Speaking Up About Microaggression

I may have accidentally been mean to a coworker the other day. I didn't mean to be mean, honestly. It's just that for some reason, all the years I was afraid to speak out when I saw or heard someone tell an insensitive joke or casually make a racist, sexist, homophobic, or agist statement have slipped away.

In the past, afraid of confrontation, I would close my ears and eyes to these seemingly small comments, brush them off, and go on my way. On the other hand, we have all made such remarks, often unthinkingly. We are influenced by the society around us, and that society has profited greatly by leveraging stereotypes and prejudices.

Think about all those high-school coming-of-age movies in the 60s and 90s. The fat girls, the nerd boys, the ugly girls, the one Black or Hispanic family, and the over-the-top gay men were fodder for the entertainment of the general public. All of that becomes ingrained in us. We don't want to be the one everyone makes fun of, so we end up falling in line with the others, laughing at the expense of varying groups of people unlike us.

Then we began to become aware of what had been happening for all of our lives. We had believed that we were not racist, homophobic, or prejudiced. We were certain those were other people. We cared about all humanity, loved our neighbors, no matter who they were.

Then we learned about microagressions and began to catch ourselves doing it. "Oh, that's gay." "Black girls are strong." "My, you're wise for your age." "You speak such good English!" "Let me do that for you, at your age you shouldn't be climbing up there."

By me, of course, I mean I. My personal little microagressions began to be revealed. I began to catch myself. Then I began to hear it in others. People I had admired made some of the most hurful assumptions, leading them to make hurtful comments.

In the past couple of months, I have begun to feel a strong urge to inform people when they commit a microagression and help them learn ways to avoid doing so again. It all started with myself.

Ya'll, I'm 66 years old and I work in a school for autistic children. I'm often running after a child, moving fast to keep a child from sticking thier hands in places where they don't belong, or climbing up cabinets to bring down the small toys tossed up there by a nonverbal child who wants to keep them safe from others. I just do what needs to be done, and if I need help, I ask for it. Inevitably, though, someone will say, "Let me do that for you."

No, thank you. I'm perfectly capable. If I need help, I'll ask.

I've finally started speaking out and telling people that while I appreciate their offer, I would rather they didn't unless they can see that I'm truly struggling. Otherwise, leave it up to me to ask. Trust me to know my own limitations. Keep asking, offering, or insisting, I might get annoyed enough to pick up the phone and call the Equal Employment office.

Back to the other day

Twice the other day, I suggested that a person I work with to rethink somehing in their frame of reference.

In the first instance, they mentioned that a drawing of a woman would be "prettier" and "look more feminine" if the drawing had a "thinner" chin.

I asked the coworker to consider rethinking their idea of beauty and suggested that our ideas about these things are so embedded that we sometimes don't realize that we're being judgmental and, in this case, fatphobic.

Later the same day, the person showed me a picture of a rainbow-colored pickup truck, with something about "men who listen to Taylor Swift" in the text.

After being shown the meme twice, I blurted out that it wasn't really appropriate to use the concept suggested by the brightly colored truck in a negative and demeaning way. i.e., "men who listen to Taylor Swift are gay." This was clearly the message to me, with the further insinuation that being gay was a bad thing.

"It's just supposed to be a joke," the person said.

In the way they said it, they intimated that I may have embarrassed them or hurt their feelings by tellinng them this.

Perhaps they truly didn't make the connection between the rainbow truck and the suggestion of gayness. I was not rude about how I "called them out," but the innate fear of confrontation that remains in me felt a little ashamed for saying anything at all. Maybe they didn't understand that saying the woman in the drawing would be prettier with a thinner chin is equal to saying a woman with a fatter chin is not pretty.

Yet, I know I did the right thing. My conscience tells me I did, and I will do it again. The reality, though, is that often, doing the right thing is not easy.

© Suzy Jacobson Cherry