Feeling White: Beneath and Beyond

This chapter looks in various ways at how expressions, gestures, objects and positions were textually and visually depicted in the past in patronizingly and divisively racialized (and sexualized) terms. Consideration is given to the emotional peculiarities of the strategic conflation of religion and skin colour by slave missionaries and similarly minded whites, and the enduring legacy of this practice. Given the capacity of emotions theory to extend across disciplinary boundaries, I also reference developments in research regarding the psychology of racial cognition and how ‘whites’ can respond emotionally to their racial identity in responsible ways.