Understanding systemic racism: Anti-Blackness, white supremacy, racial capitalism, and the re/creation of white space and time

Abstract

In this article, the authors explain systemic racism through a racial-spatial framework wherein anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and racial capitalism interlock to create and recreate white space and time. Through the creation of private property, institutional inequities become embedded and structured for the benefit of white people. The framework provides a way to conceptualize how our geographies are racialized and how time is often used against Black and non-Black people of Color. In contrast to white experiences of feeling "in-place" almost everywhere, Black and non-Black people of Color continually experience displacement and dispossession of both their place and their time. This racial-spatial onto-epistemology is derived from the knowledge and experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other non-Black people of Color, and how they have learned through acculturation, racial trauma, and micro-aggressions to thrive in white spaces and contend with racism such as time-theft. The authors posit that through reclaiming space and time, Black and non-Black people of Color can imagine and practice possibilities that center their lived experiences and knowledge as well as elevate their communities. Recognizing the importance of reclaiming space and time, the authors encourage counseling psychology researchers, educators, and practitioners to consider their positionalities with respect to systemic racism and the advantages it confers to white people. Through the process of creating counterspaces and using counterstorytelling, practitioners may help clients develop healing and nurturing ecologies that challenge the perniciousness of systemic racism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).