Community Psychology's abuse of empowerment to further a white supremacist agenda

Abstract

When White people are predominantly in power and the discipline has yet to grapple with its own involvement in oppressive and racist ideologies, the concept of empowerment has the potential of being misused, or worse, abused. This is my experience and observation within Community Psychology (CP). In this paper, I interrogate the history of CP, especially the interplay of colonized knowledge production practices and the concept of empowerment, and uncover the use and abuse of well-meaning community psychological principles by scholars and leaders without the critical racial awareness to apply them to communities to which they do not belong. Lastly, I offer a “slash and burn” approach to starting over.