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And Our Feelings, Just Don’T Feel It Anymore”: Re- Feeling Whiteness, Resistance, And Emotionality, Cheryl E. Matias

Cheryl Matias

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 they play in stifling antiracism. This theoretical paper examines how emotional investment in whiteness recycles normative behaviors of white resistance and unveils how they painfully reinforce the supremacy of whiteness. Using a black feminist approach to emotionality and an interdisciplinary approach to critical whiteness studies and critical race theory, this paper begins with positing how the emotions of white resistance are rooted in the shame of revealing a repressed childhood racial abuse. The concern …