Feeling Race: The Significance of Emotionality in Antiracist Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Scholars need to think seriously about how research, as a discursive practice, can perpetuate white racial power through the minimization of emotions. Those who do antiracist work understand that it is intense emotional labor. Yet, critical discussions of this emotional labor are scant. Disrupting dominant white supremacist patriarchal notions about the alleged importance of reason over emotion, this panel asserts that racialized emotions, and emotional discourse, have the power to both traumatize and liberate. Drawing from various critical theories, panelists re-imagine approaches to antiracist pedagogy and research that make emotionality more central. From critiques of whites’ public emotions to reflections on the inner worlds of antiracist educators, emotions are given new life so that we may feel race openly.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Education

Chair

• Michael E. Jennings, The University of Texas - San Antonio

Papers

• When Emotions Talk, Everyone Listens: Graduate School Antiracist Pedagogy - Tanetha Jamay Grosland, University of South Florida

• Shame, Race, and Power in South African Higher Education - Ronelle L. Carolissen, Stellenbosch University; Vivienne Grace Bozalek, University of the Western Cape

• When Saying You Care Is Not Really Caring: Whiteness and the Role of Disgust - Cheryl E. Matias, University of Colorado - Denver; Michalinos Zembylas, The Open University of Cyprus

• The Pain of Racial Treason: A White Antiracist’s Psychosocial Battles - Ricky Lee Allen, University of New Mexico

Discussant

• Theodorea Regina Berry, The University of Texas - San Antonio