The Domain of the Un/sayable: Troubling Classroom Race Talk in Antiracist Teacher Education

• In Event: Teaching for Social Justice: Antiracist Teacher Education in Historically White Institutions

Abstract

This paper troubles the use of dialogue as a pedagogical tool in antiracist teacher education. Authors interrogate a “hot spot” of racialized affective intensity that arose in dialogue about race (“race talk”) in one university classroom as a starting point to theorize the domain of what is “sayable” in such spaces. Using emotionality and spatiality as conceptual lenses, authors find that the borders of what was acceptable for a Black teacher candidate (TC) to say (or sayable) was dictated by the sociocultural norms of whiteness—which shape the dominant culture of teacher education—and policed by teacher educators based on their emotional discomfort and desires. Implications for practice and research in antiracist teacher education are articulated.

Authors

• Esther Oganda Ohito, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

• Sherry Lynn Deckman, Lehman College, CUNY