Unsettling the family sciences: Introducing settler colonial theory through a theoretical analysis of the family and racialized injustice

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I advance settler colonial theory (SCT) as a critical framework for antiracist and anticolonial family scholarship. Rather than a historical event, SCT describes settlement as a persistent and violent structure. SCT uniquely connects racialization to Indigenous erasure, anti‐Blackness, anti‐immigrant exclusion, and the ascendancy of Whiteness through intersectional analyses of belonging and otherness. In my discussion, I position the family as a key mechanism of settler colonialism, moving between the historical and contemporary phenomena of family formation and family separation in the United States. Weaving together tenets of SCT and the family, I provide a critical case analysis of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its colonial leanings. To conclude, I discuss the unique possibilities that emerge when family scientists utilize SCT to disrupt the structural power of the settler, contributing to the critical transformation of the family sciences.