Confessions of racism in anti-racist education: Political, affective and pedagogical concerns

This theoretical paper proposes to expand our understanding of ‘confessions of racism’ in the context of anti-racist education through the lens of ‘affective governmentality’. Confessions of racism are admissions of racism or declarations of privilege that foreground self-criticism and self-purification. The notion of affective governmentality turns attention to how confessions of racism function to normalize psychologized, individualized and depoliticized understandings of racism. Rather than outrightly dismissing confessions of racism though, given their probable persistence in popular and education discourses, an attempt is made here to re-frame them in order to highlight structural racism and inspire transformative action. It is argued that this re-framing could provide students and educators engaged in anti-racist education with a more effective path ahead. The paper concludes by suggesting that confessions of racism are used pedagogically in the classroom to revitalize attention to structural racism and transformative action rather than to foreground self-criticism and self-purification.