'Welcome to Our Country'

Today, I'll introduce you to a topic which in many ways is an extension of my last discussed theme. This is the part where the bully becomes smart and uses language which either denotes ignorance, vileness, or pure justified hatred due to previous incomplete knowledge. After reading this, direct verbal hostility will feel like a cool breeze on the face.

Social interactions are often much easier when the disagreements are clearly negative. Why? Because then they are easy to explain even to another person and can then get solved immediately. However, what if you hear something directed toward you which feels strange at first and offensive a few seconds later. We all have been there. In social psychology, such communication is affectionately known as a microaggression, a term mainly introduced and studied by Dr. Derald Sue.

Individuals who are generally new to a social context, historically marginalized, or a minority for any reason, face microaggressions more frequently. For this reason, I particularly had issues recognizing such communication once my larger cultural context changed. I have lived both as a majority and a minority, which explains half of my life's problems because my reasoning and responses were of a majority demographic, a Hindu female raised in India, while I looked like a minority, a South Asian brown female, to many after 2003. This is akin to a lion walking in a new crowd not knowing that now she is goat as per new contextual rules. Having said that, you will also find subcultures within cultures which means not all spaces are as saturated with microaggressions directed toward you. I generally give people one chance due to this possibility and try to have a general conversation instead to gauge the environment further.

Moreover, if you have observed your social contexts closely, people who are a minority due to race, religion, gender, particular forms of disability, or any identity that makes a person different from many others on a regular basis, are particularly good at recognizing such situations. They usually have something to say within seconds after a microaggression, which typically diffuses the situation on time without an overreaction. People new to microaggressions, often lose this golden space of response time because of not being sure.

I teach microaggressions as part of my social psychology course whenever given a chance because most of us have faced such scenarios and want to be better understood. However, we don't always know how to respond effectively without causing a full-blown fight or needless conflict, particularly because after a microaggression people may not have clear evidence for the implicit dormant aggression. In other words, due to actual ignorance or strong previous beliefs of many years gone unchanged over time, such communication can get directed toward you, sometimes known, other times unbeknownst to the aggressor. Therefore, I came up with tips and strategies to deal with microaggressive scenarios meant to build better communication, described ahead (distributed usually as a handout).

Microaggressions: Tips and Strategies for a Better Understanding

Microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative put downs and insults towards minorities (e.g., belonging to a different race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.). Individuals who inflict microaggressions are often unaware that they have done anything to harm another person. Most times it is outside awareness and is actually not done with the conscious intention of causing harm (Sue, 2010).

Reference: Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Get to it without letting it get to you

The idea is not to become prejudiced yourself while trying to manage these pushes and bumps in your environment. For those who are frequently on the recipient side of microaggressions, keep the good examples of people from the same group in mind to avoid solidifying a prejudice of your own. Such an approach is bound to help isolate the experience, target it with some emotional poise, solve it in that moment, and then move on to still maintain some degree of positivity about the world.

Constructive responses

You may also take experiences with microaggressions as a teaching moment. Don’t just walk away. Try to have a non-defensive and an open brief conversation with the person struck by ignorance, hate, or misinformation. If the sour experience or remark was consciously intended, eventually you are still able to convey two things: 1- you noticed and 2- it was not acceptable or it was based on inaccurate understanding. If unsure of the intent, you

may also first consider giving a second chance by the way of constructive conversation. By coming up with strategies like the above, you may be doing a favor to others like you and perhaps even to those not like you.

The majority is always right (your hidden moral power)

If you identify with a majority group or as a ‘normal’ in the social context, sometimes simply walking in to the context and striking a resounding friendly chat with the person being excluded can shift the norms tremendously. This is one way in which you can use your spot of majority identity in magical ways. It usually requires very little effort but could be your one good deed for that day.

The message is equality, not more power

This message of ‘equality, not more power ’often gets lost in translation during instances of implicit prejudice. In other words, the person who gets discriminated is usually trying to restore respect same as is experienced by everyone else -- not take over the entire context in a threatening way. Given the preexisting hierarchical contextual design of many social situations, the voice of equality frequently comes off as need for power and usurping entire groups. Therefore, a good strategy, as also discussed in Social Psychology, is to nurture and enable equal-level contact in contexts (e.g., if you are a leader, recognize what everyone in a context is serious and passionate about; use it as a binding string). If you are more in favor of stronger responses, such as expressing anger in the face of microaggressions, my own understanding so far has been that it holds the danger of generating a stereotype-affirming response (e.g., “There you go, I knew these people were aggressive.”) and leads to only short-term benefits as in it may end that particular conflict but does not always have meaningful imprinting message why microaggressions are not comfortable and right. Alternatively, it may also leave everyone involved in a lull and confusion of sharply felt misunderstandings, without any lesson. Emotions are what people remember predominantly.

Personal Exercise

Below are two relevant videos that should help understand microaggressions closely.

First watch...

An example of how to intervene if you witness a person being subtly discriminated.

Stigma and AIDS scene from the movie Philadelphia: goo.gl/EAwpej

Now imagine...

Attached ahead is a similar example as above for you to imagine your intervention. It is from the movie Sophie ’s Choice (released in 1982), which involves a Polish Jewish girl who survived the Holocaust. The scene may easily be imagined a scenario for foreign language/non-native speakers as well: goo.gl/SHigVL

In the above example, try to imagine if and how you would have intervened if you were waiting in line right behind her or were witnessing this interaction from a close distance.