Does environmental psychology afford an “effective context” for the study of structural racism?

Abstract

Recent manifestations of racial violence have renewed conversations about structural racism. An important question for psychologists concerns how they might contribute to scholarship that adequately illuminates and confronts structural racism. In this paper, we consider whether environmental psychology (EP)—a discipline unique in its attention to the everyday environment of psychological experience—can serve as a site for such scholarship. We critically review articles that mention racism in EP’s two leading journals (Journal of Environmental Psychology and Environment & Behavior). We find that of the roughly 4,500 articles published in the two journals, the word ‘racism’ appears in 45 articles, 10 of which effectively apply EP’s framework to illuminate and confront structural racism. We conclude by arguing for EP to shift toward a racism-conscious lens, until which an EP for the study of structural racism will remain unborn.