Title: Racialised emotions as maps for navigating Learning Facilitators’ experiences teaching students about identity.
Author: Dr. Marthinus Conradie, University of the Free State
Ensovoort, volume 46 (2025), number 5: 1
Keywords: critical race theory, racialised emotions, racism, race, teaching, university
Abstract
Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) conceptualisation of racialised emotions provides a critical lens for unpacking the affective components of everyday experiences that shape racialised, gendered and intersectional subjectivities. This study mobilises his conceptualisation to examine the experiences of part-time teachers at a South African university. The experiences these teachers narrated are evaluated to understand how the racialised emotions they relate impact the formation of subjectivity in relation to systemic injustice. In this regard, the study responds to Rolon-Dow’s (2024) application of Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) work by expanding her application of the concept. The racialised emotions narrated by these part-time teachers offer important insights into their efforts to teach students what it means to think about racialised and gendered identities as socially constructed, instead of essential. The study focuses specifically on part-time teachers who identify as black, South African women, and on their experiences with students who also identify along the same intersectional axes.
Introduction
This study responds to Rolon-Dow’s (2024) exhortation that those seeking to advance racial justice at institutions of higher learning should examine commonplace racialised experiences that mediate the formation of subjectivity – including the affective dimensions of these experiences. The contemporary relevance of such research can be strengthened by unpacking the various ways in which participants not only feel, but also make sense of “racialised emotions” (Bonilla-Silva, 2019: 2). The central contribution of Rolon-Dow’s (2024) research is to map sets of racialised emotions – as experienced by students of colour at a predominantly white institution (PWI) in the United States of America (US). The present project expands Rolon-Dow’s (2024) work on several levels, as detailed below.
First, this study involves participants from South Africa, thus expanding the university settings in which racialised emotions are being studied in relation to systemic marginalisation. Secondly, and more importantly, instead of focusing on interactions between people who identify along different racialised positionalities such as white and black or different gendered axes such as cis-gendered male and female, this study sheds light on interactions between people who identify along similar intersectional lines, as explained below. Thirdly, this study concentrates on experiences that occurred between undergraduate students and Learning Facilitators (LFs). LFs, in the context of this study, are contractually-employed teachers. They are required to introduce students to the proposition that social identities are not inherent, but socially constructed.
LFs, given the teaching they are required to provide to students, are uniquely positioned to engage difficult issues around identity – but this also makes them uniquely vulnerable in terms of the emotional dynamics involved in teaching. For instance, if LFs encounter resistance from students, they are vulnerable to emotions such as frustration and disappointment. To optimise the conditions under which LFs work, it is important to gain insight into the way they feel and manage such emotions.
However, instead of taking a broad approach, this research project focuses on a specific group of LFs. It centres the emotional dimensions of the experiences narrated by LFs who self-identify as South African black cis-gendered women who are responsible for teaching small groups of first-year students about the socially constructed nature of racial and gender identities. Most of these students also self-identify as South African black cis-gendered women.
Following Rolon-Dow (2024: 2), this project begins with an acknowledgement that a core component of the everyday experiences that shape intersectional subjectivities are, “the emotional charge that [these experiences] elicit”. To do this, Rolon-Dow (2024) collected narratives in which students of colour explicate 1) the racialised emotions they experienced on a regular basis, and 2) the role these emotions played in helping students navigate life at a PWI. Similarly, for the current study, I conducted individual interviews with LFs about their experiences while teaching students, aiming to understand the racialised (and gendered) emotions LFs recalled, as well as the functions these emotions play for them. The rest of this introduction briefly contextualises the study in relation to Rolon-Dow (2024) and other CRT work.
Rolon-Dow (2024) adheres to a critical race theoretic (CRT) perspective by insisting that lived experiences of racism and intersectional oppression are embedded in systemically unjust arrangements (Brooks, 2023, Madva, Kelly and Brownstein, 2023). Systemic factors such as oppressive economic structures and pedagogies rooted in whiteness and anti-black racism impact how minoritized students experience their lives at institutions of higher learning (Hytten and Stemhagen, 2023; Zembylas, 2022; Doharty, 2020; Bonilla-Silva, 2019; Keisha, 2019).
My study expands this scholarly tradition by focusing on a specific set of experiences as narrated by LFs who identify as black South African women. The experiences that constitute the focus of this article transpired in the following context. The LFs were teaching small groups of first-year students to think about race, gender and intersectional identities as socially constructed. While doing this, they (the LFs) encountered an unexpected level of resistance from students, especially from those who also self-identify as black women. Students questioned the appropriateness of framing race and gender as socially constructed. In fact, some students went as far as opining that viewing race and gender as constructed rather than inherent reflects, “white ideas that can weaken black people’s commitment to their own ideas”. From a CRT perspective, this might seem like a strange proposition, given that theorising race and gender as socially constructed has been a potent driver of projects towards racial and intersectional justice. The analysis presented in this study attempts to make sense of these encounters between LFs and students, specifically by attending to racialised emotions as theorised by Bonilla-Silva (2019) and as applied by Rolon-Dow (2024).
By taking a CRT approach to these interviews, the study seeks to critically examine how the above experiences are embedded in systemic and intersectional forms of contemporary injustice at a South African university. Specific attention is paid to the racialised emotions LFs narrated during interviews, and the functions these emotions served for them. The results of the study are likely to prove relevant to other institutions of higher learning where part-time teachers are required to engage sensitive topics such as identity.
CRT and racialised emotions
This section explains how CRT grounds the study, its objectives and procedures. It begins by outlining the relationship between CRT and racialised emotions.
Racialised emotions (RE) in Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) conceptualisation designates the emotions induced by racially oppressive societies, with the result that groups and individuals feel these emotions during the process of coming to terms with the way race is constructed and entangled with power, within unequal societies. The concrete consequence is that: “Racial actors, both dominant and subordinate, simply cannot transact their lives without RE” and “Accordingly, races fashion an emotional subjectivity generally fitting of their location in the racial order” (Bonilla-Silva, 2019: 2). Research grounded in this tenet endeavours to understand 1) the RE reported by participants and 2) how these RE reflect participants’ location in a racial order. Undertaking such research can contribute towards efforts to expand justice, as suggested in the conclusion.
Grounding my approach to RE in the five core tenets of CRT has the following consequences. First, universities are viewed as institutions that are inextricably embedded in structurally unjust societies, but this embeddedness also means that universities can play a potent role in perpetuating or unmaking oppression. Sustained research is therefore crucial if universities are to make a positive contribution to undoing structural marginalisation. Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) theorisation of RE reminds scholars that the systemic nature of oppression is not abstract. Instead, the oppression experienced on campuses are also profoundly personal and intimate. Additionally, in keeping with CRT, I approach RE from an intersectional lens. That is to say, although the research participants specifically framed their emotions in terms of racialised identities, they also flagged gender at certain junctions, making the idiosyncratic interplay between race and gender vital for understanding the function that emotions played for the LFs.
Second, CRT challenges dominant ideologies within and beyond universities by unmasking the various ways in which these ideologies allow racial and intersectional marginalisation to persist. With regards to RE, the implication is that although emotions are often denigrated as a purely personal reaction, and as something individuals must learn to control for the sake of functioning within an institution that values cognition and rationality, they are in fact crucial. The RE that LFs experience illuminate aspects of the intersectional climate that prevails on the campus and the liberty with which LFs can address important questions around identity and justice.
Third, one of the central ways in which CRT makes the above-mentioned challenge to dominant ideologies is by relying on the lived experiences of subordinated and minoritized groups. Women of colour who endure the oppressive force of whiteness and patriarchy can, therefore, yield pivotal insights into which ideologies must be challenged and how. For this reason, any attempt to study RE, must draw from the insights offered by people who identify as members of subordinated groups.
Fourth, CRT mobilises interdisciplinary knowledge by enabling researchers to draw from a wide range of analytic frameworks including discourse analysis and affect theory (Hytten and Stemhagen, 2023; Zembylas, 2022; Doharty, 2020; Bonilla-Silva, 2019; Keisha, 2019). In this regard, Rolon-Dow (2024) offers a suitable starting point. Her analysis provides a provocative and insightful analytic framework with which to examine both the types of RE research participants shared, and how participants assigned meaning to the RE they experienced.
Finally, CRT is committed to advancing social justice. One of the ways in which both Rolon-Dow (2024) and the current study seek to achieve this goal is by giving prominence to the voices of research participants who identify as black women. Their lived experiences shed light on areas where universities must become more inclusive and attentive to oppressive power dynamics. The LFs who consented to participate in this study proved eager to share their experiences, because they expected that it might reach a wider audience and thus contribute towards social justice.
Within the above-mentioned framework, it might seem surprising that LFs who identify as black South African women would encounter disagreement with students who also identify as black women – especially given that LFs are attempting to convey the standpoint that intersectional identities are fluid, contingent and discursively-mediated, rather than fixed or monolithic. After all, this approach to identity has driven efforts to uncover and contest white supremacist and patriarchal discourses that attempt to essentialise subordinated people, specifically to normalise oppressive social structures (Steyn, 2015). If we accept that, “races fashion an emotional subjectivity generally fitting of their location in the racial order” one might expect that those who identify along similar lines would express similar levels of appreciation for and commitment to ideas such as the claim that identities are socially constructed. In fact, during the interviews, the LFs under study expressed great surprise, disappointment and frustration about the resistance they encountered from students. This pattern in the interviews prompted the selection of RE and Rolon-Dow (2024) as a theoretically-grounded means of making sense of this pattern.
Rolon-Dow’s (2024) research certainly supports the expectation that LFs and students who identity along similar axes might concur instead of disagreeing. Her findings suggest that the ways in which racialisation plays out in contemporary PWIs is often subtle, multilayered and confusing. However, once participants become attuned to RE they can use them as compasses for navigating PWIs. That is to say that feeling emotions such as, “anger, exclusion, and discomfort” alerts participants to the reality that they are indeed being subjected to a subtle form of racism, which they might have overlooked or suppressed if they had not attended to their emotional reactions (Rolon-Dow, 2024: 8). When participants acknowledged feelings such as anger, frustration and disappointment, they were better able to respond constructively and with resilience in the face of everyday manifestations of racism and sexism.
However, the experiences studied by Rolon-Dow (2024) occurred when students who identify as people of colour interacted with people they identified as white. The present study engages a different context and a different set of interactions. The South African university where LFs were recruited is not a PWI in terms of student demographics. Most members of the student population identify as black and female. Additionally, the interactions under study transpired between LFs and students who identify along similar interactional axes, which challenges easy efforts to make sense of the disappointment and frustration LFs recounted during the interviews.
Overall, my interpretation of the findings dovetails with Rolon-Dow’s (2024). Even though the interactions under study here concern a different context and different dynamics, I argue that they still offer insights that must be taken seriously vis-à-vis the advancement of racial and intersectional injustices. To contextualise this argument, the next sections detail the recruitment, obligations and other relevant details of the LFs who consented to participate in this study.
What are LFs’ teaching obligations?
At the South African university under study, LFs are recruited to relieve the disproportionate ratio between students and full professors (academic members of staff with PhDs). Pedagogically speaking, LFs perform supporting roles. They are not required to present formal lectures. Instead, fully employed professors offer lectures, often to hundreds of students in one venue. LFs, on the other hand, only engage groups of 30-40 students – divided into two groups of 15-20. They are required to avoid teaching methods that treat students as passive recipients of knowledge in favour of prompting students to participate actively as co-producers of knowledge and producers around identity.
LFs are hired from a pool of students undertaking graduate research in fields related to cultural studies. They are trained to work with students by full professors in cultural studies, including feminist theory, critical race theory, ecocriticism and various branches of literary studies.
As far as first-year students are concerned, LFs are required to teach them what it entails to view racialised and gendered identities as socially constructed by relying on a selection of post-colonial literary texts. My field of study is CRT, which means that prior to undertaking this research, I needed to consult with LFs, the professors charged with training them and with the Head of Department to ensure that I understand the roles that LFs are required to play. All parties corroborated an understanding of LFs’ function to use postcolonial literature as a springboard for guiding first-year students to read social identities as constructed in a broad sense. Crucially, LFs are specifically required to foster opportunities for students to relate this theoretical principle to their own lives and experiential knowledge. However, exactly how LFs are required to do this is left to the LFs themselves. They are not trained in specific methods.
As such, LFs are not simply responsible for transmitting pre-existing knowledge, such as theoretical principles, to students. Rather, they must stimulate students into creating new, unique knowledge by bridging abstract theory with real-world experiences. For instance, LFs must prime students to think about how racialised and gendered identities are constructed in the communities they are familiar with, and how these identities intersect in complicated ways that cannot be neatly isolated from each other. Potentially, the work that LFs undertake can spur critical learning about the entanglements between identity and wider social forces, but sustained research is important to sharpen this potential.
In short, LFs must invite students to make sense of the reading materials on their own terms, while also encouraging peer-centred debate among students, which can prompt contradictions and disagreements. This is a demanding enterprise, and the study is partly impelled by an ambition to understand how LFs’ work can be supported and improved, with the aim of sharpening students’ critical thinking skills.
LFs’ demographic details
Thirteen LFs consented to participate in research interviews, but this study focuses on the narratives shared by seven LFs who self-identify as black South African women. These LFs expressed high levels of excitement at the prospect of teaching first-year students about intersectional identities. In particular, they explained that they viewed their sessions with students as opportunities to share theoretical approaches, which they consider liberatory and as vehicles for speaking back to power. Nevertheless, all these LFs also shared feelings of surprise, frustration and disappointment at the unexpected level of disagreement and tension they experienced when black female students evinced resistance against the ideas LFs were teaching.
During the interviews, these seven LFs explained that, over time, they felt a degree of familiarity with the reasons why black female students registered such high levels of ambivalence about framing identities as socially constructed. That is to say, the LFs eventually realised that they had encountered this kind of resistance before – which enabled them to use the RE they felt as compasses for navigating their relationships with students.
For context, it should be reiterated that most of the first-year students under LFs’ care self-identify as black, and most of these students also identify as cis-gendered women. Nevertheless, other intersectional differences still exist between these students and black-identifying LFs. Most notably, LFs have attained a higher level of education, and they hold a measure of authority over students. Moreover, many of them also come from financially stronger backgrounds relative to some of their students, many of whom face high levels of poverty.
Bearing these differences in mind, LFs expressed a personal and scholarly interest in sharpening their understanding of these intersectional differences, and participating in the interviews represented a means of reflecting on, and improving, their own teaching styles. More details regarding the LFs are shared in the next section. Here it should be mentioned that all these LFs had only acquired one year of teaching experience prior to participating in this study.
Rationale for researching LFs
Ethical clearance to include LFs in this study was secured from the Institutional Review Board and each LF. Individual interviews lasted around ninety minutes.
The significance of conducting research on LFs’ experiential knowledge flows from the observation that contractually-appointed university teachers are under-researched, particularly as far as teaching about identity in South African settings is concerned. Moreover, as Rolon-Dow (2024) and others (Zembylas, 2022; Doharty, 2020; Bonilla-Silva, 2019; Keisha, 2019) have observed, researching the experiential knowledge of those involved in sharing knowledge about identity, race, gender, racism, sexism and intersectional injustice is important – but more work is necessary to expand our knowledge about the emotional dynamics involved in the everyday experiences that characterise universities. This study offers a novel contribution by supplying an analysis of LFs’ reflections on the RE they discussed during interviews. As was the case with Rolon-Dow’s (2024: 14) study, “This empirical and theoretical contribution can inform practitioners […] who seek to best support students [and teachers] of colour.”
Unpacking the RE LFs discuss during interviews and the functions these emotions played for them can illuminate aspects of university teaching that stymie the critical learning about identity that LFs are supposed to advance. Taking a CRT stance when analysing the interviews implies that these micro-level interactions between LFs and students must be theorised as irrevocably embedded in broader systems, which must be changed if greater parity and justice are to be attained and normalised in university spaces.
Author positionality
Identifying as white and cis male renders critical self-reflection exigent on my part, and I relied on the steps promoted by Kerr (2020) and Corces-Zimmerman and Guida (2019). The steps they advocate provide specific and actionable methods for remaining attentive to institutional power in research.
First and foremost, Kerr (2020) and Corces-Zimmerman and Guida (2019) promote an approach to interviews that privilege the concerns of interviewees. Conscientious labour is necessary so that interviews are conducted as interactional moments where knowledge is co-constructed among equals. Doing this demands that interviewers avoid forcing their own priorities, concerns, theories and perspectives onto interviewees. In my case, this demanded inviting LFs to discuss the experiences they considered most relevant and vital in terms of what benefits they wanted to accrue from the interview process. Specific theoretical lenses and analytic frameworks were only selected and applied to the interviews following this open approach.
Another vital step occurred during the interviews and took the form of consistently communicating a high level of appreciation for the knowledge LFs could share. Steps were taken to make LFs feel that they have access to unique perspectives and that their experiential knowledge is valid and vital for the purpose of expanding social justice in university spaces. This proved particularly valuable since the LFs under study were committed to teaching about racialised, gendered and intersectional identities in ways they considered liberatory.
A final measure was to make the writing process transparent to research participants. Doing this entailed convening frequent discussions with participants to enable them to raise concerns about the research and to air their priorities for the goals the research should pursue. This step also proved essential, since LFs seized upon the opportunity to confirm that the RE they felt could yield fruitful insights that should be shared with a wide audience – provided that LFs remained anonymous.
The next section presents the findings of the discourse analysis of these interviews.
Results
Positive RE: Pride in, and solidarity with, students’ learning
Although this study is principally concerned with the RE which LFs identified as surprise, frustration and disappointment, it must be mentioned that some LFs also experienced moments of pride in the learning their students had accomplished, as well as a sense of solidarity with students’ willingness to link theory with personal experience. Admittedly, these RE were reported less frequently. However, they are nevertheless worth mentioning, since LFs expressed an aspiration to foster educational conditions that would, ideally, become more conducive to these RE in future.
Therefore, this section examines those portions of the interviews during which LFs expressed pride and solidarity. In all the extracts cited below, LFs are only identified with pseudonyms, as required by the Institutional Review Board.
Irlanda
I felt very proud of my students when they showed how they could link the idea that race is socially constructed with their own lives. Many of them explained how they’d experienced racism while growing up. They had white friends when they were small kids. When these white kids grew up, they eventually stopped being friends with my students. That’s how my students made the connection. They figured out that race is socially constructed become these white kids only learned that other white people expect them to not be friends with black people as they grew older. So, race might not mean anything in one context, and then it’s huge in another. I was proud of them when they got that, but I also felt sad that they’d experienced it in the first place, but getting it out was necessary.
As demonstrated in this extract, RE are often multilayered and complex. On the one hand, this LF reported feeling saddened by what her students had shared regarding their early childhood experiences with South African children racialised as white. She explains that the teaching session with her students induces a level of discomfort, because she created a moment when students confronted hurtful emotions such as the rejection generated by racism. Nonetheless, despite this discomfort, she also expressed confidence that the process of “getting it out was necessary”. This, in turn, drives her pride not simply in terms of the academic accomplishments her students displayed by coming to grips with a theoretical principle about identity, but regarding students’ courage to, “link the idea that race is socially constructed with their own lives”.
The function of this confluence of RE was to convince this LF, and others, that the work they do with students is important and valuable.
Alia
It’s not always comfortable. It’s not always easy, especially when students start talking about things that still hurt and still anger them, like white friends they had growing up and who then basically started segregating themselves during high school and even on campus where you’d think there’d more interracial friendships. But also students don’t often get to talk about these things and as LFs we get to give them that chance to see that these things that happen are not just things to forget. Instead, they are things you can actually study here on this campus. It makes me feel like we make a difference.
Fayala
It’s pretty special when you can tell students that life is not about the body you are born with. That body does not mean anything outside society. It’s really about how society makes that body mean something, because that means that we can change what bodies mean. We can change racism and sexism and we can do that by changing how people are raised, which is hopeful. I am proud of my students for sharing what they went through and for being willing to see that they can make it part of what they study.
As these reflections illustrate, such RE are vital sources of motivation for LFs. However, from a CRT perspective, they also signal the intensity of the labour that LFs undertake. At the university under study, being appointed to the ranks of the LFs is often advertised as a means of gaining teaching experience and, consequently, as a potential step towards becoming a rounded scholar with both research and classroom experience. However, while this stance is not without merit, the interviews showcase that even when LFs report positive RE such as pride in their students’ learning, the process is fraught with complexity. Viewed through the lens of CRT, this complexity must be seen as reflecting intersectionally unjust arrangements within and beyond the university.
As Rolon-Dow (2024: 15) articulates the point, “If higher education institutions were more racially diverse, they would not require students of colour to navigate through often hostile campus environments.” In relation to the excerpts above, it could be added that if the communities where students grew up were more racially inclusive, then students would not need to navigate racial hostility during their childhoods. However, given that such childhood experiences still occur, regrettably, universities where critical thinking is advocated as a value must offer opportunities to theorise these experiences. Such undertakings must enable students to read their experiences in terms of the systemic forces that drive them. Opportunities must also be fostered to formulate meaningful solutions. LFs have both an opportunity and aspiration to participate in this process, but to do so effectively, they require support as illustrated next.
Negative RE: Surprise, frustration and disappointment
The precept that social identities are contingent, unstable and discursively formulated has been central in efforts to oppose patriarchy and racism. Not all intersectional forms of injustice depend on essentialist discourses, but ideologies that cast gender and race as biologically rooted have not only been problematised in terms of their empirical and physiological accuracy; they have also been proven to mask oppression. This understanding prompted the LFs under study to believe that by teaching first-year students about this perspective, they would be sharing analytic tools that would equip these students to speak back to marginalising social structures. It is therefore understandable that they registered some surprise when students who identify as black, cis-gendered South African women expressed resistance against this teaching.
Nomsa
Many of my students said that they could not, as black women, go back home and share such ideas with the people there. They said they would be questioning their parents and family members and that would not go over well. I said that’s okay. I’d experienced that myself when I was in their shoes. Some ideas don’t sit well with older people like ideas that you are not just born with gender or with race, but you can still question these ideas without always talking to people about it. But then my students started saying they’re not sure they share my views on race and gender. I was shocked.
Masoli
My students started saying they don’t think what I’m saying about race and gender not being something you are born with makes sense. I thought to myself, but that’s how oppression works. People tell you that being a woman and being a black woman means they know who you are and what you are like. We must question how society shapes us, but students kept saying no you are who you are, and you cannot change that. I was caught off guard.
The RE of surprise served the function of alerting the LFs that their lessons were not developing as they had anticipated. Their interactions with students were not following the patterns they had experienced themselves. To clarify, the LFs recalled feeling liberated and empowered by theorisations of gender and race as contingent and context-dependent. Once they had been alerted to this unexpected resistance, the LFs laboured to uncover the details of students’ resistance.
However, while they attempted to win students’ trust to the degree that students might become willing to explain their resistance, the LFs experienced an interrelated set of RE: frustration and disappointment. This RE was propelled by the LFs’ expectation that as black, South African women, those students who identity along similar axes would relate to them and, consequently, trust them to share useful, empowering theoretical propositions.
Kanya
At first, I was confident that students would relate to me because I look like them, I talk like them, I dress like them. We are all black women. But now I felt a disconnect. It wasn’t talked about openly, at first, but I felt it. It didn’t feel good because I was hoping to use it as a basis for teaching. You know, to win trust. I felt blocked. Frustrated.
Sunanda
The fact that students resist what I’m trying to teach frustrates me. I figured that I would be able to get them to open up and accept these ideas because we have so much in common. But this resistance cuts our ability to relate to each other.
This was the junction, during interviews, when intersectionality became most prominent. The LFs’ frustration was articulated from a specifically intersectional viewpoint. To clarify, the LFs expected that because they shared a social positionality with students on at least two levels of identification, “We are all black women”, teaching would be easier.
To deal with the RE of frustration, the LFs reported that they persevered, asking students to share their views and to explain why they felt uncomfortable with an approach to identities as socially constructed.
Sunanda
What really surprised me again was when students eventually started talking. They said that this idea about race and gender identity sounds like a white perspective. They said that if they embraced white perspectives on identity, if they talk about it too much, they might lose sight of black ideas about identity. Again, I felt frustrated. How is viewing identity as constructed a white thing? Why would I force white ideas on them?
Masoli
Students took a long time to believe that I really wanted to hear what they had to say honestly. When they did, many of them said what I was asking them to accept about identity sounds like white ideas that can weaken black people’s commitment to their own ideas. What I don’t understand about this is we were reading black and other non-white authors. Black people had developed these ideas. So, some of the students said maybe we cherry-picked the black authors who agree with white ideas. I didn’t know how to deal with that because I wanted to them to trust me that I wouldn’t share such oppressive ideas.
These portions of the interviews bear further testimony to the frustration that LFs narrated in response to students’ resistance. Again, however, the LFs elected to show resilience – in the sense that, during the interviews, they proffered a variety of interpretations for students’ resistance.
Nomsa
I mean, I’m thinking about it now and I realise that when I say identity is only a social construct it might come across to my black female students as if I’m saying none of their experiences matter. That gender does not exist at all. Race does not exist at all. Therefore, if they have experienced sexism and racism, then I sound like I’m saying none of that matters because it’s just constructed. Of course, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s not what the texts we read are saying, but I think some students misunderstood me and the texts.
Kanya
The way I’m thinking about it is that students might have missed some of my points. I think they were thinking that if race and gender and so on are socially constructed then everything they like about being a woman or about being black are things they are not allowed to celebrate.
Masoli
Here is the thing. Many of the students feel proud of being black. They feel proud of being women. That’s great. I am too. That doesn’t change the fact that these identities are socially constructed. In fact, it means you can see past the toxic constructions and celebrate the good. But that’s not the bit some of them heard. I think they heard me saying, don’t be proud of a thing that society just made up. Also, I know many students have experienced racism and sexism and how the two mix intersectionally, but now it might sound like I’m saying, they don’t oppose the isms because identify doesn’t really exist.
In these reflections, the LFs offered two related interpretations of students’ resistance. In both instances, LFs maintain their perspective that viewing identity as socially constructed is conducive to critical thinking and to interrogating social structures in the sense that those who adopt this view can, “see past the toxic constructions and celebrate the good”. However, they suggest that students made two misinterpretations: 1) racialised and gendered identities cannot be celebrated or become a source of pride if they are socially constructed and 2) experiential knowledge grounded in such intersectional identities, including experiences of oppression, are not worth discussing in university environments if these identities are simply socially constructed.
The current study does not include narratives generated by students. Consequently, the veracity of the LFs’ propositions cannot be verified. However, when viewed through a CRT lens, both interpretations are disconcerting – if accurate. The possibility that students experienced their lessons with the LFs as 1) discouraging pride in personal and collective identities or as 2) silencing their encounters with racism, sexism and intersection subordination, is worth considering. It suggests that the pedagogy through which students were engaged was ineffective and offensive.
However, at this junction, it is vital to recall that LFs occupy a liminal position in the teaching hierarchy. They are not responsible for selecting reading materials, selecting themes, setting assessments or determining how course objectives are achieved. For the interests of this article, the main implication of this liminal positionality is that LFs should not be held fully accountable for students’ resistance. In fact, the RE experienced by LFs should be taken as guidelines for redesigning the way lessons are planned and implemented – so that more care can be taken to immerse students in the emancipatory potential that is on offer in such lessons with LFs. Specific suggestions are offered next.
Conclusion
CRT is committed to challenging dominant ideologies, including any insistence that emotions are of little value in university settings. LFs are positioned to do important work by helping students to set personal experiences in conversation with theory, but to do this work well, to assist students effectively, attention must be paid to the RE LFs experience. LFs need support so that they can recognise RE and navigate them successfully. However, in addition, the RE that LFs report must also be seen not simply as obstacles to overcome, but as important indications of areas where teaching can be improved.
For instance, the LFs reported that students were uncertain about whether they were allowed to voice pride in the racialised and gendered identities they had claimed for themselves. This suggests that the lessons LFs are required to share with students must be redesigned to clarify the point that theorising gender and race as socially constructed is meant to supply a method of exposing and problematising oppressive power dynamics. Had the course been designed to achieve this – instead of simply informing students that social identities are constructed in an abstract sense – students might have reacted very differently.
At present, however, LFs lack the agency to raise their concerns or to contribute to course design. This study insists that the RE LFs experience should be taken seriously as input for improving course design. Doing so is especially important if the insights of CRT are to be taken seriously, since this theory urges scholars to glean knowledge from the perspective of those who are subordinated.
Finally, as mentioned earlier, the gendered aspect of LFs’ identifications featured most prominently when LFs explained why they expected to have an easier time teaching students who also identify as black South African women. During the interviews, LFs explained how eager they had initially been to invite students to explore a theoretical perspective that would be especially liberating for black women. Future studies should attempt to deepen the intersectional approach to RE by examining how gender and race function together in different contexts. For instance, if critical feminist theories had featured more prominent and explicitly in the teaching LFs were instructed to offer, the results might have been different.
References
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