Toward a moral reckoning on structural racism: Examining structural factors, encouraging structural thinking, and supporting structural intervention

Abstract

The racial reckoning of 2020 involved the largest social movement protest in U.S. history, but support for the Black Lives Matter movement declined shortly after. To advance a moral reckoning on structural racism that dismantles racialized structures and redresses racial inequities, we call on scholar activists within the field of community psychology to realign their own practices by (a) examining structural factors; (b) encouraging structural thinking; and (c) supporting structural intervention for racial justice. Two structural factors–political determinants and commercial determinants–maintain the status quo of structural racism, undermining efforts for racial equity. As a result, we encourage the development of structural thinking, which provides a structural analysis of racism and leads to support for structural intervention. With an intersectional race and class perspective, we detail how structural thinking could be developed among the professional managerial class (through structural competency) and among the oppressed class (through critical consciousness). Finally, we discuss structural intervention factors and approaches that can redress racial inequities and produce structural change. Ultimately, we provide a pathway for community psychologists to support activists building a multiracial, multiclass coalition to eliminate structures and systems of racial, political, and economic injustice.