Interrogating whiteness: Critical reflections on occupational science scholarship and social responsibility

Abstract

This paper interrogates the obscurity of whiteness and white supremacy as a system of thought and white racialization as a social process influencing habits of inquiry in occupational science research. By attending to the relationships between whiteness, white supremacy, and occupation, occupational science scholars can critically engage in research that dismantles harmful societal understandings of occupation within their science and in society-at-large. This social responsibility further requires occupational science scholars to initiate anti-racist research and scholarship that actively seeks undoing normalized structural racism by taking up critical theories authored by theorists of Color. Doing so offers alternate ways of conceptualizing human doing, thinking, being, knowing, becoming, and belonging pertinent to people across racialized identities. Critical epistemologies and research approaches, such as critical participatory action research, hold potential for the discipline to ethically produce anti-racist research applicable to diverse populations. However, whiteness must be attended to and deconstructed throughout research processes.