The Impact of MicroAggressions

Dear YOU,

There comes a time in your life when you fully realize that the status quo is not made for your benefit (and never will be, in your lifetime), that your experience is the culmination of millions of tiny papercuts, and that the majority of people are blissfully unaware of their impact and privilege.

This is personal. This is non-judgmental. This is thought-inducing. This is educational. This is to help you (and me).

Have you ever gone to speak at a conference or meeting and been ignored and or mistaken for the help?

Have you ever been asked if you were the chauffeur, IT support technician or security guard when being escorted to a venue where you are the honored guest?

Has it ever been assumed that you would be the note-taker for discussions where you are the main contributor?

Have you ever been purposefully or benignly excluded or unrecognized for your contribution, and have that contribution attributed (publicly) to others?

Have you ever had your (email) communication called aggressive and unfriendly when you are being as direct and focused as your peers?

Have you ever been ignored in direct conversations when people are asking questions specifically geared to your expertise?

If you have never been in these situations as the recipient, have you ever been the person dishing this out?

Be honest with yourself. There is no one here but me and YOU.

Have you ever said?

“We are not going to compromise our hiring standards to include diversity candidates”

“You are so well-spoken for a (insert ethnicity here) person”

“You are so not like the rest of (insert ethnic group here)”

“You are just not like the rest of them”

……….

If you cannot honestly appreciate and own your bias (and the impact you have on others), then you are saying that you are completely comfortable hurting people in the process of “just being yourself”.

Would you be okay with the majority of the world constantly hurting your loved ones, i.e. your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your child, your spouse ?

Be honest. Be real. Be your best self.

- Ty

P.S.

The term “Micro-Aggression” refers to “a brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative (racial) slights and insults toward the non-majority.” Examples of micro-aggressions are here.

If you want to get technical, read “Microaggressions in Every Day Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation” and also explore microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations.

Microassaults: Conscious and intentional discriminatory actions: using racial epithets, displaying White supremacist symbols — swastikas, or preventing one’s son or daughter from dating outside of their race.

Microinsults: Verbal, nonverbal, and environmental communications that subtly convey rudeness and insensitivity that demean a person’s racial heritage or identity. An example is an employee who asks a co-worker of color how he/she got his/her job, implying he/she may have landed it through an affirmative action or quota system.

Microinvalidations: Communications that subtly exclude negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings or experiential reality of a person of color. For instance, White people often ask Latinos where they were born, conveying the message that they are perpetual foreigners in their own land.