Laying Grounds for Dialogue: Exploring Anti-Racist Activists' Negotiations of Emotions When Challenging...

In this article, I explore how 36 Norwegian anti-racist activists of colour negotiate emotions when engaging with the white majority population. Much recent research on racist ideology draws on Bonilla-Silva's framework of colour-blindness, arguing that the white majority nowadays is more likely to deny systemic racism. However, few studies have explored the relationship between micro-level interactions and colour-blind ideology beyond the realm of language. Using Ahmed's theory on affective economies along with decolonial perspectives on emotions, I empirically demonstrate how an unequal distribution of emotions across racial divides works as a central mechanism in the development of colour-blind ideology. This finding reveals the need to incorporate the role of emotions within the literature on colour-blindness more broadly, as similar tendencies may be prevalent in other Western societies.