598038

research-article2015
JBPXXX10.1177/0095798415598038Journal of Black PsychologyNobles

The Hilliard-Jones Forum for African-Centered Psychology

Journal of Black Psychology
2015, Vol. 41(5) 399414
From Black Psychology The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
to Sakhu Djaer: [Link]/[Link]
DOI: 10.1177/0095798415598038
Implications for the [Link]

Further Development
of a Pan African Black
Psychology

Wade W. Nobles1

Abstract
This article traces the historical evolution of African (Black) psychology
in the United States and outlines the main components of an African-
centered psychology. The article concludes with a call for the formation
of Pan African psychology founded on the notion of Spirit or Sakhu and an
invitation for African (Black) psychologists to seize the global opportunity
to informally and/or where advantageous formally establish a Pan African
(Black) Psychology African World Federation Network.

Keywords
African-centered psychology, African psychology, African self-consciousness,
Afrocentricity, spiritual/spirituality

The Advent of Black Psychology

The Association of Black Psychology was born in the social, cultural, and
political vortex of the civil rights and Black power movements occurring in the
United States. The unending struggle of Black people from captivity, kidnap-
ping from Africa to captivity and enslavement in early America to segregation,

1Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture, Oakland, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Wade W. Nobles, Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture, 1012
Linden Street, Oakland, CA 94607, USA.
Email: [Link]@[Link]
400 Journal of Black Psychology 41(5)

exploitation, and discrimination in contemporary times came to a head in the

1960s with the assassination of our civil rights leaders like Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, and Fred Hampton. Even though
there were two or three early Black psychologists; that is, Francis Cecil
Sumner in 1917 and Inez Beverly Prosser in 1933, Robert Williams (2008)
notes that with the exception of Kenneth Clark and Martin Jenkins, Black
psychologists were virtually unknown prior to 1968. At that time African
American students and professional psychologists found the Association of
Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in San Francisco in 1968. The ABPsi was
formed as a national organization free and independent of the American
Psychological Association. In forming themselves, these Black psychologists
who held positions in various academic, public, industrial, and governmental
programs pledged themselves to the realization that they were Black people
first and psychologists second. These men and women charged the American
Psychological Association with condoning the White racist character of
American society and failing to provide models and programs conducive to
the solving of African American problems stemming from the oppressive
effects of American racism. It is extremely important to point out and high-
light that we declared the primacy and importance of our Blackness over our
status as psychologists.
The ABPsi was thus formed to utilize the skills of Black Psychologists to
benefit the Black community. Specifically, the raison detre of the Association
was to address the significant social problems affecting the Black community
and to positively impact on the mental health of the national Black commu-
nity through planning, programs, services, training, and advocacy. In its orig-
ination, the objectives of ABPsi were to (a) organize our skills and abilities to
influence necessary change and (b) address the significant social problems
affecting the Black community and other segments of the population whose
needs society has not fulfilled (B. H. Williams, 1997).
For the accuracy of the historical record, it is important to acknowledge
that at the birthing of the ABPsi, we formed an ABPsi, but had yet to create
the discipline and practice of a Black psychology. During the next two
decades, several Black psychologists, for example, King, Dixon, and Nobles
(1976); Akbar (1984, 1990); Azibo, (1989); Hilliard (1986); Nobles
(1972,1986a, 1986b, 1997); Myers (1988); Kambon (1992); Wilson (1993);
Grills and Rowe (1996), joined in the excavation of African ideas as ground-
ing for the reemergence and advent of the discipline of Black psychology.
Due to the assault on African peoples humanity and the depopulation of
the continent resulting from the savage system of both Arab and European
slave trade, African intellectual developmental trajectory was derailed and
African people and our indigenous ideas were disconnected and shattered.
Nobles 401

This has resulted in our not being able to be informed by and benefit from an
ongoing intellectual and cultural exchange. Nevertheless, similar diggings
were being conducted by continental psychologists (Kruger, 1988; Mphahlele,
1987; Owuso-Bempah & Howitt, 1995), including the importance of indige-
nous psychologies (Nsamenang, 2006).
In 1972, Dr. Reginald Jones published Black Psychology as the first col-
lection of the thoughts and theories of Black psychologists in the United
States. In that publication, Nobles (1972) introduced the notion of African
philosophy and African psychology as fundamental to the burgeoning field of
Black psychology. The beginning of a Black psychology represents, in my
opinion, a scientific revolution in the intellectual universe of humanitys
understanding of human functioning.

Psychology in Africa
The importance of Black Psychologists from around the world meeting at the
30th International Congress of Psychologists in Capetown, South Africa in
2012, reconvening at the ABPsi meeting in New Orleans in 2013, and then
again at the 1st International Congress of the Forum of African Psychology in
2014, is that we, as members of the worldwide African family, had an oppor-
tunity to reconnect the scattering of Africas children and to consider the ques-
tion of psychology in Africa. This has become an ongoing discussion relative
to healing the mind of the African world. In so doing, we can help heal all
humanity. The charge of the Forum of African Psychology, rightly so, was to
bring together leading African-centered scholars, prominent academics, pro-
fessional psychologists, and traditional spirit practitioners1 (healers) from
throughout the African world and to continue the task of creating a Pan African
Black Psychology that will not only heal the damage of historical colonialism,
enslavement, political exploitation, and westernization but will also serve to
guide African people into the next millennium. There is a need for African-
centered psychology that responds to the needs of African communities.
We, who call ourselves psychologists, must refigure psychology to reflect
the realities of Africa and her children worldwide. There should be agreement
among Black African psychologists to use African epistemological reflections2
and subsequent skill sets to meet the challenges of our time in every context
and to engage in policy and program development wherever African people
exist.
We, therefore, should not be just talking about psychology in Africa. To
simply bring Western psychology to Africa is to be complicit in the mental
brainwashing and psychic terrorism (Nobles, 2015) of Africa and the adop-
tion of the very tool and theories that have been used to demean, defame,
402 Journal of Black Psychology 41(5)

debilitate, and damage us. In effect to merely advance Western psychology

into Africa would be akin to uncritically drinking poison as if it were medi-
cine to heal and revive ourselves. The discipline and practice designed to
assist in the healing and management of the human affairs of African people
must be uncompromisingly African centered and grounded in the philosophy
and wisdom traditions of African people.
The paradox of our time is that to simply apply Western psychology to
Africa (both continental and diasporan) and her children is to turn a blind eye
to the role Western psychology has played in the dehumanization of African
people and adopt that which is logically and spiritually unacceptable. Not
only is the continued blind importation and application of Western thought
unacceptable to those of us responsible for understanding African human
functioning, it is also counterindicative and self-contradictory to being a self-
defining, self-sustaining, self-affirming healthy, and whole people.
All human communities, especially African prior to invasion and coloni-
zation, used their own intrinsic essence (spiritness), epistemic reflections,
cultural appreciations, and apperceptions about reality to inform their know-
ing framework and intellectual mindset from which, in turn, they recognized
and recorded events and experiences as well as made sense of the world. To
be clear, what is needed, in my opinion, is the continued creation of a Pan
African Black Psychology that is the cocreation of Black Psychologists
throughout the African world.

The Western Grand Narrative

Narratives are understood as being part of a constructive process in which
humans interpret and reinterpret their experiences according to narrative
structures (Sarbin, 1986). A so-called grand narrative reflects deep intrinsic
beliefs as both descriptive and explanative discourse. Accordingly, humans
use their epistemic reflections, cultural appreciations, and apperceptions about
reality to inform their knowing framework and intellectual mindset to further
recognize and record the making of sense of events and experiences as a grand
narrative. Historically, the Western Grand Narrative has been grounded in
logical positivism, biological determination, social Darwinism, reductionism,
and more recently, postmodernism. In these intellectual and philosophical
frameworks, the Western Grand Narrative has supported a mindset that is
grounded in ideations that privilege difference, aristocracy, elitism, classism,
racism, sexism, genetic inferiority, caste attribution and value, empiricism,
and rationalism as the only way to know and understand. The Western Grand
Narrative has shaped and influenced what we see and accept as normal.
Unfortunately, in a very real sense, a direct consequence of the Western Grand
Nobles 403

Narrative for African people is that it infects the African mind with a disease
that can best be symptomized as Afrophobia, a persistent, abnormal, and
irrational fear for things African; Europhilia, a positive unwarranted feel-
ing of love, liking, and affection for things European; and Grecomania, a
violent derangement of the mind due to Greek thought and ideas. Hence,
when we fail to see the need for an African Grand Narrative, the Western
Grand Narrative becomes the only way of describing, understanding, and
explaining reality by default. While the western world asserts and privileges
its grand narrative based on Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman thought as uni-
versal, it is not. It is simply unchallenged and unduly accepted by default.
As counterpoint to the false universality of the Western Grand Narrative, I
would like to share some ongoing thoughts and preliminary suggestions rela-
tive to a proposed African Kmt-Nubia/BaNtu-Kongo Grand Narrative; an
African philosophical grounding; and, the Skh Djr (Sah koo Jair) for the fur-
ther development of a Pan African Black Psychology.

Kmt-Nubia/BaNtu-Kongo Thought
An African Grand Narrative3 is reflected in the voice of people of African
ancestry, which is seldom and often ignored or not heard. Growing out of
African peoples cultural grounding, meanings of being human, and histori-
cal relations, an African voice reflects the subjective and collective ability to
express the essential and authentic experience of life and living for African
people. An African Grand Narrative would and should reflect and represent
the voice of African people on the continent and throughout the diaspora.
Accordingly, I propose that we formulate an African Grand Narrative based
in Kmt-Nubia/BaNtu-Kongo thought that interrogates the knowing impli-
cations of the classical civilizations of Kmt (Egypt) and Nubia, and the
ancient beliefs of the BaNtu and Kongo people. Such an African Grand
Narrative would posit that reality is Spirit and that a particular process of
knowing emerges from African genesis or creation myths, meaning of being
human, and concept of life and death. Parenthetically, it is important to pro-
vide a clarification of this idea of Spiritness as distinct from spirituality. I
have suggested that Spiritness pertains to the condition of being spirit as
distinct from spirituality which pertains to having the quality of being
spiritual. It is believed that African people experience their spiritness
(Grills, 2002; Nobles, 1997) simultaneously as a metaphysical state and an
ethereal extension or connection into and between the supra world of the
Deities, the inter world of other beings, and the inner world of oneself.
Spiritness is often misconceived as spirituality and deemed a religious
quality. It is more akin to physics than religion.
404 Journal of Black Psychology 41(5)

An African Grand Narrative would privilege the sense of personhood, syn-

ergy, interconnectedness, circularity, wholism, and collectivism. Grounded in
African epistemological reflections, the African Grand Narrative would privi-
lege a particular intellectual mind-set that would posit that real(ity) is based on
Spiritness, as defined above. The idea of Spiritness, in turn, would allow for
the framing of the process of knowing with constructs like commonality, cen-
teredness, transformation, transcendence, improvisation, inspiration, agency,
will, revelation, invocation, intention, and the power of the word.
The thinking, theories, and ideas associated with the development of a Pan
African Black Psychology must openly, unashamedly, and unapologetically
give recognition and respect to and grounding in a Kmt-Nubia/BaNtu-
Kongo shaped African Grand Narrative which privileges the idea of an
expansion of Mphahleles (1987) notion of African Humanism to that of a
Pan African Humanism.
The concept of Pan African Humanism requires an adequate psychological
understanding of African humanity worldwide and its intellectual and cultural
developments, as well as relationships to the Western world and other world
cultures. Pan African Humanism would require engagement with all forms of
African intellectual, literary, and artistic production across time and space. Pan
African Humanism serves as an orientation for the study of the psychocultural,
geopolitical, intellectual, and artistic history of African people in both its histori-
cal unfoldings and contemporary expressions worldwide. The evolving Pan
African Black Psychology should be an African-centered interdisciplinary and
multidimensional investigation of African philosophy, literature, languages, his-
tory, politics, aesthetics, spirituality, and science. As a global discipline, Pan
African Black Psychology would allow us to approach questions of human
essence, experience, and expressions (i.e., values, customs, beliefs, conduct,
etc.) important to all culturesthe nature of the beautiful, the meaning of human
existence, the search for the divine, the nature of historical epochsthrough an
African-centered interdisciplinary and multidimensional studies.
Pan African Humanism supports the use of an African-centered paradigm
that privileges the life experiences, history, and traditions of people of African
ancestry as the center of analyses, ergo, African-centered psychology. Such a
paradigm would give license to scientifically understanding an African-
centered way that represents the core and fundamental qualities of the Being,
Belonging, and Becoming of people of African ancestry. The African-
centered way, in turn, would assert as an organizing precept the importance of
being as central. Accordingly, the experiences of being, belonging, and
becoming and the principles of location and agency for reviewing and under-
standing African phenomena are epistemologically paramount.
Nobles 405

What all this suggests is that there is an African way of being which should
reflect an African quality of thought and practice rooted in the cultural
image and interest of people of African ancestry (Karenga & Carruthers,
1986). This African-centered way would represent the intellectual and philo-
sophical foundations on which people of African ancestry create their own
scientific and moral criteria for authenticating the reality of African human
processes (Asante, 1991). Parenthetically, it should be noted that it is only
when one has a sense of his or her own human integrity, that is, way of
being, that one has the instinct to resist dehumanization or oppression as well
as the capability to even contemplate, letalone achieve, human liberation/
freedom.
The historical difficulty or problem with developing a Pan African Black
Psychology has been the inability to free ourselves from Western thought and
ideas and to comprehend and conceive of the African experience before
enslavement and colonization. The question of being as seen and defined
by African people is seldom, if ever, part of the intellectual discourse. This is
the direct result of being disconnected from our own way of being. The
African meaning of being human is rarely the starting point for any African,
continental or disaporic, intellectual, artistic, or political dialog. African-
centered interrogations concerning identity and consciousness, that is,
how do African people recognize and become aware of our humanity, must
be asked anew.
We, as Pan African Black Psychologists, must give ourselves the opportu-
nity to engage in deep epistemological reflections regarding how Africans
make sense of reality and how Africans recognize, record, and reveal their
sense of reality as descriptive and explanative discourse, ergo, an African
Grand Narrative. The development of a Pan African Black Psychology should
reveal and restore how African people worldwide express the experience of
living as an experiential expression of our essentiality-of-being, and
response to preenslavement and postenslavement and colonization.

The Philosophical Grounding for a Pan African

Black Psychology
Before discussing the philosophical grounding for a Pan African Black psy-
chology, I want to highlight the importance of language as defined by Diops
directive to find the cultural unity of Africa by examining the domains of
history, language, and psyche and the significance of the BaNtu heritage.
Diop (1974, xiii) makes a convincing argument that the cultural unity of
Africa is located in its language, history, and psyche. He, however, leaves the
406 Journal of Black Psychology 41(5)

exploration to the psychic unity undone. Tucker (2003) has pointed out that
Africa has over 3,000 indigenous languages and innumerable creoles, pidgins,
and lingua francas. Implying that Africa is a land of Babel. This observation
was used to support the idea that those Africans kidnapped into slavery all
spoke many different languages and were not able to understand each other.
However, what is more accurate is that most languages spoken in Africa
belong to one of three large language families, that is, Afroasiatic, Nilo-
Saharan, and Niger-Congo (Epstein & Kole, 1998). The Niger-Congo lan-
guage family, in my opinion, should be termed the BaNtu-Kongo language
family. It is the migratory expansion of the BaNtu with their language, beliefs,
and so on, and not the river Niger that more accurately denotes the language
family. Parenthetically, the so-called Niger-Congo or more correctly BaNtu-
Kongo represents about three fourths of all of sub-Saharan Africa. With regard
to language families, what should be obvious but seemingly less appreciated
is that people create language to communicate about what is most important to
them, that is, environment, experience, belief, thought, and so on. The BaNtu-
Kongo language family represents the need of the BaNtu people to communi-
cate their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences. Hence, if there is a common
language family, then there must be common experiences, environment, and
beliefs, and thoughts that bind that language family. It should also be noted
here that BaNtu essentially means people or the people of spirit (Ntu).
However, it has been denigrated, especially in South Africa and refers now to
be a qualifier designating inferior status and/or the area, that is, BaNtustan, set
aside for Black people in support of apartheid.
The so-called BaNtu expansion, it is believed first originated around the
Benue-Cross rivers area in Southeastern Nigeria and spread over Africa to the
Zambia area. Sometime in the second millennium BC, the BaNtu were forced
to expand into the rainforest of Central Africa. Later, the BaNtu began a more
rapid second phase of expansion beyond the forests into Southern and Eastern
Africa reaching modern day Zimbabwe and South Africa. Another theory
held that the BaNtu originated from the Congo and spread out to the north,
east, and the south. Whether going from north to south or south to north it
should be clear that the BaNtu spread out over most of Africa and with the
experience of the slave trade spread equally throughout the new world. The
primary evidence for this great expansion (Ehret, 2001), one of the largest in
human history, has been linguistic, namely that the languages spoken in sub-
Equatorial Africa are remarkably similar to each other, to the degree that it is
unlikely that they began diverging from each other more than 3,000 years
ago, The BaNtu people with their culture, language, family, spiritual beliefs,
and philosophical ideas are the very people stolen and kidnapped in the
Transatlantic slave trade. In effect, BaNtu beliefs and ideas were embedded
in the various peoples who were stolen and kidnapped.
Nobles 407

Africans on the continent and throughout the diaspora are fundamentally

BaNtu people. In fact, it is only in understanding the BaNtu-Kongo ideas and
meanings of being human that one will be able to better or more fully deter-
mine the impact of the Trans-Saharan and Transatlantic slave trade.
In terms of beliefs and African deep thought, Ngubane (1979) argued that
the African understanding of the person is a protein evaluation of the
human being which flowed into Nile Valley high culture of the Ancient
Kemites and subsequently created clusters of similar conceptions all over
Africa. What, in fact, is recognized as African culture and civilization is the
combined social conventions and inventions emerging from a common
African root meaning of the person.
While there is not enough room in this exposition to exhaust the topic, the
further exploration of the proposed Kmt-Nubia/BaNtu-Kongo African Grand
Narrative and African philosophical thought does require some detailing here.
The ancient Kemite/Nubians believed that the Neb-er-tcher evolved from
the primordial substance and facilitated the evolution of forms into phenom-
ena (Budge, 1997). The creative principle emerged out of the primordial
substance; that is, Nu and all phenomena were, in fact, extensions of Nu.
The Kemite/Nubians believed in the consubstantiality of all phenomena. One
key to understanding Kemite/Nubian philosophy, can be found in the belief
about the meaning of the person. Because the person was a manifestation or
expression of Nu, the primordial substance, the ancients regarded the
form of the human being as destined to live forever. Hence, institutions
were developed to enable the person to evolve in response to the challenges
of nature. The human person, like other forms, has an unchanging value
and evolves in response to the demands of that value. The ancients regarded
the primordial substance, Nu, as infinite. The infinity operated, in terms, of
its law, which was its will. As a manifestation of Nu, the person represents
a manifestation of the Law.
In discussing BaNtu philosophy, Kagame (1989) notes that all that exists
can be subsumed under one of four categories of Ntu or spirit. Ntu, in this
regard, is thought to be the universal expression of force or spirit. Ntu insepa-
rable from Umu is Being itself. It is the cosmic universal force. UbuNtu
is spirit in which Being and beings coalesce.
This notion of spirit or force or power makes no distinction between spirit
and matter. Matter is not in the BaNtu conceptualization a manifestation of
spirit. Matter and spirit are not separate. They are not different or apart.
Reality is not a duality of matter and spirit. UbuNtu is all that is or be.
Conceptually, Ntu, as a modal point at which being assumes concrete form,
is reflected in four categories of expression in BaNtu philosophy. In effect
there is one essence with four categories of expression. The categories are
Mu Ntu, Ki Ntu, Ha Ntu, and Ku Ntu. All beings, all expressions of spirit can
408 Journal of Black Psychology 41(5)

Table 1. UbuNtu: Spirit Beings (Mu Ntu) in a Reality of Spirit (Ntu).

Mu Ntu or Muntu Human beings are spirit (energy)Knowing and knowable
spirit, including the dwellers of the afterlife (dead), those yet-
to-be-born as well as the angels, orishas, loas, and ancestors.
Ha Ntu or Hantu Place and time are spirit (energy)Activated by Mu Ntu
Ki Ntu or Kintu Material objects are spirit (energy)Activated by Mu Ntu
Ku Ntu or Kuntu Emotions/feelings are spirit (energy)Activated by Mu Ntu

be found within one of these categories. All that exists will express itself as
one of these expressions. Human beings (Mu Ntu or Muntu) are an expres-
sion of spirit or force. Place and Time (Ha Ntu or Hantu) are equally expres-
sions of spirit or force. All the material objects (Ki Ntu or Kintu) like
mountains, other animals, rivers, and so on, are spirit expressions. Joy,
beauty, laughter, love, emotions, and so on (Ku Ntu or Kuntu) are equally
spirit expressions. As such everything and all being is UbuNtu and as such
are more than simply related to each other. All that exists are different
concrete expressions of Ntu. In effect, Being is being spirit in a reality of
spirit (see Table 1).
All being is therefore, spirit, energy, or UbuNtu. In being, humans exist
in the aforementioned categories. The category Mu Ntu includes intelligent
beings that are living, the dwellers of the afterlife (dead), those yet-to-be-born
as well as the orishas, loas, and ancestors. That which exists as Ki Ntu are
forces that are activated at the command of Mu Ntu. Plants, animals, miner-
als, created objects, and ideas, and so on are all spirit (Ki Ntu) awaiting the
command or activation by Mu Ntu. Spirit also exists or expresses itself as
space and time. This is Ha Ntu. Modalities of existing are equally spirit. Ku
Ntu as modal spirit gives beingness to modalities like loyalty, devotion,
discipline, and so on. The UbuNtu idea should be thought of as one of the root
ideas in African philosophical thought and the further creation of a Pan
African Black Psychology.
A Pan African Black Psychology must, therefore, embrace the African
meaning of being human as being spirit, an energy or power. Refashioning
African philosophical thought with its Kmt-Nubia/BaNtu-Kongo ground-
ing, as an African Grand Narrative would assert that human beings as Spirit
Beings are those who live and move within and are inseparable from the ocean
of waves/radiations of spirit (energy). A human being is spirit that affirms its
humanity by recognizing the humanity of other spirits and on that basis estab-
lishes humane relations with them. A human being is spirit whose unfolding is
a constant and continual inquiry into its own being, experience, knowledge,
and truth. To be human is to be spirit in motion (unfolding). Being human is
Nobles 409

being a phenomenon of perpetual, constant, and continual unfolding (vibration

sharing and exchanging) of spirit. In this regard, Fu-Kiau (2001) clarifies that the
human being is a threefold unfolding experience in the realms of yet-to-
live, living, and after living. He further notes that a human being is a living
sun (energy), possessing knowing and knowable spirit (energy) through
which spirit in human form has an enduring relationship with the total per-
ceptible and ponderable universe.

The Development of a Pan African Black

Psychology: Skh Djr
The question of a Pan African Black Psychology must ultimately turn to the
task of our being able to illuminate the spirit of Mu Ntu to the people world-
wide. In furthering the challenge of Black psychology to rescue ancient African
deep thought, I propose the adoption of Skh Djr (Nobles, 2013) as the process
of understanding, examining, and explicating the meaning, nature, and func-
tioning of being human for African people by conducting a deep, profound, and
penetrating search, study, and mastery of the process of illuminating the
human spirit or essence, as well as all human experience and phenomena.
In order to fully understand the complexity of the Skh Djr (illumination of
the spirit), one must include a discussion of the African antecedent compre-
hension of what it means to be human or to be a person. To understand this
point, one has to think deeply and profoundly about African meanings and
understandings about being human. Consistent with Diops (1974) directive
to examine the domains of history, language, and psyche, Skh Djr would
require that one interrogate the language and logic of traditional African peo-
ple in order to gain insight into the functioning of contemporary African
peoples. Our ancestors were spread throughout the diaspora absent of free-
dom, that is, in chains. However, they did not arrive absent of language,
thought, and belief about who they were. Our ancestors on the continent had
a sacred relation to the land. However, because of colonial domination that
relationship was often disrupted. One direct consequence of colonialism was
that many African children were forced into boarding schools and had to
learn their captors language as well as their way of being. They too did not
experience this atrocity absent of their mother tongue, thought, and belief
about who they were. Our ancestors came with a language and a system of
beliefs (logic) about what it meant to be human and whom and whose they
were and why they existed. It is through a penetrating reinterpretation of the
language and logic of our African ancestry, that both continental and diaspo-
ran Africans will be able to rescue and remember our humanity, wholeness,
and wellness.
410 Journal of Black Psychology 41(5)

In directing us to locate Africas cultural unity in its language, history, and

psyche, Diop unfortunately left the exploration of the psychic unity undone. In
an attempt to partially address Diops psychic directive, I have offered the
concept or notion of Skh Sdi (Sah koo Shedee) to represent the practice or
method of Sakhu (Sah koo) first introduced by Akbar (1985). Consistent with
the African idea of if it exists it most assuredly is spirit, the Skh Sdi practi-
tioners would be Spirits (humans) who are lead by spirit, who read
spirit(s); who seeks help and protection from spirit and engages in the salva-
tion and nurturing (healing) of spirit by performing the Sakhu as it should be
done (Nobles, 2013, p. 294). There are traditional African concepts in every
African language that represent the idea of illuminating the spirit and should
be explored as a further expansion of a Pan African Black psychology.
Our charge is clear. Guided by the call to organize issued in the Capetown
Declaration and the Nassau Declaration as well as in the charge to refashion
psychology given in the New Orleans Accord, we must claim our own African
Grand Narrative and use it, not only as our descriptive and explanative dis-
course about African reality worldwide but to shape the African way as a tool
for healing ourselves and the world.
In open and direct collaboration, we, continental and diasporan, African/
Black psychologists must aggressively interrogate and learn from our tradi-
tional sciences, for example, Ifa, Vodun, Candombl, and collaborate around
addressing the specifics of the New Orleans Accord, that is, forge continental
and diasporan working relationships to critically examine the assumptions
and paradigms concerning the understanding, development, and the emer-
gence of African/Black peoples in context throughout their lives; commit to
developing the culturally congruent discipline and practice of Pan African
Black Psychology; as well as endorse and adopt the development and utiliza-
tion of a Pan African Black Psychology for understanding, analyses, treat-
ment, and restoration of African/Black spirit, mental health, wellness,
wholeness, worldwide emancipation, participation, and unity of our people.
We must not be afraid to accept the challenge and charge of critically
assessing the limited utility and questionable fidelity of American and
European psychologies for understanding and treating African/Black peoples.
As continental and diasporan Pan African Black Psychologists, we should
openly support the ongoing collaboration among and between continental and
diasporan psychologists worldwide and to use the further development of Pan
African Black Psychological theories in all areas of human endeavor by find-
ing ways to assemble, critique, and make more accessible the existing oral,
written, or electronic psychological works of African scholars concerning our
understanding, analyses, interventions, and treatment (both traditional and
contemporary) that promote the wellness of African/Blacks; and, in particular,
Nobles 411

address the lingering and ongoing affects of both historical and contemporary
colonization, enslavement, and dehumanization.
In spite of the success of the birth of a Black Psychology in the United States,
which is not race defined, psychology on the continent, South America (Brazil),
Europe, and the Caribbean may or may not be in the hands of Black Africans.
The non-Black African control of psychology in the various places throughout
the African world will need to be addressed as we unfold the furthering of a Pan
African Black Psychology. We, in effect, need to identify and access whatever
energy (spirit) and resources that will support our ongoing collaboration and
intellectual exchanges, for example, joint education task force between the
ABPsi and Pan African Psychology Union that should also include the Caribbean
Alliance of National Psychological Associations and the Regional Psychology
Council of Bahia, as well as kindred associations in Europe and Asia.
Starting with a critical examination of the United States that developed Black
Psychology and a systematic review and utilization of African-centered resources
and materials, the task ahead should be to directly advance the worldwide exami-
nation and development of a Pan African Black Psychology and support the
implementation of healing programs and services throughout the African world.
Through this global initiative, we could provide opportunities for teaching, train-
ings, continuing education, workshops/seminars, professional consultations, in
addition to ongoing discussions on the philosophies, theories, therapeutic inter-
vention, research orientations, methodological approaches for the overall imple-
mentation, and dissemination of a Pan African Black Psychology.
In full collaboration, as an African family, we ultimately could become an
African World Federation of Pan African Black Psychology Organizations
and/or Associations. Working together as a federation, we could and should
provide certification and ultimately licensing for any psychological work
occurring throughout the African world. To achieve this, I invite us, as African
Black psychologists, to seize the global opportunity before us to informally
and/or where advantageous formally establish a Pan African Black
Psychology African World Federation Network that is committed to taking
the authority to be Spirit Beings and practitioners of the Sakhu. To do so
would, in my opinion, be the only way that we can guarantee that we produce
and practice a real Pan African Black Psychology or what I propose we call
Skh Djr. To do any less would be to fail to fulfill what our ancestors have
prepared the way for us to be, Divine Spirit Beings, living in a reality of
spirit, called to enlighten, restore, and heal.

Authors Note
Keynote Presentation: 1st International Congress of African Psychology FAP2014,
Polokwane, Limpopo Province, South Africa, March 27-29, 2014.
412 Journal of Black Psychology 41(5)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

Notes
1. I choose to refer to our traditional sages, wise-ones, and healers as spirit prac-
titioners rather than fetish priest or shaman because they use their immediate
rapport with the Divine spirit to understand how to be, know, and heal.
2. My own epistemological reflections have been guided by ongoing direct con-
versations and study with the following living practitioners of traditional spirit
science (religion): the Araba of Osogbo, Nigeria, Baba Ifayemi Elebuibon;
the traditional priest, Nana Kwabena Abebresse Abass (Nana Alhaji Abass) of
Ghana; the Ndepp of Senegal, Oulimata Diop; the High Sanusi of South Africa,
Baba Credo Mutwa; and the Nganga of the Congo, Kimwandende Kia Bunseki
Fu-Kiau.
3. Both Dr. Molefi Asante (2003) and Dr. Maulana Karenga (2010) have offered
important definitions of Afrocentricity that support the unpacking of an African
grand narrative.

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