Definitions
Types of Microaggressions
+ Microaggressions
The commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental slights that creates hostility towards targeted and opressed groups of people.
+ Microassaults
Microassaults are the most overt microaggressions. With microassaults, the person committing the microaggression acted intentionally and knew their behavior might be hurtful. For example, using a derogatory term to refer to a person of color would be a microassault.
+ Microinsults
Microinsults are more subtle than microassaults, but nevertheless have harmful effects on marginalized group members. For example, Sue and his colleagues write, a microinsult could involve a comment implying that a woman or person of color received their job due to affirmative action.
+ Microinvalidations
Microinvalidations are comments and behaviors that deny the experiences of marginalized group members. One common microaggression involves insisting that prejudice is no longer a problem in society: Sue and his colleagues write that a microinvalidation could involve telling a person of color that they are being “oversensitive” to a racist comment that was made.
Understanding Racism
+ Racism
A belief that some races are superior to others, used to devise and justify individual and collective actions that create and sustain inequality among racial and ethnic groups. Individual racism is usually manifested in decisions and behaviors that disadvantage small numbers of people. Institutional racism, whereby policies and traditions, sometimes unwittingly, favor a particular racial or ethnic group, may be less obvious but may disadvantage large populations.
+ Discrimination
The unequal treatment of members of various groups based on race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion and other categories.
+ Racial Prejudice
Negative beliefs, perceptions, or attitudes towards one or more ethnic or racial groups.
+ Structural Racism
The normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage Whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color.
+ Racialization
Racialization is the very complex and contradictory process through which groups come to be designated as being of a particular "race" and on that basis subjected to differential and/or unequal treatment.
+ Race
By historical and common usage the group (sub-species in traditional scientific use) a person belongs to as a result of a mix of physical features such as skin color and hair texture, which reflect ancestry and geographical origins, as identified by others or, increasingly, as self identified.
+ The Critical Race Theory
The Critical Race Theory movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, and even feelings and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step by step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and principles of constitutional law.
Understanding your Perspective
+ Colorblindness
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
+ White Fragility
a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable [for white people], triggering a range of defensive moves.
+ Implicit Bias
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
+ Oppression
The systematic subjugation of one social group by a more powerful social group for the social, economic, and political benefit of the more powerful social group.
+ Prejudice
A pre-judgment or unjustifiable, and usually negative, attitude of one type of individual or groups toward another group and its members.
+ Power
Power is unequally distributed globally and in U.S. society; some individuals or groups wield greater power than others, thereby allowing them greater access and control over resources.
+ Privilege
Unearned social power accorded by the formal and informal institutions of society to ALL members of a dominant group (e.g. white privilege, male privilege, etc.). Privilege is usually invisible to those who have it because we’re taught not to see it, but nevertheless it puts them at an advantage over those who do not have it.
+ Bigotry
Intolerant prejudice that glorifies one's own group and denigrates members of other groups.