Resisting the Coloniality and Colonialism of a Westernized Community Psychology: Toward a Critical Racial Justice Praxis

The institutional violence we are now experiencing, coupled with historical and ongoing waves of oppression, is a result and continuation of the legacy of colonialism. The outward eruptions that we are seeing over the last years are a result of American and Canadian settler nation-states that have taken hold in North America but are now in decline. Yet, the perpetuation of imperialism and white supremacist ideologies via the academe and other noneducational entities reproduced through curricula, pedagogy, and institutional policies and practices must still be addressed. The discipline of community psychology (CP) is no exception. As a part of the imperialist empire, CP, a mainstream academic discipline born at the heart of the empire of the colonial ruling class, continuously asks: What can we do? We, the authors of this paper, are troubled by this question and respond with a question of our own: Can community psychology really be part of the solution if it does not acknowledge that it is part of the problem? Through the lens of five Indigenous, Black, and racialized scholar-activists, educators, and practitioners, we identify three community psychology principles and argue that in practice within Black and Indigenous communities, they are not sufficient. Further, we illustrate that, related to these principles, community psychology is situated within what is termed the industrial complex, and we elucidate the implications of this situating. Lastly, we offer a proposal for how we, as part of the academe and practice, can decolonize community psychology and move it forward to align with current liberation movements and Indigenous sovereignty