In 2014, APA finally updated its testing standards and put fairness on the same level as reliability and validity. After years of tests being created through a mostly white lens, this update basically admits that bias has been baked into psychological testing for a long time. By calling fairness a core part of what makes a test “good,” the field is finally owning up to how prejudice has shaped who gets measured accurately and who gets misjudged.

Alice Chang becoming the first person of color to serve on APA’s Board of Directors in 1994 shows how long people of color were kept out of leadership in psychology. For more than a century, APA’s top positions were held almost entirely by white psychologists, so her election exposes how deeply whiteness shaped who had power in the organization. Turning point .

Ponterotto (1988) shows that people of color were barely represented in psychology. Only 5.7% of the articles focused on communities of color, and only 6.5–11% of the reviewers were people of color. This shortage of minority representation exposes how the field was operating through a system of whiteness, where white perspectives dominated what research was produced and validated.