Pdf Matias, C

. “And Our Feelings Just Don’t Feel It Anymore”: Re-Feeling Whiteness, Resistance, and Emotionality Inclusion Cheryl E. Matias, Ph.D. University of Colorado, Denver Social Equity andSocial Equity Abstract To effectively deliver racially just projects, we must theoretically understand from where emotional resistance to them stems, why this resistance is regularly expressed, and what role it plays in stifling antiracism. This theoretical interpretative paper examines how emotional investment in whiteness recycles normative behaviors of white resistance and unveils how it painfully reinforce the supremacy of whiteness. Using a black feminist approach to emotionality and an atrix Center for the of the Advancement for atrix Center interdisciplinary approach to critical whiteness studies and critical race he M he theory, this paper begins with positing how the emotions of white T resistance are rooted in the shame of revealing a repressed childhood and racial abuse. The concern is twofold. First, what happens to the child, now grown, when confronted with moments that reveal this repressed traumatic past? Second, how do these emotional outbursts, regardless of whether they are intentional or malicious, continue to silence, racially microaggress, and ultimately hurt people of color? Methodologically, this paper employs counterstorytelling to illustrate how these emotional behaviors force an interconnected process of pain—one that gets Privilege Conference Privilege erroneously projected onto people of color rather than therapeutically onto the self. When whites refuse to project their racial shame onto White people of color they emotionally invest in a therapy out of whiteness. he he Assistant Professor ournal of T Urban Community Teacher Education and Educational Foundations Understanding & Dismantling Privilege School of Education and Human Development The Official J The Official Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Matias: “And Our Feelings…” “It’s not about race anymore!” she composure of the class. Later, these students screamed with tears streaming down her reported this professor’s “bad behavior” to face. “We have Oprah, Obama, and Kobe the administration team, claiming she was Bryant!” While shouting this, Truley, a “trying to make them feel bad.” Yet what white teacher candidate matriculated in an was not reported to—nor asked by—the urban-focused teacher preparation (mostly white) administration was, “Why program, fidgeted in her lecture hall chair are you feeling so ‘bad’?” Seemingly, like a snake-wielding zealot at an discussing race in a course titled “Social Appalachian church revival. Some of her Foundations and Issues of Diversity in classmates’ faces hung low, hoping to Urban Education”—a requisite first course escape the shame of this emotional outburst. of the school’s urban-focused teacher They opted to feign emotional frozenness,i preparation program—was too unnerving. while others nodded in obvious resolute Yet the question is, why? Why are the solidarity; some even rushed to emotional sensibilities of these students so sympathetically rub her back, offer tissues, intense when engaging in a conversation and throw piercing looks at the professor of about race if, as they claim, race is not an color who was lecturing on race. issue anymore? Plainly stated, what was Truley so angry and defensive about if race Before I present my theoretical and means nothing? This emotional intensity psychoanalytic interpretation of resistance undergirds students’ resistance to learning embedded within the emotionality of about race when openness to the subject is a whiteness, I acknowledge such a necessary tool in the antiracist learning conceptualization may surface feelings of process, for teachers cannot engage in sadness, anger, defensiveness, and/or guilt. antiracist endeavors if they cannot bear to These emotions may be expressed by (1) utter the word “race.” discrediting the literature; (2) disputing the overarching claim on premises like Although resistance is theorized in a methodology; and/or (3) projecting the angst multitude of ways, namely to investigate it may surface onto the author herself. I do how marginalized students resist schooling not present this framework to blame (Giroux, 2001; Solórzano & Bernal, 2001; whites—rather, to interrogate the emotional Willis, 1977), few scholars theorize the manifestation of whiteness and to show how emotional root causes of white students’ by doing so we, as antiracist educators, are resistance to the growing number of better prepared for the emotional resistance educators/researchers of color (Matias, that comes with our dedication to racially 2012a; Rodriquez, 2009). Wouldn’t there be just projects. value to theorizing upon these emotional causes? This theoretical and interpretive Regardless of the manner in which article claims there is something to be said this white teacher candidate and all her about what undergirds racialized emotions. whiteii classmates responded, the intoxication of emotional tension suffocated Some may question the role of the dialogue such that the professor (the emotions by inquiring whether emotions are only person of color in the room) fearfully simply self-initiated, dynamics of scrambled to find a way to regain the individuality unscathed by social ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 135 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Matias: “And Our Feelings…” constructions. On the contrary, emotions, As the only tenure-line professor of like gender identity and race, are socially color in an urban-focused teacher constructed, yet become so internalized and preparation program of a large, urban, self-produced that their relationship to social Rocky Mountain West university with conditions goes unnoticed (Ahmed, 2004; predominantly white teacher candidates, I Boler, 1999; Leonardo & Zembylas, 2013). am preoccupied with this topic. If I want to Within this invisibility, racial dominance, best prepare white teachers for the realities like whiteness, is maintained precisely of race in urban teaching, they must be able because emotional displays of whiteness are to emotionally withstand a conversation assumed to be nonracial despite being very about race itself lest they be disingenuous racialized reactions. In the case of the above about their antiracist teaching endeavors. A counterstory, although Truley makes a lackluster approach will continue to contradictory racialized claim—that it is reinforce the hegemony of whiteness upon “not about race anymore” but singles out urban students of color, a process that hurts only famous African Americans—she their emotional, mental, and educational assumes that her emotional behavior is not development. Metaphorically, the ability to tied to a racialized condition. To illuminate discuss race must be as organic as a tail is to this situation’s contrary, consider how a a dog: Without the emotional fortitude to group of people would socially respond if invest in learning about race, racism, and one person decided to laugh derisively at a white supremacy, white teacher candidates commercial pleading for donations for will hold the reality of antiracism like one starving African children? Just as bad holds water in one hand, i.e., it will be a behavior by Japanese preschool students can thought never actualized. be modified by social shunning (Tubin, Wu, & Davidson, 1991), so too can racialized This article explores theories of emotional responses be modified by similar emotions as applied to whiteness in social constructions. That is, our emotions education by drawing from critical race are surveilled by power structures (see theory (CRT), critical whiteness studies Foucault, 1977), such as the hegemony of (CWS), and black feminism. It seeks to race, also known as white supremacy. unveil theoretical considerations as to why Consider how the lecture would have white students emotionally resist learning proceeded if Truley’s outburst had not been about race and racism so that antiracist met with silence, agreement, comforting, instructors can have a more nuanced and diversion. If, instead, her peers had understanding of how emotions play a role noted or confronted her contradiction, would in such resistance and be better prepared to the spell of whiteness have been broken by a identify these emotions. Although variations revealing discussion of race? Truley, her of white resistance may exist—along with white classmates, and her professor of color the possibly that there is no such are all complicit in engaging in whiteness, resistance—within white antiracist racists,iii which thus maintains white supremacy, the analysis of white racism is still albeit their responses stem from different structured under white supremacy. means: one from racial ignorance and blithe Therefore, despite the degree of resistance white racial solidarity, one to protect herself (or assumed lack thereof), the manifestations from this supremacy. are not exempt from white supremacy. So, although I recognize and commend the efforts of white individuals who engage in ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 136 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Matias: “And Our Feelings…” antiracist endeavors and may define their “What’s This About Feelings?!”: behaviors as “not resistive,” this paper Theorizing Emotion acknowledges the overarching state of white supremacy that continues to structure whites And our feelings at the racial apex. As such, I employ the Just aren't feelings anymore term “whites” to acknowledge the structural

Load more