Search

Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a renewed and more mainstream attention to systemic racism emerged. Critical Race Theory (CRT) has permeated the larger public discourse around race more than ever before. Yet, social, scientific, and political backlash intended to silence conversations about the systemic and power‐driven nature of racism have also characterized these years. 30+ years have passed since CRT's introduction as a critical analysis of how the legal system fails minoritized groups; 20+ years have passed since CRT's introduction into the social psychological field. Although psychology provides a strong foundation for the CRT tenets, incorporating CRT into the field of psychology has lagged behind many other fields (e.g., sociology, education). In two installments, this special issue (re)introduces psychological researchers to CRT and Psychological Critical Race Theory (PCRT), underscores CRT's importance and limitations in the context of psychological research, features novel applications and directions in CRT, and addresses the current political climate of opposition to discussions of CRT. This second installment looks outward highlighting psychological research applying (P)CRT frameworks to advance racial justice. We conclude with reflections on the history of CRT and PCRT and the shifts necessary in our scholarship‐activism to dismantle systems of racial oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The years since George Floyd's murder in 2020 have been characterized by both a renewed attention to systemic racism and a backlash intended to silence conversations about race. Critical Race Theory (CRT), in particular, has become a larger part of the public discourse around race than ever before. Although CRT developed in the 1980s as a critical approach in legal studies and was incorporated into social psychology in the 1990s, psychology's engagement with CRT has been much more limited than that of other fields. In two installments, this special issue aims to (re)introduce psychological researchers to Critical Race Theory (CRT), to underscore CRT's importance and limitations in the context of psychological research, to feature novel applications and new directions in CRT, and to address the current political climate of opposition to discussions of CRT. The first installment looks inward to examine how psychology can more effectively advance racial equity within the field and the research we conduct by continuing to incorporate a CRT lens throughout higher education and research. The second installment looks outward to highlight psychological research that uses CRT frameworks to advance racial justice in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID‐19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that Black and Latinx communities experienced a disproportionate burden of illness. The goal of this study is to investigate laypeople's attribution of these disparities. We hypothesized the following four potential attributions: external causes (e.g. systemic racism), internal causes (e.g. personal choices), cultural causes (e.g., being close knit), or genetic causes (e.g., being more vulnerable for genetic reasons). Data from 447 participants revealed that lay theories involving external factors were the most endorsed, whereas theories relating to genetic causes were the least endorsed. Our analyses further revealed that external attributions predicted broader COVID‐19 relevant outcomes (i.e., perceived threat of COVID‐19, adherence to CDC guidelines, and support for government policies in response to COVID‐19), even after controlling for political orientation, participant race, and other attributions. This research provides insight into how lay people's explanations for disparities can predict their reactions to the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether multicultural personality orientation as measured by the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire short form (MPQ) predicted intergroup forgiveness, decisions to forgive, revenge intentions, and avoidance intentions in the context of U.S. political conflict. We conducted three replicated studies across three different political, contextual samples. Study 1 was collected from a majority liberal, majority People of Color sample (N = 301), Study 2 was a majority liberal, majority White sample (N = 125), and Study 3 was a majority conservative, majority White sample (N = 160). Participants in these studies completed items from the MPQ short form and read a hypothetical political violence event committed against their political ingroup by a political outgroup. Overall, we found that the cultural empathy subscale of the MPQ short form was a consistent positive predictor of forgiveness even in the presence of other relevant predictors such as strength of ingroup identification and political ideology. We also performed a mini meta‐analysis across our three collected studies which further supported cultural empathy as a consistent positive predictor of intergroup forgiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 1944 article, Prospect of a World Without Racial Conflict, W.E.B. DuBois hypothesized that we would never live in a world without racial division. With this in mind, we highlight how neoliberal ideologies promote policy, actions, and an idea of peace that upholds racial inequality in the United States. We consider how neoliberal tenets, such as free market trust and individual responsibility, reflect and promote misperceptions of racial conflict and impact colorblind perceptions of peace and justice. These perceptions promote definitions of conflict as physical violence versus systemic violence, ignore racial equality as a path to peace in favor of harmonious interaction, and highlight individuals as responsible for racial conflict as opposed to the system. In response, we argue for counter‐definitions of peace that explicitly acknowledge systemic violence and prioritize justice within the racial conflict context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his address to the APA, King (1968) suggested that critical consciousness about racism, based on realities of African American experience, could serve as a tool for creative maladjustment: resistance to collective delusions and refusal to assimilate to pathological norms of a racist society. In this article, we summarize a program of research that applies decolonial perspectives of cultural psychology and a focus on the intentionality of everyday worlds to the topic of creative maladjustment. In particular, we consider the potential of critical historical consciousness, rooted in the experience of racially subordinated communities, as a resource for perception of injustice and support for policies designed to restore social justice. Hegemonic knowledge institutions (including psychological science) have evolved via cultural selection to protect White comfort and to promote White ignorance. An anti‐racist response requires investment in knowledge forms that challenge White delusions and afford creative maladjustment to systems of oppression—a task that King highlighted for psychologists more than 50 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]