Essay On Naim Akbar

The life and Times of Nai’m Akbar
By: Ahmed Samara Nai’m Akbar, previously known as Luther benjamin Weems Jr, was born on April 26, 1944 in Tallahasee, Florida. Like most of the southern United States at the time, Akbar's community was extremely segregated, and open, systematic, racism was still the cultural norm. His childhood was so segregated, that he never had any direct personal interaction with white people until he started college. Naim grew up in a very unique environment. Schools were still segregated, African Americans were still not treated as equals by the education system or American society in general, and especially in the American south racism was still rampant. However, Naim’s parents both had college degrees, and between
his parents, his aunt, and his grandparents (from both sides of his family) he grew up in a community where academics were valued above all else. They viewed education as a way for African Americans to regain their dignity, to begin to actually have influence on their surroundings. They valued it as an intentional contrast to the days in which slaves were not only This continued to influence his views and his careers throughout his high-school career, the focus on academics as well as his isolation and development in very uniquely African American environments helped him to develop academically, as a professor and as a scholar, and shaped his views of Afrocentrism compared to the overwhelmingly Eurocentric view of most other scholars, especially for the time period in which he grew up. With his family's focus on academia and strong high school career, he went on to attend the University of Michigan, where he majored in Psychology and earned his Bachelors degree in 1965. While a student, he also developed an interest in activism. He joined the “Black Action Movement” (BAM for short), which participated in protests and activism on campus, even instigating a strike at one point that lead to three weeks of class cancellations. It was his experiences here as an undergraduate that influenced the subject matter for a lot of his later work, his dissertation, his writings, and his speeches. A summary of the message that he learned and now works to share is described as “clear and simple, yet provocative and well grounded: Black people in America are "crazy." Not so much individually, but culturally. “ (www.naimakbar.com) What this means is that he developed a viewpoint on psychology that contrasted with the classic Eurocentric methodology of the time. Many early psychological models followed the classic ‘democratic’ view of psychology and mental health where the behavior of the majority was also what was considered healthy, and because Caucasian and European culture was so much more dominant, as it still is today, mental evaluations of African Americans, as well as any other minority were unfair. Anyone’s behaviour could be considered strange and healthy when viewed from a slant of a foreign culture that they were not a part of. He believed that psychology was fundamentally connected to culture, and that studies on mental illness should done in cultural contexts. It is because of this that he was considered by Essence Magazine to be [one of] “one of the world’s preeminent psychologists and a pioneer in the development of an African-centered approach in modern psychology.” http://www.naimakbar.com/naimakbar.php After finishing his undergraduate career he went on to complete a masters, and a doctorate in Clinical Psychology in 1967 and 1972 respectively.
In his doctoral dissertation, titled “"Power Themes among Negro and White Paranoid and non-Paranoid Schizophrenics”, he continued his exploration of African American Psychology. On his dissertation work Akbar stated that “My dissertation topic was a beginning effort to define the unique definitions of psychology and mental health for Black people… This early work began to raise some of the fundamental questions about the validity of European American psychology’s definitions of the mental health of African Americans. “ https://www.academia.edu/3046854/Im_Trying_To_Get_You_Free_Naim_Akbar_African_Psychology_and_the_Reconstruction_of_the_Collective_Black_Mind
Previously, psychology was always studied in the context of a very Eurocentric worldview.
There was a defined norm, the way that the majority behaved, and that was how every other healthy person was expected to act. Because the ‘majority’ behavior was formed from a completely Eurocentric viewpoint, the behavior of anyone from any other culture could easily be considered ‘deviant’. Akbar’s work was the beginning of “Black Psychology”, where the behavior of African Americans was considered in the context of African American culture. Without this context-view, any non-caucasian could arbitrarily and unfairly be considered mentally
ill. After graduating with his PhD, he joined the faculty of Morehouse college, one of the few black colleges in the US and quickly distinguished himself.
He taught Morehouse college's first course on Black psychology, and eventually expanded that class into an entire Black psychology program. This was the first Black Psychology program at Morehouse, and one of the first ones in the country overall. Much of what was covered in these courses expanded and built upon what he had learned during his graduate school career. There were fundamental differences in how people of different cultures viewed the world, and because there would always be a eurocentric slant to most mainstream psychological studies, he considered the creation of this black psychology program to be an essential part in the empowerment of African
Americans. Akbar eventually decided to leave Academia to work for the nation of Islam full time, as a Co-ordinator of the Office of Human Development at the main headquarters in Chicago. At this point, in keeping with precedent set by other Nation of Islam members of giving up their surnames which had previously been given to their enslaved ancestors by their owners, he also changed his name from Luther Benjamin Weems, to Luther X and eventually to “Naim Akbar” as he embraced more conventional Islam. While working at the Nation of Islam, Akbar “Outlined an economic plan that was rooted in the NOI’s philosophy of self-help and entrepreneurship.” His belief in entrepreneurship continued even after he left the Nation of Islam, when he started multiple businesses, a consulting firm called “Naim Akbar Consultants”, and a publishing company “Mind Productions”. He offered services such as public speaking, self help, and publishing his own books. During his academic career he published many papers through many different channels, but he had a number of books and lectures which were published through his own company. Lectures such as “Visions for Black men”, “The Centering of Black Culture”, and “The Deniggerization of the Black Mind”.