Psychology Today Apologizes for 'Black Women Less Attractive' Post

Psychology Today, an academic journal that examines emerging thought and literature in the field of psychology, published on its website blog an article with this title earlier this month. This is another demonstration of the importance of being ever vigilant in confronting assaults on the human dignity of Africans and African Americans. It is notions such as this that serve to justify thee subjugation of their sociological standing in society.

Satoshi Kanazawa, a Japanese psychologist and controversial researcher, wrote the article that was a purported study on anatomical beauty traits, originally entitled, “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” After a swift and quick public outcry, the title of the article was changed to, “Why Are Black Women Rated Less Attractive Than Other Women, While Black Men Rated More Attractive Than Other Men?” When you start manipulating the title of the study, you kinda know the manipulation doesn’t stop there.

Psychology Today’s website finally pulled the article down (after less than a week) but the public discourse doesn’t end there. (Editor’s note: The website buzzfeed.com captured the article before it was taken down and you can click here to read the original.)

While we can (and will) talk about this as being yet another opportunity to assault the self-esteem and dignity of black women directly, and the intelligence and sensibilities of the public, we can’t address this without addressing the anti-intellectualism being presented as intellectualism and faux science being presented as real science.

Moreover, Kaufman noted that "the majority of [Kanazawa's] data were based on the ratings of attractiveness of the participants when they were teenagers." When the data was stratified based on age, he concluded that "as adults, Black Women in North America are not rated less attractive by interviewers of the Add health study."

In another post on magazine's website, Dr. Stanton Peele leveled his criticism at the field of evolutionary psychology as a whole.

[T]he logic underlying [Kanazawa's] racism is exactly that which drives the field -- i.e., there are biological imperatives that determine social behavior, attitudes, and undeniable human reality... [But] the only inevitabilities are (a) in Kanazwa's head and (b) ev psych's fantasy version of the human species as the end result of a deterministic evolutionary process that makes people think and act in the ways they say people must -- that is, according to their own preferred prejudices (like Kanazawa's ideal woman -- who is NOT African-American!).

However, many were still waiting for a direct response from the magazine, who, according to Stanton, "is probably the most popular PT blogger." Considering the level of outrage, the apology was some time coming. Kaja Perina, the Editor-in-Chief, issued the following statement on Friday:

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.

However, there was no word on whether the magazine will continue to publish articles by Kanazawa. He has not published on entry on his blog since the one removed, although there is no indication that the blog will be terminated.


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