Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education

by Cheryl E. Matias

Discussing race and racism often conjures up emotions of guilt, shame, anger, defensiveness, denial, sadness, dissonance, and discomfort. Instead of suppressing those feelings, dubbed "emotionalities of whiteness," they are, nonetheless, important to identify, understand, and deconstruct if one ever hopes to fully commit to racial equity.

Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education delves deeper into these white emotionalities and other latent ones. It provides theoretical and psychoanalytic analyses to determine where these emotions stem from, how they operate, and how they perpetuate racial inequities in education and society. The author beautifully weaves in creative writing with theoretical work to artistically illustrate how these emotions operate while also engaging the reader in an emotional experience in and of itself, claiming one must feel to understand.

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. Without a proper investigation on these underlying emotions, that can both stifle or enhance one's commitment to racial justice in education and society, the field of education denies itself a proper emotional 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.

Cheryl E. Matias, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver. She is a mother-scholar of three children, including boy-girl twins.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anti Racist, Race

210 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Hannah]

Matias is a baller, and her ideas are more compelling than Robin DiAngelo's (I will give you one guess why people go to DiAngelo instead), but man oh man is she the absolute fucking worst at similes and metaphors. I have edited more bad writing than I can remember because that's being a book editor, and it's wild because the gusto with which Matias goes after her absolutely horribly ill-advised and poorly conceptualized similes and metaphors is something I usually only see in fiction writers!

But in all seriousness, there is some really good stuff in here about critical whiteness, and there's some sappy shit about social justice that kind of made me want to vomit, and as an editor I can't get fully behind her as a writer because she's just not that gifted at it and really thinks she has something, but as a scholar with ideas, she is absolutely at the top of the game and deserves much wider recognition in the academy AND in the general public.

[Marni Fritz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I speed read this for a paper I’m working on to get at the culture of whiteness and feeling whiteness in spaces. Cheryl Matias theorizes the emotionality of whiteness in education spaces but also as a feature of whiteness more broadly. Drawing on radical scholars such as Franz Fanon, Charles Mills and bell hooks while also her own experiences as an anti racist educator training teachers in public schools that serve students of color, to tease out the emotionality of whiteness. She provides helpful tools for those either doing the same work as her or those in the position of anti racist students. Matias dives into shame, guilt, surveillance, disgust, fetishization and the colonizer mindset to break down white emotionality. Recommend if you’re doing this kind of work, are trying to understand why white people behave the way we do or if you’re a white person that is looking to understand how whiteness shapes your life.

[CJ Venable · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book is very important, but was a mixed bag for me personally. Some of the analysis was extremely powerful and valuable to challenge me as a White person to consider more deeply my complicity in Whiteness and colonization. Some of the connections, however, did not work for me. In particular, some of the author's personal narratives about motherhood fell flat for me as a nonbinary trans person. Perhaps it was my own discomfort at personal sharing in scholarly work (or the tone that was used to do so) that threw me off. I've been wrestling with whether or not my Whiteness is causing me to be overly critical of some of these moments. I'm still unsure.

One thing I would have liked more of was deep engagement with the literature and theorizing about Whiteness. Some of the chapters felt repetitive and much of the literature in each chapter was used in subsequent chapters. While it's certainly not a bad idea to reinforce concepts, having essentially the same point and the same quote from a text used repeatedly felt unhelpful and could have had a greater impact if there was a greater variety of literature used and argument made. Sometimes I felt like just as some deep engagement was established and a source (like Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks or Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized), a chapter ended and a new topic was introduced. Perhaps this book's intended audience is someone for whom these concepts are new, but I was hoping for a deeper dive into this theorization.

I'm excited to see what comes next as more complex theorization and analysis of Whiteness develops from/alongside this work.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matias writes, "This book is a project to reaffirm our humanity by recognizing the racialized states of our emotionalities, its association with the permanence of whiteness, and how education can be one avenue that can lead us down a path that liberates our communal heart." Doing so takes work, however, which Matias delineates over the course of the book---exploring how and why "feelings" have a symbiotic relationship with socially constructed norms. These norms, of course, often stem from *whiteness* as the hegemonic, driving force behind it all. Thus, we see from Matias' work precisely why it is (drawing from Noel Ignatiev) that a "betrayal to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." Selah.

[Lindsay Tucker Smith]

Completed for graduate level course in educational psychology and diverse learners — Dr. Matias evaluates how race plays out in society and the classroom, and specifically, how white pre-service teachers can strategically and authentically care for their students from all backgrounds.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to read this for my diversity class. It is written like a series of higher ed essays but was still easy to understand. This book is an essential read for every teacher.

[Kerrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read through Chapter 6 & needed to return it to the library (only 1 copy & holds on it). Want to check it out again & finish it.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. A must read.

[Timothy J Carrier · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to read a collection of essays that uncritically lays out post modernist/Marxian/Freudian thinking on race and education in America, this is it. It's as if the author of has never familiarized herself with the knockdown arguments against what appear to be her received wisdom.

It's very lightly sourced and heavily relies on the genre's habit of treating anecdotal stories (think poor man's T. N. Coates) as normative. It's also heart breaking in its illustration of the self indulgent "fear" of the author.

She actually shares a moment of terror she imparts on her 7 year old son. Explaining to the probably confused as hell kid that his skin tone makes him a target on a daily basis for marauding police. Setting aside whether there is in fact a nationwide crises of police assassinating people of color, wtf does she think she is accomplishing by frightening her 7 yo???