This article examines narratives from student discussions in a university course for preservice teachers, focusing particularly on dialogic markers that indicate deep, holistic grappling with race and racism in education that we frame as "emotionally connected." We frame "emotional connectedness" in critical feminist theories that critique the historical marginalization of emotionality in institutional learning spaces both in the university as well as professional settings. In our examination of the times where we identified student breakthroughs in their understandings of systemic racism in education, we argue that cultivating "emotionally connected" stances in new teachers is crucial to their processes of building a deep understanding of the ways that systemic racism operates in education and developing an antiracist teaching practice.