Pyschology Today Apologizes for ‘Black Women Less Attractive’ Post
Earlier this month, the popular magazine Psychology Today
Satoshi Kanazawa
published an article by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa titled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” that was met, expectedly, with mass outrage. The article used data based on another study to make several claims such as “black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women” yet “subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others.”
After some attempted editing of the title, the magazine retracted the post from its website in its entirety. Kanazawa in turn is facing an investigation by the London School of Economics, where he is a professor, after a unanimous vote for his dismissal by the student union.
Contributing writers to Psychology Today moved quickly to do some damage control. Dr. Kaufman, in his blog for the magazine “Beautiful Minds,” wrote a post re-analyzing Kanazawa’s data.
Last week, a blog post about race and appearance by Satoshi Kanazawa was published–and promptly removed–from this site. We deeply apologize for the pain and offense that this post caused. Psychology Today‘s mission is to inform the public, not to provide a platform for inflammatory and offensive material. Psychology Today does not tolerate racism or prejudice of any sort.
The post was not approved by Psychology Today, but we take full responsibility for its publication on our site. We have taken measures to ensure that such an incident does not occur again. Again, we are deeply sorry for the hurt that this post caused.
The apology is really neither here nor there. The clearance by an editor to post it in the first place was wildly ignorant. There is a historical acceptance of disrespecting people of African descent, especially women. Of course such a “study” (flawed in innumerable ways) was published and posted only for the sake of sparking viewership, hits and news coverage. It generated all three. No retraction or removal changes this fact.
As they say, it is better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. Mission accomplished for Psychology Today.
The “psychology” behind the study and its posting is obvious. At the root of this discussion is the genuine hatred of Black people generally and Black women more specifically.
Mo’Kelly doesn’t usually refer to comments posted on articles, they are more anecdotal than indicative. This is the exception.
One of the first comments posted in response to the article highlighting the apology from Psychology Today was the one found below. Notice the hatred, notice the 29 “thumbs up” and 0 “thumbs down.” Notice the ZERO replies or rebuttals to disagree.
The comment may be anecdotal but the subsequent reverence for it is indicative of the pervasiveness of stereotypes and their effect on the lives of African-Americans everywhere. This is how we as a people are perceived. These perceptions have untold deleterious effects on our community.
Nene Leakes
It’s in moments like these we should be even more mindful of damage that public figures such as Nene Leakes and the rest of Reality TV incur.
To be clear, yes, there are many Black women which fit these stereotypes, the multitude do not.
We must be diligent in not feeding into the stereotypes personally and fighting them as a community more broadly.
Let’s ask ourselves…are we feeding or fighting our stereotypes?
