One hallmark of Community Psychology practice is that instead of going into communities and acting on their behalf, Community Psychology practitioners work to strengthen communities so they can act on their own behalf. This requires a strong, trusting relationship between the community psychologist and the various stakeholders, such as community partners, advocates, members of the target population, treatment providers, and governmental entities (Elias et al., 2015). If Community Psychology practitioners are successful in their work, communities they work in should eventually not need their help at all. The goal is to create change which is then adopted by the community and managed by the community members to the point where they sustain it over time. This is really important for working in disadvantaged communities that have been traditionally disempowered. By giving away our skills and knowledge, we empower them to make the changes their communities need and reduce their reliance on outside professionals. These four competencies are designed to help us do that (see Table 3). When the Community Psychology consultant in our first case study goes into the communities to work with them to build their collaboratives, she will not do any of the work for them. She will provide training and technical assistance to strengthen the skills and capacity of the community members to build and maintain their collaborative.

The foundational principles are the five competencies that all Community Psychology practitioners working in the US need, listed in Table 1 below. They represent knowledge, skills, and principles that help to guide practice work from a Community Psychology perspective, as well as the values and perspectives of Community Psychology and the competencies needed to apply the values in practice, as also indicated in the first chapter (Jason et al., 2019). These competencies are combined with the remaining more technical skills-based competencies to ensure they are exercised using a Community Psychology approach. Elias et al. (2015) suggest that you think of them as “foreground” processes because Community Psychology practitioners need to pay constant attention to these principles and make sure that their actions align with them.

You might be wondering, what does “practice competency” mean? The Community Psychology practice competencies were developed to provide a common framework to describe the skills involved in Community Psychology practice (Dalton & Wolfe, 2012). It means that someone who is a Community Psychology practitioner has mastered some or all these skills and knowledge to some extent. Community Psychology practice competency means that the community psychologist has mastered enough of the skills to implement their work in real life situations dealing with individuals and communities in need.

Core components of Liberation Psychology include praxis and dialectics. Praxis can be thought of as a tool for acquiring knowledge and transforming oppressive realities involving a conscious integration of theory and practice to make theory more grounded in reality (Montero & Sonn, 2009). Dialectics is a philosophy of praxis emphasizing that knowledge is not created unless acquired through a method of mediated social discourse. In other words, we develop knowledge about the world and simultaneously work to bring about change. Dialogue needs to occur between power holders and the oppressed to raise the consciousness of all to understand the meaning of oppressive actions (see Chapter 17; Olson et al., 2019). This raised awareness of conditions challenges the status quo and may create a desire for those in power to be more humane. Ultimately, the hope is for the encouragement of a rethinking of problems “with and from, the oppressed; with a commitment to unveil and characterize conditions of oppression and exploitation suffered by large sectors of the population” (Montero & Sonn, 2009; p. 31).

Rudolf Moos (2003), another influential community psychologist, developed the social climate theory in an effort to better understand the natural interplay between individuals and their social contexts. Social climate theory helps to understand how people adapt to their social environment and how contexts adapt to people. Social climate taps three main dimensions of how people perceive: 1) how a setting organizes their perceptions of social relationships, 2) how they are being supported in their personal development, and 3) how the setting handles the maintenance of norms and supports change processes. From a psychological measurement perspective, the social climate is very much related to indicators of individual well-being. This measure has been useful for assessing setting dynamics within schools and juvenile treatment programs.

The ecological theory was developed by James Kelly (1966) who was one of the founders of the field of Community Psychology. The purpose of his theory, as shown in Table 1 below, is to provide a framework for understanding the structure and function of community. This theory assists in learning how the characteristics of the environment of the community can play a central role in the ways people interact and relate to each other. Through this framework, we can consider the dynamics among groups, organizations, and whole communities as they relate within certain settings, and help guide thinking around the development of community interventions (Kelly, 1968).

Psychologist Raymond Cattell argues against the “mixture of blood between racial groups” (Cattell, 1933, p. 155). A few years later, he declared that Black individuals have “contributed practically nothing to social progress and culture” and argued against their full citizenship (Cattell, 1937, p. 56). Cattell argued that these individuals should “be brought to euthanasia” for this inferiority. In 1972, he again argued that such “race mixing” would result in “the intelligent maintainers of the culture being completely replaced by lower intelligences” (Cattell, 1972, p. 154). He continued to maintain the dangers of race-mixing through the early 1990s.

The Johnson-Reed Act passes, limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and favoring immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. The goal of the Act, as stated, was to preserve American homogeneity. Italians, Greeks, and Eastern European Jews were heavily impacted and Syrian immigration was limited to 100 people per year. It further extended a ban on Asian immigration. Psychological research was cited by eugenics leaders in congressional testimony leading up to passage of the Act. It was argued that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were endowed with inherently poor genetic material and that restriction was needed to preserve American racial stock (Doyle, 2014; Laughlin, 1923; Tucker, 1994; Gelb, Allen, Futterman, & Mehler,1986 ).

Culturally biased test questions and examination procedures, along with an assumption of White, American normativity, led to results that established a clear racial hierarchy of performance with White, American-born recruits scoring highest on IQ tests and Black recruits, particularly those from the American south, scoring the lowest. 89% of Black recruits were labeled by the Committee as “morons” (Kevles, 1968; Rury, 1988; Yerkes, 1921).