ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an alternative instrument to address issues of racial inequality in the classroom, designed to confront painful emotions and use them to encourage personal, social, and academic deep learning. It is important to cognitive learning objectives that students consistently engage in discourse about racial inequality via a diverse set of disciplines throughout their academic careers. Various pedagogical approaches to teaching race and racial inequality must encourage students to engage in consistent meaning-making, while acknowledging the differing social cost of such engagement. The chapter presents uncomfortable learning as an alternative pedagogical theory for generating productive classroom discourse on race, racism, and racial inequality. It seeks to address roadblocks to productive discussions on race in classroom settings, acknowledge disproportionate risk associated with discourse participation on these issues, and improve perceived learning outcomes of students on predominantly White college campuses.
