NEW YORK – The following is a statement from Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange.org – the nation’s largest African-American online political organization – regarding Psychology Today’s recent public apology for allowing a known controversial contributor to post a dehumanizing article on their website last week:

“Over the last few days, more than 70,000 ColorOfChange members called on Psychology Today via petition signatures and emails to take responsibility for allowing a racist and dehumanizing post to be published on their website and explain how they will ensure something like this never happens again. Today, they finally broke their silence and took an important first step towards accountability.

Psychology Today’s statement indicates that they understand the racist and inflammatory messages in Kanazawa’s article to be unacceptable. However, they’ve remained silent on exactly what measures have been taken to ensure such articles are not published. Given the level of the offense, it is an important goal of our members that Psychology Today provide such an explanation before declaring the issue resolved.

Clearly Psychology Today isn’t the only media outlet that has given a platform to racist and dehumanizing content. We will continue to hold not just Psychology Today accountable, but all media that allow themselves to become vehicles for unfair attacks on our communities.”

Last week, Psychology Today posted an article on their website from controversial contributor, Satoshi Kanazawa. The article attempted to use pseudo-scientific evidence to explain why Kanazawa thought black women were less physically attractive than white women.

On Monday, ColorOfChange.org sent a message to its members, asking them to sign a petition that demands Psychology Today apologize for allowing the article – “Why Are African-American Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” – to appear on its website. The petition also asked Psychology Today to explain the steps they are taking to ensure that dehumanizing and racist articles aren’t given a platform on their site. Over the past few days, ColorOfChange.org collected over 70,000 petition signatures.

After being met with silence, ColorOfChange.org was contacted today by Kaja Perina, editor-in-chief of Psychology Today with the following statement:

“Last week, a blog post about race and appearance by Satoshi Kanazawa was published–and promptly removed–from this site. We deeply apologize for the pain and offense that this post caused. Psychology Today’s mission is to inform the public, not to provide a platform for inflammatory and offensive material. Psychology Today does not tolerate racism or prejudice of any sort. The post was not approved by Psychology Today, but we take full responsibility for its publication on our site. We have taken measures to ensure that such an incident does not occur again. Again, we are deeply sorry for the hurt that this post caused.”

###

With more than 750,000 members, ColorOfChange.org is the nation’s largest African-American online political organization.