To show the potential and limitations of pedagogies of discomfort and empathy in anti-racist and multicultural teacher education, this paper engages in an in-depth analysis of two "critical moments" that are drawn from a series of teacher workshops. The purpose of the analysis is to show how discomfort and empathy may be combined together pedagogically in the context of multicultural and antiracist teacher education. The contribution to the literature is to highlight the importance of foregrounding attention to teachers' discomfort and its pedagogical implications in multicultural teacher education.