Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education

• In Event: 28.036 - Four Recent Books' Contributions to White Teacher Identity Studies: A Discussion With the Authors

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Discussing race and racism often conjures up emotions of guilt, shame, anger, defensiveness, denial, sadness, dissonance, and discomfort. Yet, when applying racial psychoanalysis, these are just surface emotions that often mask deeper underlying or suppressed feelings, coined emotionalities of whiteness. Though less deconstructed, they are, nonetheless, important to identify, understand, and deconstruct if one ever hopes to fully commit to racial equity. This book delves deeper into these white emotionalities and other latent ones by providing theoretical and psychoanalytic analyses to determine where these emotions so stem, how they operate, and how they perpetuate racial inequities in education and society. 

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The book draws from a variety of critical theories of race and emotions to provide a more a holistic and complex analysis of how emotions are tied to a racialized society. For example, Critical Race Theory (CRT) focuses on the systemic dynamics of race, racism, and white supremacy (Ladson-Billings, 2004). Thus, CRT demonstrates how whiteness connects to the overarching institution of white supremacy and how that then impacts both whites (via whiteness) and People of Color (via racism). Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) is a transdisciplinary approach to focusing on enactment of whiteness in society (Leonardo, 2002). Therefore, using CWS allows for the book to directly focus on whiteness, specifically how emotions are used as a way to uphold the hegemony of whiteness. As Fanon (1967) and Cheng (2000) suggest the field of psychoanalytics delves more deeply into what lies at the root of some of these common recurring white emotions.

Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry
The book weaves in creative writing and CRT’s counterstorytelling (see Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) with theoretical work to illustrate how these emotions operate while also engaging the reader in an emotional experience in and of itself, claiming one must feel to understand. Helms (1990) argues whites must go through the jungle of racial identity before they are apt enough to lead others; a process that many white teachers then must undergo in order to be prepared for their students of Color. This book does not rehash former race concepts; rather, it applies them in novel ways that get at the heart of humanity, thus revealing how feeling white ultimately impacts race relations. 

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Drawing from a variety of sources as surveys and coursework of pre-service white teachers, storytelling, and narratives the book weaves in both empirical and theoretical ruminations.
 
Results & Scholarly Significance
The book is the first to identify the existence of white emotionalities. Without a proper investigation on these underlying racialized emotionalities, the field of education denies itself a proper preparation so needed to engage in prolonged educative projects of racial and social justice.  By digging deep to what impacts humanity most—our hearts—this book dares to expose one’s daily experiences with race, thus individually challenging us all to self-investigate our own racialized emotionalities.

Author

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of Colorado - Denver