Joseph L. White, at 84, psychologist, activist
IRVINE, Calif. — Joseph L. White, a psychologist, social activist and teacher who helped pioneer the field of black psychology to counter what he saw as rampant ignorance and prejudice in the profession, has died. He was 84.
Dr. White, who lived in Irvine, died of a heart attack on Nov. 21 near Chicago during a flight to St. Louis to see his daughter for Thanksgiving, said Tom Vasich, a spokesman for the University of California, Irvine, where Dr. White was a professor for decades.
Dr. White was born in Lincoln, Neb., in 1932 but grew up in Minneapolis. He enrolled in San Francisco State College in 1950 after working his way west as a waiter on a passenger train.
He earned his Ph.D. from Michigan State in 1962, becoming one of only a handful of blacks in the nation to hold a doctorate in clinical psychology.
“When I left the program, I was what you call a black AngloSaxon. I was the nicest Negro you ever wanted to see” but prejudice changed him into “a militant Negro,” he recalled.
With a wife and three children, he tried to find a home and an office in Long Beach, Calif., but was repeatedly turned down despite having a college education and having performed military service.
In the midst of the civil rights and black power era of the 1960s, Dr. White campaigned for what is now known as cross-cultural psychology that took into account the perspectives and needs of ethnic minorities. In 1968, Dr. White — then dean of undergraduate studies at San Francisco State — and other black psychologists formed the Association of Black Psychologists. They were angry at the way mainstream psychology took what they considered a white Western world view that ignored or misunderstood black culture and lifestyles. The field also was dominated by a prejudiced view of blacks.
“Psychology is part of America. Black people are invisible in America, they’re invisible in psychology,” Dr. White said in an interview for the association’s 2008 convention.