Race and Relevance: A Content Analysis of the South African Journal of Psychology

Abstract

All 478 papers which were published in the South African Journal of Psychology between 1970 and 1995 were content analysed to determine changing ways in which race issues have been dealt with in the Journal.1 It is argued that the discipline of psychology may have played a role in perpetuating racism under the apartheid regime by inaction, by not speaking out. To capture this distinction between ‘speaking out’ and ‘not speaking out’ we distinguished between papers which consider race issues in a value-neutral scientific manner and those which consider race issues in a critical, politicised manner. The results show that the lowest proportion of papers dealing with race occur during the early 1980s, and that in contrast to the mostly ‘scientific’ considerations of race in the 1970s, from the late 1980s there has been a steady increase in ‘political’ papers. These categories of race were also related to the type of methodology which the papers employed, and the field of psychology which was being investigated. The results suggest that the content of the Journal articles has not been independent of ideological forces in South African psychology. We conclude by discussing some of the warrants which may have justified the psychological practices in this country which ignored the profound psychological effects of racism and apartheid.