Toward moving ‘race-acting’ research into a global perspective

Abstract

This brief article lightly critiques the research of Burrell and colleagues that examines an innovative theory for understanding the low academic achievement scores of African-American adolescents compared to those of their White peers. It goes on to raise some hitherto muted emotive but attainable scholarly issues about cognitive repertoires and achievement dispositions of the Dark Continent – Africa – its race and Diaspora peoples. It forcefully muses over what and how African-American scholars can contribute to uplift “race-acting” and “acting White” research to a global Black scholarship platform, not in isolation but within scientific communities with the objective of enriching and extending global research trends with humanity’s experiences from Black peoples. This stance is premised on scientific psychology as a racialized discipline that has subverted and continues to exclude or trivialize the social historical experiences and psychological profiles of Black peoples, which are an obvious endowment of human knowledge. It is the onerous task of Black scholars in Africa and its Diaspora to transcend their awful history and fragmented perspectives to research and input, within leading-edge global scholarships, the timeless wisdom and ingenuities intrinsic in Africa’s heritages into global knowledge systems. The terrible circumstances of Black peoples must no longer be allowed to define them; rather they must be applied to define where they want to be in a globalized world. It is incumbent on Black researchers worldwide to evolve science-based actionable vistas of how to attain that desired, respectable end.