In this essay, I address the problem of White racism in the classroom, proposing a way of reading racist discourse that takes into account its emotional dimensions and hence its persuasive appeal for White students. This way of reading begins with the insight that racist language functions metaphorically, and that it acts as a rhetorical bridge between the affective domain of feeling, on the one hand, and the political domain of racial belief and racism, on the other. I argue that methods for analyzing racism that focus on the political domain, such as Critical Discourse Analysis, do not adequately reveal racism's persuasive appeal for individuals and thus fail to help teachers address a central question: Why are otherwise well-intentioned White students convinced of racism's claims? In answering this question, I draw on research conducted with White college students, and I suggest that racist discourses link the political and the emotional, convincingly articulating private emotions in a public rhetoric of familiar, historically derived beliefs and values, and thus persuading both speaker and audience of their truth. The persuasive power of racist language--in fact, the power of any convincing public discourse--lies in its ability to bridge these domains. Teachers committed to anti-racist teaching must learn to understand the emotional aspects of racism's persuasive appeal. Only then can teachers begin to create rhetorically effective anti-racist curricula and pedagogies.