Through laughter and through tears: emotional narratives to antiracist pedagogy

If as a collective society we desire to challenge oppression as it exists, we must individually commit to learning about race, in all its facets, and racism as an institution at an emotional level. Although there are many ways to accomplish these ends, antiracist pedagogy – as antioppressive education – is an effective method to do so through its focus on the intersections of race. This study shares how participants in a higher education classroom emotionally experienced studying race and racism. Using a narrative inquiry hybrid, results of this inquiry include how emotions are at the core of such learning, particularly because they can be racially segregated and relationally complex. The lack of research about the relationship between racism and emotions is felt acutely in higher education classrooms, so this study contributes to our understandings of antioppressive pedagogy in such classrooms. Since the overall goal of antiracist pedagogy is antiracist change and classroom emotions are an impending result, the dilemma of focusing on emotions persists. Subsequent implications for antiracist pedagogy specifically, and antioppressive pedagogies broadly, include explicitly addressing the emotionality of antiracism as an ongoing praxis.