We are pleased to have our first guest post. In this
entry Peter Kinderman writes about the role of psychologists and makes a plea for social engagement.
Peter Kinderman
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| What would he think psychologists should be doing? Photo: Discover Black Heritage |
“On September 1st 1967, the Nobel
Prize-winning civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech entitled “The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement” to the American Psychological
Association. With eloquence and passion, Dr. King
championed the civil rights struggle and spoke about how people like you and me could
and should support the civil rights movement. This speech is particularly
relevant today.
“There are some things in our society, some things in our world, to
which we … must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We
must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We
must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry.
“We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take
necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust
ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of
physical violence. … There comes a time when one must take a stand that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular. But one must take it because it is
right…”
If there were a Martin Luther King for 2013, he or she
would call on us to speak out, to identify and to condemn those things that
should be condemned. We should refuse to tolerate the unacceptable and to act
accordingly. That modern Martin Luther King would turn to academics
and psychologists and call on us to analyze – using those particular skills and
perspectives that we possess – the psychological and social mechanisms that
sustain and maintain those unacceptable current realities, and similarly to use
our particular skills in psychological science to research social and
psychological mechanisms that could support positive change.
