Microaggressions: Symbols, Culture, and Oppression

Finn Gardiner Sociology 3/Social Problems 22 May 2012 Honours Research Project Microaggressions: Symbols, Culture, and Oppression Introduction When people conceptualise social oppression, they tend to think of more overt, physical forms of discrimination: Black men hanging from trees after a lynching; Kristallnacht; “White Only” signs; humanrights violations in China; Hitlerian ethnic cleansing; laws equating women and oxen; Kosovo and Darfur. It is the egregious cases that resonate with people, the ones that clearly demonstrate the inhumanity that people can display to one another. They are the ones that provoke visceral reactions, and dovetail with what we have been brought up to recognise as “aggressive.” Unfortunately, aggression is more complex and nuanced than the more overt scenarios that people generally envisage when thinking of it; it comprises situations that may not seem aggressive on the surface, but are representations of culturally sanctioned oppressions against targeted social groups. In sociology and social psychology, a microaggression is a social interaction that reinforces a particular cultural stereotype, and represents a nonphysical act of aggression by a member of a dominant cultural group towards a member of an oppressed social group. The idea is that verbal condemnation of particular groups, subtle insinuations that a particular set of people is inferior, and other social interactions can be seen as violent, in a similar fashion to physical harassment such as lynching or gaybashing. The nature of microaggressions is variable: it can range from the use of insults such as sp*c, fagg*t, and n*gger (or the hip-hop variant, nigga), to more subtle, insidious forms of discrimination, such as telling women that girls aren’t good at math, or redirecting Black and Hispanic students from academic tracks at school to more vocational tracks like auto repair and cosmetology, or asking a lesbian whether she has a boyfriend yet. Microaggressions create a state of constant vigilance in marginalised people, as though they are constantly being physically harassed. In the foreword to his 2010 book Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation, the social psychologist and Columbia University professor Derald Wing Sue disabuses his readers of the notion that the “greatest harm” to minority groups and women does not come from neo-Nazis, skinheads, and gay-bashers; it comes from the constant and continuing everyday reality of slights, insults, invalidations, and indignities visited upon marginalized groups by well-intentioned, moral, and decent family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, students, teachers, clerks, waiters and waitresses, employers, health care professionals, and educators (Sue xv). For Sue, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are not just the overt, in-your-face shootings, lynchings, racial slurs uttered by public figures, and queer-bashings; they are included in seemingly normal, everyday social interactions. Cluelessness and outright hostility towards minority groups comes out in conversations and short remarks, and Sue argues that the combined effects of these negative interactions can be just as detrimental to the psyche of members of marginalised groups as the more obvious cases of oppression. The concept of microaggressions is in keeping with the symbolic interactionist theory, which posits that social phenomena are expressed through social interactions that are representative of particular expectations or mores in society. Microaggressions are symbolic representations of social norms that reflect particular oppressions; for instance, ethnically stereotyped language symbolises the subordinate position that nondominant ethnic groups hold within American and other western societies; the use of generic masculine referents in all hypothetical situations designates women as irrelevant, second-class human beings; and the assumption that everyone is heterosexual in casual conversation invalidates the complexity of human relationships, particularly for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Sexist microaggressions Feminist scholars have noted microaggressive behaviour directed towards women, particularly in contexts where women’s abilities are undermined or diminished in favour of men’s abilities, or when men stereotype women based on their appearance or sexual prowess rather than psychological or intellectual traits. These behaviours have had significant negative results—for instance, the insinuation that women are poorer at mathematical, scientific, and technical academic pursuits has resulted in a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat.” Stereotype threat is a means by which social inequality is perpetuated through the application of microaggressions towards a particular group. In a practical sense, stereotype threat results in reduced performance by people who are strongly invested in a particular academic or professional domain that is stereotypically closed to them. For instance, a woman with a strong interest in mathematics may experience depressed performance on a standardised test of mathematical skill because she is dealing with the internalised notion that “women are not good at math” (Steele). In addition to depressed performance, many women also experience reduced self-esteem when performing stereotypically “masculine” tasks (Sue 166). For women, these stereotypes occur quite early in childhood; even in children’s books, women and girls are portrayed as passive, subservient, and more likely to be nonparticipants in the workforce (Oskamp, Kaufman, & Wolverbeek 28). Childhood messages inculcate adult stereotypes into young people and contribute to unintentional microaggressive behaviour that negatively impacts women’s academic and professional chances—and performance, once enrolled in a university programme or hired at a workplace. People who commit these microaggressions may not be aware of it, and believe that academic or professional success is purely meritocratic (Sue 39). According to this mindset, people are admitted to academic programmes or hired at workplaces solely on merit, rather than because (or in spite of) their gender. This idea invalidates the negative stereotypes that these groups must deal with on a daily basis. For women, this occurs most often in scientific or technical fields. Larry Summers, the erstwhile president of Harvard University, implied that gender disparities in technical fields such as engineering had a genetic cause—the reason why there were fewer women engineers and scientists was not that women were systematically discouraged from pursuing science and engineering jobs and degrees, but that women were genetically predisposed to be poor at mathematics and engineering (Sue 171–172). While Summers is an egregious example of the institutional endorsement of occupational sexism, the problem occurs in less blatant ways. Sue remarks that these prejudices are part of a “thread that undergirds our educational system and influences career choices,” upholding patriarchal social structures that unfairly disadvantage women (172). Stereotype threat is not the only way in which women experience microaggressions; language, too, contains sexist implications that may negatively affect the way women perceive themselves as members of society. Language that excludes, marginalises, or stereotypes women can also be viewed as microaggressive. While there are more obvious cases, in which women who fall on the wrong side of the “madonna/whore” complex are called “sluts,” “bitches,” and “whores,” there are more subtle cases in which women’s roles in society are made marginal or subordinate. When people, regardless of gender, are generalised as “men,” or when “he” is used as the generic pronoun by default, this sort of language invites the idea that women are lesser human beings, and cannot be seen as exemplars of humanity in toto. The same applies to other careless applications of androcentric language, such as anthropological books and journals with titles like Man and His Tools, Mankind Quarterly, or The History of Mankind. Feminist theorists have called out these forms of language as acts of aggression and marginalisation against women. For instance, Bobbye Persing draws attention to such linguistic inequities in her 1977 article, “Sticks and Stones and Words.” Persing notes that “woman in the language is in a subordinated, subjugated position,” and that then-current English linguistic conventions reflected the patriarchal social structure that treated women as though they were subservient, passive vessels with no intrinsic worth of their own. Habits like pairing “powerful” jobs with generic “he” pronouns (such as “manager” and “chairman”) come in for particular opprobrium in Persing’s article; she argues that such stereotypes contribute to unwarranted sexist stereotypes and the subjugation of women in the workplace and in society at large. Sara Mills and Louise Mullany do something similar in their book, Language, Gender and Feminism, published last year, in which they analyse the complex relationships between language use, social interactions, and feminist thought. Mills and Mullany offer the example of the Buddhist writer and scholar Subhuti, who defends his use of the generic “he” pronoun on the basis of “tradition” and the influence of his mentor. He claims that his mentor, Sangharakshita, has decried the “manipulation” of English for “ideological ends,” and he clings to a sexist practice on the grounds of “standardisation” (Mills & Mullany). This mentality, of jettisoning the inclusion of women in the name of “tradition,” sends the message that women’s representation in language is a mere afterthought, an emblem of feminist soapboxing, rather than an act of true inclusion and membership in society at large. The sexism is “distanced from the author,” and appeals to tradition take precedence over awareness of the effects that gender-exclusive language may have on women and gender-variant people (Mills & Mullany). The inherent gender bias of such androcentric language becomes more apparent when one swaps out the masculinised words for feminine ones—people would react quite negatively to a generic “she” pronoun, or a book entitled Woman and Her Tools, referring to all people, not only women. This implies that it is an insult to be grouped with women, and an honour to be grouped with men. The marginality of women is exemplified here, and it is evidence of sexism’s grip on culture. Increasing the invisibility of women is something that many scholars and writers do, even though they may not intend to deliberately advocate for the exclusion of women in their work. When male writers, scholars, and employers use such gender-exclusive language, they send the message—whether intentional or otherwise—that women’s contributions are irrelevant, and that men are the “default” workers, thinkers, and citizens. This contributes to the cultural myth that women are secondclass citizens, only fit to exist under men’s shadow for their entire existence. While most men who use such language do not intend to perpetuate sexist stereotypes, their culturally sanctioned privilege makes it more difficult for them to recognise their microaggressive behaviour, in the same way that a White person may not notice the ways in which they may be unwittingly transmitting racist stereotypes in conversations with people of colour. There have been studies that indicate that such sexist language does, in fact, send the message that women are considered less relevant: Janet Parks and Mary Ann Roberton found in a 2004 study that there was a statistically significant relationship between attitude towards women and the use of sexist language. People who harboured negative attitudes towards women were more likely to use language that excluded or marginalised them, which reflects the effect that culturally sanctioned oppressions have on mundane social interactions (Parks and Roberton). People whose worldviews place women in a subordinate place will talk to and about them in a way that reflects those attitudes, and the interactions that result will place women in an uncomfortable, vulnerable place, where their contributions to society go seemingly unacknowledged. It cements the idea that women do not belong in the workplace, and that their labours deserve to go unrewarded (Sue 171). According to Parks and Robertson’s study, there is a direct correlation between sexist stereotyping and language that treats women as though they are second-class citizens. This gives credence to the idea that microaggressions’ effect is something that can be measured and quantified, rather than simply being a means by which “angry feminists” can cast aspersions against well-meaning men who “don’t mean to be sexist.” Racist microaggressions Race, too, is a site of microaggression; like women, people of colour must contend with stereotype threat, too. In addition to stereotype threat, people of colour are faced with the reality of hearing slurs and insults that dehumanise them and designate them as Other, unfit to be treated as valid, worthy members of society. Racial slurs have been long considered nonphysical aggressions towards marginalised ethnic groups. Calling someone a “wetback” or “chink” is not merely an insult; it is an act of implied verbal violence towards a particular ethnic group. It is the implication that a particular group is “lesser” than a dominant group, and that their lives and existences hold less value than those of Whites. Racial slurs, however, are only an extreme manifestation of the effects of microaggression; more broadly, people of colour struggle with social attitudes that imply inferiority or lack of worth, whether the people with whom they interact are aware of the implications of their words and actions or not. Derald Wing Sue relates the story of Don Locke, an African American man who has enumerated some of the microaggressions with which he has had to contend throughout the years: “I am tired of watching mediocre White people continue to rise to positions of authority and responsibility.” “I am tired of never being able to let my racial guard down.” I am tired of explaining that not all African Americans are employed to meet some quota” (Sue 15). For Locke, the stereotypes exemplified by the microaggressions that he faces in daily life add up, contributing to a particular brand of world-weariness that people of colour experience in a Eurocentric society that values the contribution and work of Whites more than it does people of colour. His ethics, his identity, and his very existence are always under attack, even if the people committing the microaggressions are unaware of their impact on his life. For them, they may have made a simple mistake, or they may have simply been unaware of the effect that their actions have had towards him, but to him, it is yet another example of how his life and work do not hold the same value in society as they do for Whites. An example of the negative effects that microaggressions have on ethnic minorities’ lives is the stereotype threat experienced by Black students, particularly men and boys, in academia. There is a prevailing misconception that Black people are less intellectually capable than Eurasians, and teachers, parents, and other adult role models inculcate these stereotypes into Black youth, whether intentionally or not. When these stereotypes are introduced to these people, they internalise them, and they perform according to type, rather than by actual potential. The act of underestimating Black students is a form of microaggression; by creating an environment that is inhospitable for Black youth, a sort of violence is enacted on these youth. Lowered academic prospects lead to disadvantages in the workforce, which lead to increased involvement with the criminal-justice system and black-market employment, such as the drug trade and gang membership. There is a direct relationship between seemingly soft factors like adult discouragement, and the more recognisable forms of oppression, such as gang violence and the racial inequities that the criminal-justice system perpetuates towards people of colour. In Claude Steele’s 1999 Atlantic article, “Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students,” the author, a social-science professor at Stanford University, presents cases in which Black students have found themselves academically disadvantaged through the deleterious effects of stereotype threat. Steele discusses a particular case in which a Black student was forced to listen to a psychology seminar at his college, where he spent an hour listening to a professor openly discuss the ideas in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s controversial book, The Bell Curve, which proposed that Black people were genetically less intelligent than Whites and Asians, and soon after that, he overheard a discussion in which some of his fellow students claimed that affirmative action would only cause mediocre Black students to flood the university and keep qualified Whites out. The microaggressions that this young man had experienced affected the way in which he perceived himself as an academic and as a member of society, and he found it difficult to divorce his own individual struggles from the larger social structures that informed his experiences as a Black man in a university. Steele also mentions that there is a body of evidence that demonstrates that there is a significant racial achievement gap in education (lower chances of gaining admission to prestigious universities, lower grades, lower standardised-test scores), and attributes much of the achievement gap to racial inequities that affect Black students from a young age. Black students who are invested in their education experience anxiety about their ability because of the idea that Black people are intellectually inferior, and their performance suffers for it. This anxiety often results in secondguessing, overthinking assignments, and hyper-vigilance in academic settings. While that article was written thirteen years ago, the situation has not changed much over the past several years; stereotype threat is still a significant problem for people of colour, as Sue posits in Microaggressions and Everyday Life. While I focus on Blacks’ struggles with stereotype threat, since this is the form with which I have personally dealt, similar theoretical and practical frameworks can be applied to the experiences of Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. Stereotype threat is not the only form of microaggression that exists for people of colour; cultural appropriation is another factor that can be considered threatening. Cultural appropriation is the thoughtless adoption of symbols, clothing, and cultural customs of a nondominant or oppressed social group by a member of a privileged group; an example would be a White hipster wearing a Native American headdress. In her 2010 zine, Kate Burch juxtaposes quotations from critical race theorists, socialjustice bloggers, and laypeople of colour with images of cultural appropriation on the part of White people. One particularly compelling quote is by Adrienne Keene, a Native American blogger and cultural theorist who has questioned the pervasiveness of cultural appropriation by Whites: “Eagle feathers are presented as symbols of honour and respect and have to be earned... Those costume shop chicken feather headdresses aren’t honoring Native craftsmanship.” For Keene, and for Burch, the wholesale adoption of honoured cultural customs by a community that has gone out of its way to marginalise, exterminate, and pillage the cultural group from which they draw these ideas is an insult to the humanity of Native Americans, and is a form of aggression towards them. While many cultural appropriators are unaware of the hurt they cause the minority groups from whom they appropriate, the action of robbing people of their cultural traditions inculcates a sense of inferiority and expendability in them. If they cannot maintain their traditions without Whites trampling over them, what else do they have? Anti-LGBT microaggressions Homophobic and transphobic microaggressions exist, too; the concept is not limited to women and people of colour. These microaggressions can be expressed as slurs, as insinuations in conversation that imply that a queer identity is less valid than a heterosexual or gender-normative one, or through the support of ideologies that unfairly marginalize people because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. Homophobic aggression isn’t always Matthew Shepard-esque gay-bashing, nor does it always come in the form of Fred Phelps’ funeral protests. It is casually saying “that’s so gay” in conversation; it is mocking young boys for seeming “feminine”; it is chastising young women for the “crime” of being attracted to women, rather than to men. The same principle applies to transphobic microaggression: treating people’s gender identity as marginal through the use of incorrect names and pronouns is a form of aggression; it is depriving a person of their right to exist through linguistic trickery. The same attitudes that cause people to baldly declare that someone’s gender identity does not exist and that it is a “choice” to be corrected are the same attitudes that ultimately lead to the rape, murder, and assault of transgender people, particularly transgender women of colour. The recent spate of LGBT youth suicides is a testament to the power of microaggressions on people’s lives; anti-LGBT verbal abuse sustained over extended periods of time led to the senseless death of LGBT youth who responded negatively to the effects of homophobic microaggressions. While a single microaggression may seem minor, the effect of multiple microaggressions together may combine and become fatal, as it has for those unfortunate youth who were driven to take their own lives because of the stress that daily existence caused them. Many queer people have discussed the impact of these microaggressions on their everyday lives; on the collaborative blog, Microaggressions: Power, Privilege, and Everyday Life, anonymous contributors submit their brief stories of social interactions that they perceive as being microaggressive. Many of these are poignant, subtle reminders of how these fleeting social interactions represent larger social problems; for instance, a lesbian poster remarks that she was once told, “Maybe you haven’t slept with the right man. I can turn you right, baby” (Anonymous, Microaggressions). Less obviously egregious, but still problematic, is a poster who notes that her sister subscribes to Seventeen Magazine, and there is a strong implication that the magazine states that only men and boys are appropriate partners for teenage girls. In the world of Seventeen, stories on gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender youth are still shock stories, rather than articles that send the message that queer youth’s experiences are as valid as those of heterosexual or nontransgender youth (Anonymous, Microaggressions). A transgender man was asked, “Why don’t you use your own [read: women’s] bathroom” by a non-transgender male classmate (Anonymous, Microaggressions). The implication was that because the poster was transgender, he was not really a man, and that he should use the women’s bathroom because his gender identity was not actually valid. These messages of invalidity, of otherness, of failure to meet a particular standard of heteronormativity or gender conformity, add up, and take an enormous toll on queer people’s psyches. These interactions are symbolic representations of the negative attitudes that people have developed around gender identity and sexuality, and these microaggressions reflect them as surely as discriminatory legislation and public statements by politicians and celebrities do. Increasing Popular Awareness Until recently, the concept of “microaggressions” has been an academic exercise, primarily discussed by professors and students involved in fields such as sociology and social psychology. However, with the advent of Internet social-justice organising, this is starting to change. In Deb Jannerson’s Bitch Magazine article, she spotlights the collaborative blog Microaggressions: Power, Privilege, and Everyday Life, which was spearheaded by two Columbia University students. Unlike an esoteric peer-reviewed scholarly journal locked behind a paywall to the tune of $50 per article, Bitch Magazine is immensely accessible, and many of its articles are freely available. By writing about microaggressions in a magazine targeted towards young feminists, a wider audience is able to recognise their effect in society, and pinpoint ways in which such behaviour can be combated. A strong culture of popular education via the Internet has made microaggressions a more familiar topic for cultural theorists who do their work outside the traditional environment of academe. The Microaggressions blog, hosted on the free blogging platform Tumblr, attracts contributors who are younger than the average cultural-studies professor or graduate student; in fact, many of them are younger teenagers discovering the importance of social justice and awareness through the Internet and online communities that have sprung up to discuss social phenomena in a way that embraces thinkers from all backgrounds, rather than restricting such discourse to universities. While there has been some backlash against social-justice bloggers on Tumblr—for instance, the parody blogs that have sprung up against the concept of microaggressions, which often perpetuate the same worn-out social stereotypes that social-justice advocates attempt to investigate and agitate against—the burgeoning awareness of symbolic-interactionist social phenomena is a boon to cultural critics, theorists, and analysts. Social Problems and Microaggressions While individual microaggressions may seem as though they are merely unwanted consequences of the vagaries of everyday life, their effect is far more pernicious. This has been borne out through the deleterious effects that stereotype threat has had on the educational and professional careers of women and people of colour, the recent uptick in suicides by LGBT youth reacting to social ostracism and harassment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and the oppression of socially oppressed groups through the subtle exclusion and marginalisation that occurs through language and behaviour directed at those groups. For those who are unfamiliar with microaggressions’ effects on their own or on others’ lives, these incidents may seem like isolated personal problems, rather than contentious social problems that distill larger macro-level issues into smaller, micro-level interactions that reflect people’s prejudices and biases. However, their contributions to the marginalisation of traditionally targeted groups in American society, such as women, people of colour, and LGBT people, are more emblematic of social problems viewed through a symbolic-interactionist lens. Since these interactions both exemplify and exacerbate preexisting social tensions, it is fair to conclude that microaggressions can be considered social problems. References • Burch, K (2010). Head Dress. Self-published. • Jannerson, D (2011). “Microaggressions: Because It Is a Big Deal.” Bitch Magazine April 2011. • Microaggressions: Power, Privilege, and Everyday Life (n.d.) Retrieved from http:// microaggressions.tumblr.com. • Mills, S, and Mullany, L (2011). Language, Gender and Feminism. London: Routledge. • Oskamp, S, Kaufman, K, and Atchison Wolterbeek, L (1996). “Gender Role Portrayals in Preschool Picture Books.” Handbook of Gender Research, 27–39. • Parks, JB and Roberton, MA (2004). “Attitudes Toward Women Mediate the Gender Effect on Attitudes Toward Sexist Language.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 28, pp. 233–239. • Persing, Bobbye (1977). “Sticks and Stones and Words: Women in the Language.” The Journal of Business Communication 14.2: 11–19. • Sue, DW (2010). Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. • Steele, C (1999). “Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students.” The Atlantic August 1999.