Microaggressions
We have finished the section on "the basics" and are now beginning the section on "manners." This section will focus on a lot of the behavior we are guilty of as white people, and why we need to work on ourselves. First up, is "microaggressions."
You may have seen the word and wondered what it meant, but then forgot to look it up. Microaggressions are exactly as they sound. Small acts of aggression people have to deal with on a constant basis. We are all guilty of doing some of these, no matter how much we want to deny it. And one time might not be too bad, but if you’re the 100th person to do it in a month, it doesn’t matter that you only did it once. It’s just too much.
Here are examples of some common microaggressions:
-Touching a Black woman’s hair without her permission.
-Commenting on a Black person’s intelligence in surprise.
-Saying a Black person is articulate.
-“No, but where are you really from?”
-Asking a Black person at a store where something is without knowing if they even work there, because you assume they work there.
One microaggression I think is very important for us all to work on is when a Black person tells us about racism they have experienced and we respond along the lines of: “What? No, really?! Maybe that person just…” “I’m sure they didn’t mean…” or other responses expressing our disbelief in their experience and trying to explain away what the racist person did. We don’t need to be the devil’s advocate for racism, and expressing disbelief, even if it’s meant as a form of sympathy, still places the burden of proof on somebody who already experienced racism. Also? Please don’t respond to such things with your own experiences. Any discrimination you have ever felt has nothing to do with being white, so how can it possibly compare? Just respond with belief from the start, anything else shows that you don’t really believe them.
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