A Past Editor’s Retrospective and Future Perspectives on the Journal of Black Psychology: The Third Editor of the Journal

I had the privilege of serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Black Psychology (JBP) from 1987 to 2001. I would describe the experience as one of the highlights of my career. My tenure predated the online access to scholars that is now commonplace. The opportunity that JBP offered for me to interact with and learn from scholars across the nation was very stimulating. Moreover, participating in the growth of JBP was rewarding. When I became Editor, we were publishing two issues of JBP annually. When we began our collaboration with Sage in 1993, we instantly began publishing four issues per year.

JBP was the first journal published by a racial/ethnic minoritized professional group. Thus, JBP set the stage for the other racial/ethnic journals that followed. Mainstream journals have not always been open to utilizing much of their space to publish research specifically about Blacks or other racial/ethnic minoritized groups. JBP and other racial/ethnic journals provide this space. However, creating space for scholarship on racial/ethnic issues is only one of the benefits. In addition, having our own journal also enables us to use methodologies (e.g., within group rather than race-comparison designs) and to develop and disseminate measures (e.g., racial identity measures) most appropriate for advancing our science. At the time that Dr William David Smith, the first JBP Editor, first initiated JBP, a preponderance of the limited research on Black people in mainstream journals was based on a deficit model. However, JBP includes more scholarship on Black resilience and strengths. Moreover, theoretical models developed for other groups often are insufficient for understanding the Black experience. JBP encourages papers that are based on African-centered theoretical models.

The political backlash in recent years to scholarship on the Black experience is a threat to the dissemination of Black scholarship. Accordingly, perhaps more than ever before, having an independent outlet such as JBP makes an important contribution to exposing Black people and others to research, theory, and other conversations that otherwise might be inaccessible. I take pride in several specific successes during my tenure as Editor. First, it was during my tenure that JBP moved from being self-published by ABPsi to Sage. Prior to Sage, the Editor was in Cincinnati, the copyeditor lived in Virginia, and ABPsi was responsible for the production and dissemination in Washington, DC. Remember this was a period when the correspondence was primarily by mail. Although independence was great, the professional production and marketing from Sage elevated the Journal to a new level. Moreover, the income from Sage has become a significant source of income for ABPsi.

Negotiating a contract with Sage that included the publication of an edited volume was a second success. The edited volume was titled African American Psychology (Burlew et al., 1992). Multiple Black professionals had the opportunity to publish a chapter in that volume. Creating opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to earn a first publication was a third success during my tenure. We had one special issue in which professionals could only publish if they included a student as a co-author. I know of one undergraduate whose acceptance into a top-ranking graduate program was largely due to being a co-author in that issue and later doing a book review in JBP.

My university had a program to support journal editors with a stipend for a graduate assistant. Accessing stipends for several Black graduate students during my tenure was a fourth accomplishment during my tenure. In addition to the financial assistance, the experience augmented their training by exposing the students to the work of Black professionals across the nation that was not typically included in their curriculum. Prior to collaborating with Sage, it was unfair to other authors to commit one of the two issues per year to a special topic. However, once we moved to four issues a year, special issues became more feasible. During my years as Editor, we published several special issues that allowed us to delve more deeply into single topics that were germane to our communities. The special issues during my tenure along with their volume and issue numbers are listed below:

• AIDs Prevention and Education (19 [2])

• Emotional and Social Development of African American Children (19 [4])

• Works presented at the Empirical Conference on Black Psychology (21 [4])

• Psychosocial Aspects of Sickle Cell (25 [3])

• Studies Conducted as part of the Center for Substance Use Prevention (CSAP) National Cross-Site Evaluation of High-Risk Youth (26 [4])

Devoting a full issue to a topic when only two or three authors were interested was not feasible. In those cases, we included special sections in issues. The topics, volume, and issue numbers are listed below for special sections.

• Black English, Ebonics, and Bilingualism (23 [3])

• Cognitive styles and academic performance (16 [1])

• Racial Identity (17 [1])

• Critique of the Bell Curve (21 [(3)])

Adequate measurement is critical to good scholarship. Too often, scholars studying Black and other racial/ethnic minoritized groups are restricted to using measures developed and standardized on other populations. I am particularly proud to report that JBP introduced a substantial number of measures during my tenure that were developed specifically for Black populations. These measures and one or more of the authors are listed below:

• Adjective Q sort as a measure of the Big Five Personality Structure among Black Adolescents (Aquilar et al., 1998)

• African American Acculturation Scale (Landrine & Klonoff, 1994)

• African American Acculturation (Snowden & Hines, 1999)

• Africentrism (Grills & Longshore, 1996)

• Attitudes toward Multiracial Children Scale (Jackman et al., 2001)

• An Ethnic Identity Measure for African American Youth (Smith & Brookins, 1997)

• Development and Initial Validation of the Africultural Coping Systems Inventory (Utsey et al., 2000)

• Development of a Racial and Ethnic Identity Scale for African American Adolescents (Resnicow et al., 1999)

• Schedule of Racist Events (Landrine & Klonoff, 1996)

• Spirituality Scale (Jagers & Smith, 1996)

• The Communalism Scale (Jagers & Mock, 1995)

• The Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess an Optimal World View (Montgomery et al., 1990)

• The Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity: A Validation Study in a British Sample (Walsh, 2001)

• Themes Concerning Blacks (TCB), a Projective Technique for Assessing Racial Identity (White et al., 1995)

• Validation of the Cross Model of Black Racial Identity in the South African Context (Hocoy, 1999)

In addition, Shawn Utsey (1998) conducted a review of measures titled Assessing the Stressful Effects of Racism: A Review of Instrumentation. Many of the above measures are still available and useful to current scholars.

Along with the successes, the most significant challenge was that my tenure predated the use of online submission and circulation of manuscripts to potential reviewers. Accordingly, the review process was especially cumbersome. We instructed the authors to submit four copies of their manuscripts to me. Once I selected potential reviewers, the editorial assistant would mail a copy of the paper to prospective reviewers who may or may not communicate back whether they could review. If they agreed to review, we would ask reviewers to submit the review in four weeks and then mail (at their expense) the review to us. If the decision was to ask the author to revise and resubmit, the process repeated itself if we sent the revised manuscript back to the reviewer. Although we hoped to complete the review in four months, frequently the review process took longer.

My other challenge was that I was young in my career. Although I was already tenured as an Associate Professor when I became the Editor, I was probably too early in my career for the position. I was learning the editorial process as I assumed the role. Moreover, I occasionally found myself interacting with scholars who were more advanced than me in their careers which was somewhat uncomfortable. In addition, serving as editor was significantly time consuming. I reviewed my own vita while writing this piece to assess my publication record during and after my tenure as editor. As I expected, I published much more after than during my editorship. For that reason, the other members of the selection committee and I are convinced that selecting a senior person such as Dr Vandiver as the next editor is important both for the next editor’s career and the Association. Dr Vandiver has accomplished quite a bit during her tenure as Editor-In-Chief. Last year, we learned that the impact factor had advanced to the highest ever—5.2. That level makes it even more possible for scholars to submit their very best work to JBP without concerns that the Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT) committees at mainstream universities will undervalue their JBP publications. Dr Vandiver also increased the number of issues published per year which increases the opportunities for scholars to publish their work. She also has initiated podcasts featuring articles published in JBP which increases the visibility of the work of the authors and JBP. As JBP moves into the next era, I see several additional opportunities for growth. ABPsi has a number of initiatives which would be great partners for JBP. Already Dr Vandiver partnered with the team that conducted an ABPsi national needs assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on Black mental health. The National Urban League provided the funding for that initiative. JBP is publishing a special issue on papers derived from that initiative. In the future, JBP might partner with the ABPsi Global Institute to increase the visibility of that project. Moreover, ABPsi currently offers continuing education (CE) credits for sessions held at the annual meeting. JBP might work with the CE committee to provide CEs for reading specific articles and issues.

Beyond ABPsi, JBP is well-positioned to take advantage of several additional opportunities. The psychology departments in many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) already assign students to read articles in JBP. However, more contact with HBCUs would be beneficial to HBCU students, ABPsi, and JBP. For example, technology would enable JBP authors to present their work in HBCU classrooms and to interact directly with students. Beyond HBCUs, JBP has much to offer to other Black professional organizations such as the Black Social Workers, the Black Nurses, and the National Medical Association. JBP can be an important vehicle for ABPsi to collaborate with those organizations.

In closing, the sustainability of the JBP for 50 years is a real accomplishment. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to have served as the Editor of JBP. I applaud Drs Utsey, Cokley, and Vandiver for how they each advanced JBP in their own ways. I look forward to what the future holds for the JBP over the next 50 years.