciousness
• Present in all distinct societies and cultures; informs us of
rules for living
• Prerequisite to collective human actions and shared
cultural goals
• Necessary for collective human action to be manifested
within institutions

• AiA lack collective consciousness

• Lost sight of importance of having AiA institutions
• Historical and contemporary impact of the Maafa
 • Deficiency in institutional infrastructure indicates
that AiA have forgotten:
• Collective consciousness: “I am because we
Institution-Building: are and because we are therefore I am”
Dilemma for AiA
• To engage in Sankofa: “Go back and retrieve
that which we have lost”

• Our ancestors and what they accomplished

and endured

• We are our brother’s/sister’s keeper

 • Not meeting one (1) or more of eight (8)
standards, relegates would-be "institutions"
Institution-Building: to the status of an "organization:"
Tasks for AiA
1. Engaged in knowledge production
• Does the entity convert information into forms that are
useful to AiA?
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)

2. Behavior surveyors
• What behaviors do AiA institutions need to regulate?
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Umoja (Unity) and Ujima
(Collective Work & Responsibility)
 3. Agents for coordination, cooperation, and communication
• What strategies do we need to implement to promote
trust between AiA?
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Ujima (Collective Work &
Institution-Building: Responsibility)
Tasks for AiA
4. Source for societal discipline and diligence
• Disciplined individuals are a product of their institutional
environments (family, church, school, etc.)
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Nia (Purpose)

5. Engaged in teaching and learning

• What do AiA institutions need to teach AiA?
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
 6. Repositories of knowledge and information
• What wisdom do AiA institutions need to preserve?
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Nia (Purpose) and Imani (Faith)
Institution-Building:
Tasks for AiA 7. Engaged in a watchdog function
• Who will monitor and negotiate with dominant
cultural institutions?
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Ujima (Collective Work &
Responsibility)

8. Catalyst for innovation

• What kinds of innovations do AiA institutions need to
promote?
• Nguzo Saba Principle: Kuumba (Creativity)
Institution-Building: Tasks for AiA

• Gain access to and manage information that is essential to us

• AiA possess unique body of knowledge that the world needs–knowledge system

• Individuals need to:

• Hand over certain responsibilities to the collective
• Allow institutions to handle important collective decisions in our lives

• Build AiA communities

• Community is the manifestation of our collective African consciousness, as it
has evolved in US
Institution-Building: Tasks for AiA

• Develop oneness or unity (Umoja)

• Everything is interrelated and connected
• The eight (8) areas of human activity are interdependent and mutually
supportive
• Institutions are interdependent and mutually supportive

• Develop common goals with common objectives revolving around a common and
evolving knowledge system
• AiA institutions will be ineffective and AiA individuals will fail to achieve
community without a common knowledge system
EPILOGUE