ABSTRACT
Is it racist to discuss race? Does racial analysis perpetuate insidious racial notions? Heartfelt White students often pose these questions in predominantly White college classrooms. Such questions recur in academic settings when students engage literature produced by and about nonwhites. As a Black woman teaching African American literature, I get these questions frequently, and, in the following chapter, I’d like to explore the embedded optics and cultural assumptions in these inquiries. White students often feel discomfort, denial, detachment, defensiveness, and guilt when reading texts that remove the veil and dare to gaze boldly at whiteness and its socio-structural effects. 1 But these responses may give way to curiosity, openness, awareness, and a critical sensibility that leads to political engagement.
