Whether or not there is a particularly controversial topic to consider, emotions are always present in students’ degree of confidence in themselves as learners. This story confirms for me how powerfully students’ emotional investment in some current issue in their lives, either political or personal, affects their performance in class.

A show of hands suggested that for many students strong feelings about violence and patriotism more than about slavery and Nat Turner lay behind their choices. It was not until the discussion was nearly over that I wondered if students had unwittingly chosen the side on Nat Turner that reflected their position on the recently-begun war in the Persian Gulf. The resistant whites were overwhelmingly on the side of justifying the revolt, while the “white liberals” opposed it the blacks were divided. To my surprise, although the discussion was emotionally charged, students did not divide along lines I had predicted. Most, however, whites and blacks alike, were confused and eager to learn.Īs I put the question to the class, “Was Nat Turner’s revolt justified?,” I expected an even hotter expression of arguments than usual. But in contrast to past patterns, this year there was an unusually high number of whites who, following the political climate of recent years, blamed blacks for their claims of victimization and continuing anger, opposed affirmative action as “reverse discrimination,” wondered if slavery was all that bad, and selected examples from history to justify their view of the present (just like historians do). We were about to discuss The Confessions of Nat Turner, a text that in the past had generated heated emotions as we debated whether students thought Turner’s 1831 slave revolt, in which 55 whites were killed, was ‘justified.” Among the 41 students in the course there were, as usual, about ten African-American students, two international students of color, and the predictable handful of sensitive white liberal students.

There was even more anticipatory energy than usual in my Black History class that late January day in 1991.

Wheel of emotions coloring page