Towards a (Truly) Anti-Racist Writing Center

Anti-racist writing center research is a recent and critical field of study; however, in practice, it is often trivialized and used in antithetical ways. My research argues anti-racist practice should be one of the primary concerns of a writing center. Further, my research addresses a gap in anti-racist approaches by incorporating emotional labor research to identify the ways in which marginalized consultants are expected to perform emotional labor in the space. I analyze non-consensual or involuntary emotional labor, and how it contributes to burnout, isolation, and lack of job satisfaction for consultants of color and other marginalized communities. I use previous scholarship on emotional labor as well as my own experiences as a consultant of color in order to examine what strategies can be used to interrupt the practice of involuntary emotional labor and create a truly anti-racist center.