NEW YORK – The nation’s largest African-American online political organization is calling on the industry magazine Psychology Today to take responsibility for allowing a known controversial contributor to post a dehumanizing article on their website last week. The article, written by Satoshi Kanazawa, attempted to use pseudo-scientific evidence to explain why he thought black women were less physically attractive than white women.

ColorOfChange.org today sent a message to its 750,000+ 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 last week. The petition also asks Psychology Today to explain the steps they are taking to ensure that dehumanizing and racist articles aren’t given a platform on their site.

“Kanazawa is notorious for hiding behind pseudoscience to promote discredited racist and sexist ideas and Psychology Today continues to give him a public platform,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange.org. “By allowing this article to be posted without edit, Psychology Today dehumanized black women and girls everywhere.”

Kanazawa is a frequent contributor to Psychology Today and is known for posting controversial articles. He previously wrote an article asking whether all women can essentially be called ‘prostitutes’ and another suggesting that the US should have dropped nuclear bombs across the entire Middle East after 9/11 because it would have wiped out Muslim terrorists. In his latest piece, he uses a modern-day version of the faulty logic used to dehumanize blacks as inferior for hundreds of years, from the social Darwinists and eugenicists of the 19th century to The Bell Curve just 15 years ago.

Last week, Kanazawa’s piece was posted on Psychology Today’s website and immediately caught the attention of journalists and civil rights activists. Editors at Psychology Today quietly took down the offending piece, but made no public apology. Kaja Perina, editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, distanced herself and the publication from Kanazawa’s article when asked for a comment, stating that Kanazawa has access to post articles on the site at any time, and that editors only noticed its negative impact after it was too late.

“The fact that this article appeared a week ago and Psychology Today still hasn’t issued a formal apology is an outrage,” continued Robinson. “Kaja Perina and others at the magazine think that by simply taking down the article and distancing themselves from its author, they are exempt from responsibility. The only solution is for them to apologize for allowing this atrocity to be read by anyone, and to explain how they intend to prevent something like this from happening again.”

Click to view ColorOfChange.org’s official campaign: https://colorofchange.org/campaign/psychology-today/

###

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