Too Traumatic? Discomfort, Pain Narratives and Racially Minoritised Authors in Secondary School English Classrooms

In this article, I examine how secondary school English teachers in England navigate discomfort when deciding whether to teach texts by racially minoritised authors. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 11 teachers, I uncover the pain narrative double standard: pain embedded in canonical, white-authored texts is recuperated as literary and educational, whilst equivalent content in texts by racially minoritised authors is perceived as traumatic and inappropriate. This operates through three interconnected mechanisms: a differential standard of appropriateness applied to texts by racially minoritised authors; a self-reinforcing hierarchy of literary value from which those texts are excluded; and an institutional culture that makes the canonical default the rational choice whilst requiring no explicit racial judgement. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Theory, racial literacy and aversive racism, I argue that these mechanisms defend the white canon, using the language of appropriateness and pupil welfare to justify exclusion and absorb antiracist impulses.