Scales Off My Eyes: Tutors Teaching about Racism at a South African University

Abstract

Abstract Critical whiteness studies (CWS) holds that challenging systemic racism in higher education must include scholarly attention to the everyday conditions under which students engage and produce knowledge about racism. This study examines the context of tutorials on postcolonial literature in a historically-white South African Department of English. Using individual interviews with contractually-employed Tutors, I map how these Tutors assign meaning to discomforting experiences and how they manage their own intersectional subjectivities while engaging undergraduates on systemic racism via postcolonial literature. Specifically, many students attempted to explore marginalization by grounding their essays in lived experiences of material deprivation. How Tutors’ responses might be read within CWS is a core concern of this article.