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WIU Professor Emeritus Looks at "Growing Up White in America"

August 23, 2007

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MACOMB, IL - - Bem Allen has personalized the issue of race in his latest book, "Growing Up White in America: Experiences with Race," which is available online at www.iUniverse.com.

In "Growing," Western Illinois University's psychology professor emeritus examines how his experiences in rural Texas, Houston, Mississippi and western Illinois during his high school, college, graduate school and professional years shaped his white male's view of America's problems with race.

Allen examines race through questions such as: Are there any races? Are blacks and whites genetically different? Are black people prejudiced? How many millions of white Americans have African heritage and don't know it?

Allen, who retired from Western Illinois in December 2005 following 37 years of teaching and research, presented "Race and IQ" as the University's 2001 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer. He received eight Faculty Excellence Awards, was named the Sigma Xi Researcher of the Year (1976) and earned the College of Arts and Sciences Research Award (1990) and the Affirmative Action Office Award for Multicultural Programming (1999).

He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a Fellow of the Society for Personality Assessment. Allen served as a referee for the Journal of Personality, the Journal of Research in Personality, American Psychologist, Multivariate Behavior Research and Basic and Applied Social Psychology. He also was a consulting editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

He supervised undergraduate research projects and chaired graduate student theses in addition to his own prolific research and publication schedule, which included writing more than 40 articles, presenting more than 45 papers, authoring 11 books and contributing to many edited books.

Allen earned his bachelor's (1963), master's (1966) and doctorate (1969) in psychology from the University of Houston.

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