The emotionality of race in education calls for continual pedagogical reconceptualizations that specifically address emotion. As such, the purpose of this paper is to inform and expand pedagogies related to educational equity in the context of emotionally charged race conversations in postsecondary education classrooms. We do this by first putting forth some theoretical claims about emotions within education and racial literacy. We then share our findings from our study of a job embedded professional-practice graduate course for full-time practicing educators, a course on educational equity called “Culturally Responsive Classroom Management.” We discovered two types of experiential narratives: pity and emotional negativity toward racially-minoritized children. We also found evidence that educational leaders burdened their racially-minoritized colleagues by showing emotional negativity toward the Black/African American children they served. Thus, we asked: can someone who has pity and emotional negativity about race have the competence or “fervent fortitude” needed to address racial inequality and the emotions it promulgates? Such a question is crucial in our complicated world, but the implications lie in a twofold approach that involves engaging both emotions and racial literacy curricularly.
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