African American adaptations to racism trace to African cultural origins, not just oppression responses.

Evidence

Attempts to explain African Americans’ adaptation to racism have traditionally been ahistorical and culturally neutral. In contrast, the patterns of adaptations to the universal context of racism, I argue, are culturally derived from African origins and applied in a functional way to the challenges presented by this pervasive context. Over time, the adaptations to the human challenges of slavery, Jim Crow, and contemporary forms of dominative and aversive racism have molded and shaped those originating cultural patterns of behavior (Jones, 1986). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1087

Categorization

• SEED: An article angle: how psychological adaptation research has erased the African cultural inheritance in favor of deficit models of Black coping.