Reimagining worlds without whiteness: A research-to-podcast journey through counter-modernity inquiry.

Abstract

Whiteness is like an invasive weed. By “whiteness,” we do not mean white people, but a harmful social construct invented to uphold power through division and justifying violence—harming all, regardless of race. Entangled with capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and colonial/modern-gender systems, whiteness fuels coloniality by taking root in thoughts, behaviors, relationships, communities, and institutions—including community psychology. Although the field positions itself as committed to social justice and liberation, its practices often remain entangled with unexamined operations of whiteness rooted in modernist ways of knowing and being that reproduce colonial hierarchies. This reflexive case study examines the Reimagining Worlds Without Whiteness research-to-podcast project which engaged 26 multiracial participants as co-researchers from diverse disciplines across the U.S. and Europe and responds to community psychology’s lack of frameworks for interrogating whiteness as a structural system. The project addresses the research gap by: (1) advancing theoretical contributions through counter-modernity inquiry that resists colonial logics; (2) developing methodological innovations that move beyond critique toward co-creation; and (3) producing practical decolonial tools that actively challenge and dismantle whiteness. These tools include: (a) an invasive species metaphor for whiteness; (b) a five-step emergent framework for naming whiteness, seeing it, uprooting its harmful thoughts and behaviors, composting its emotional residues, and planting new worlds without it (i.e., reimagining); and (c) a public podcast extending these tools beyond academia. Together, these outputs provide tangible strategies for engaging whiteness reflexively, collaboratively, and creatively, offering community psychology a pathway from critique toward transformative structural change within and beyond the field.