Good news - ColorOfChange and all those who signed their petitions have struck another blow against racism. First the racism of Glenn Beck and now of Satoshi Kanazawa.
Psychology Today Agrees to remove Controversial Author Satoshi Kanazawa from Website; Implements New Policies to Prevent Inflammatory Content
Following last week’s apology, publication responds to over 75,000 ColorOfChange.org members on how it will prevent dehumanizing content in the future.
June 1, 2011
NEW YORK – Psychology Today, the publication that recently came under fire for allowing a dehumanizing article to be published on its website two weeks ago, today stated that controversial contributor Satoshi Kanazawa – the author of the article in question – is no longer contributing to the publication and that they are taking the necessary steps to prevent an incident like this from ever happening again.
Two weeks ago, Psychology Today posted an article on their website from controversial contributor, Satoshi Kanazawa. The article – “Why Are African-American Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” – attempted to use pseudo-scientific evidence to explain why Kanazawa thought black women were less physically attractive than white women.
Over the past week, more than 75,000 ColorOfChange members called on Psychology Today via petition signatures, emails and various social media outlets to take responsibility for allowing this racist and dehumanizing post to be published on their website and explain how they will ensure something like this never happens again. Last week, the publication broke its silence and took an important first step towards accountability by apologizing for publishing the article, but failed to explicitly state the steps it would take to prevent incidents like this from happening again. After receiving hundreds of phone calls from ColorOfChange members last week, they finally made the clarification.
News One reports:
Psychologist Fired For “Why Black Women Are Unattractive” Study
People who hadn't heard of Kanazawa were sharing the text in question, their hurt, their ire and disbelief that Psychology Today endorsed the piece. They demanded Kanazawa be fired. Students at Kanazawa's other day job, London School of Economics, have also called for Kanazawa's resignation. It's not just American Black women who were put off by the piece, every segment of the globe's population was annoyed: white men, black men, white women, black women, academics, Asians, Indians, writers, babysitters, the mail man and mail lady. People who surf the web and browse Facebook for random stuff did not like it and this time could not dismiss it.
Kanazawa has been offensive before. He's blogged that criminals look different from non criminals (OJ Simpson, according to Kanazawa looks like a criminal.”) He had an epiphany when he blogged that all women are essentially prostitutes. In the past, offended readers emailed Kanazawa rather than his editors.
Kanazawa’s blogs, for as long as Psychology Today has published them (a little over five years now) have always been controversial, racist, sexist, and unfounded. Most of his blogs are hypotheses on human nature (or why men and women do the the things that they do). Readers are drawn into Kanazawa's ideologies because his notions offer one explanation for human behavior in our contemporary culture and its current setting.
Letters and phone calls poured in to the magazine from outraged folks - thanks to facebook, twitter and especially from blogs in the Afro-sphere.
Whoopi Goldburg addressed the "study" on The View:
This Sister wants to thank all the Kossaks who helped!