Theory, Policy & Social Justice
We live in a complex world with many different moving parts. Our life experience is certainly impacted by our choices, but those choices themselves take place in a wider social, political, and economic context. Even the very choices we have at our disposal can be expanded or restricted by the structures and policies that “make up” that broader world. Although we do not usually “see” how public policy, politics, and economic structure affect our lives, we can “feel” their effects even when we are not aware of them.
We can think narrowly of racial, gender, sexual orientation, or class based prejudice, for example, as “bad thoughts” and “bad behavior” enacted by “bad actors.” That feels more concrete and real because we are able to see someone acting in a biased way. In the absence of a concrete and specific racist, sexist, cisheterosexist, classist person being biased, we can nonetheless feel the structural, systemic impact of racial and economic inequality when we worry if we will be able to make rent this month, when we have to choose between buying food or paying medical bills. Similarly, seemingly intimate questions around dating and finding love, or having children and raising a family, can be impacted by these wider structural forces. Policy at the political and structural level winds up having a “domino effect” that trickles down into our lives.
Instead of seeing racism, cisheterosexism, or classism only or even primarily as prejudices to be “managed” at the individual level, we can begin to think of them as structures maintained by specific politics and policies. At the Fanon Lab, we are working on scholarship that helps us develop better theory and a stronger analysis of systemic injustice that provides clarity on the underlying root causes, while working toward identifying solutions at individual, communal, and systemic levels.
Our current work explores the contours of what scholars call “racial capitalism,” the ways in which race and class indelibly constitute one another or are “fused.” Using this model, we have explored how some of the ways that psychology thinks about racism are not only limited by an individualistic frame, but ignore the broader politics and economics that undergird it. We then identify specific universal and race-specific policies that would dismantle racial and economic inequality by targeting the power of economic elites who use racism to divide and conquer. An example of our work can be found in the recent American Psychologist special issue on racism in psychology (article link below), where we discuss the scholarly and policy implications of this framework:
We are building on this scholarship by extending this model to thinking on “racial capitalist patriarchy,” drawing on decolonial feminist thinking, critical race theory, and liberation psychology to explore how conversations around gender and sexuality can also be limited by an individualistic frame, and how a structural analysis yields concrete theory and policy that builds toward a more just world.