Howarth, C., & Hook, D. (2005). Towards a critical social psychology of racism: Points of disruption [Editorial]. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 15(6), 425–431. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.840
Abstract
One of the questions that the papers here as a whole invite is what is or what should be the point of a critical social psychology of racism? What questions should such an approach propose? What this special issue contributes to the study of racism is a focus on disruption, resistance and transformative practices. While social psychology has often preferred approaches that account for the expression of racism and/or the psychological consequences of racism. This special issue as a whole makes a very significant argument: that a critical social psychology of racism needs to consider the social and psychological possibilities and conditions for disrupting racialising practices and claims to privilege, belonging and knowing. Proposals of how Social Psychology should study racism are also given in the paper Studying talk and embodied practices: Towards a psychology of materiality of ‘race relations’ by Kevin Durrheim and John Dixon. Critical antiracist work must therefore remain aware that recourse to the language and logics of ‘race’ remains always tethered to a set of conceptualizations that never completely escapes the horizon of racialization brought about by racism itself. If social psychology is to make a useful contribution to the analysis of racism, we suggest we need to explore the ways in which it becomes unintelligible, problematic, contested and rejected in people’s everyday sense-making, cultural practices and social relationships.