On Microaffection
Microaggression, briefly described, refers to the small social acts that denigrate others, particularly across in-group out-group categories, often outside the conscious awareness of the aggressor. The concept of Microaggression provides a way of naming the day-in and day-out of loaded questions, comments, assumptions, and well intended but hurtful gestures that erode spirits. The development of a discourse around microaggression (referred to as some by the ‘new face of racism’) undoubtedly helps to build awareness, mobilize action, and create change. Through naming the experience of microaggression, remediation is possible. If microaggression is ‘the new face of racism’, what is the new face of liberation?
I’ve wondered lately about the potential additional impact of a reciprocal awareness and discourse around ‘microaffection’, or practices aimed at nurturing social affection. A provisional sketch of microaffection could include all the ways in which people subtly and skillfully include others, make others feel genuinely cared about, see others, hear others, think about others, and engage in social affection between in-group out-group categories that brings a concrete benefit to another, such as a genuine smile, or a genuine laugh, or a feeling of warmth, love, or safety.
Yet, there is not much conversation about microaffection. The dialectical vacuum around ‘microaffection’ at first blush would seem to indicate that affection is simply not as important or impactful as aggression. Affection is weak, aggression is strong — so it would seem. This belief in the ineptitude of affection is probably part of the reason that nobody talks about microaffection, but it is also possible that on a deeper level there is a collective, implicit doubt about the fundamental goodness of human beings that is shaping the dialectic, as well as our beliefs about the power of affection. If human beings are interpellated as bad, affection, by extension, is ineffectual. I would wager that believing that people are bad severely truncates our overall impact (as well as our lives).
You might be still wondering why we would unpack microaffection. The short answer is simply that affection probably scales up and permeates social networks in the same way that aggression does, if not more so. At least to the extent that microaggression can crush, microaffection can liberate. Mary Ellen Kondrat illuminates well the recursive relationship between micro and macro with a simple observation: ‘Social practices at a micro level always have macro consequences (and vice versa) because the interface is everywhere’. In a very real way, as the phenomenon and concept of microaggression illuminates, micro and macro are in a reciprocal relationship. The word ‘interface’ also has particularly poignancy here, in that it points to the enactment of systems as taking place relationally, between people. The connecting web, the life blood of macro-level problems lives in our interactions with each other, in our hearts and imaginations. In a sense, there is nowhere else. All else is inert.
Lovingkindness
Justice is what love looks like in public, according to Cornel West. It is a beautiful slogan, and its logic implies the reverse is true as well: love is what justice looks like in private. If we take Mary Ellen Kondrat at her word, the private is the interface for the development of the public. The ‘private’ turns out to be the vast majority of most people’s lives, living in families and communities. In terms of microaffection, we could argue that human intimacy and love is the bone marrow of the skeleton of justice. bell hooks expresses well how movements that are not grounded in this awareness inevitably reiterate problems:
Because of the awareness that love and domination cannot coexist, there is a collective call for everyone to place learning how to love on their emotional and/or spiritual agenda. We have witnessed the way in which movements for justice that denounce dominator culture, yet have an underlying commitment to corrupt uses of power, do not really create fundamental changes in our societal structure. When radical activists have not made a core break with dominator thinking (imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy), there is no union of theory and practice, and real change is not sustained. That’s why cultivating the mind of love is so crucial. When love is the ground of our being, a love ethic shapes our participation in politics.
A little later in her writing, bell hooks refers to a practice called lovingkindness, and advocates for it:
“Imagine all that would change for the better if every community in our nation had a center that would focus on the practice of love, of loving-kindness.”
Lovingkindness is great candidate for an actionable practice that develops and encourages microaffection. It is a systematic, well-trodden, and nourishing way of developing more affectionate, pro-social attitudes and behaviors, progressively, towards all others. As bell hooks hints, it is possible to create incredibly powerful, beautiful and impactful minds and actions through engaging in lovingkindness practice. The practice is also shown by some research to decrease implicit bias, the engine of microaggression.
In lovingkindness meditation one moves through a series of categories, beginning with one’s most cherished friend, inclining one’s heart and mind toward kindness, and then progressing at an individualized pace through categories of others, including, eventually, all others. One brings to mind the focus of one’s attention and extends one self and others good will and kindness by using the imagination and phrases such as ‘May you be happy; may you be healthy; may you be safe; may you be free’. One cultivates an attitude of benevolence, distinct from any sense of approval or disapproval, or of wanting anything in return. Through the practice, one can also simply take time to imagine what it is like to be another, for more than a brief moment, spending time internally with the joys and sorrows of other peoples’ lives, other people’s parents lives, other people’s grandparents and great grandparents lives, and allowing it to affect you. I’ll mention that you can also look forward to numerous benefits from the practice. Researchers note from studying lovinkindness practice that it can increase positive emotion, decrease negative emotion, increase empathy, and increase feeling of social connection. Interestingly, when children are taught these practices at school, they shift the distribution of their resources to an equitable pattern across in-group/out-group categories, as opposed to the pattern we are all familiar with — the distribution of resources almost exclusively to our in-group.
Though there is no conversation about microaffection, there are people who have begun to include this sort of practice in social justice work. A great example is Rhonda Magee, who outlines a practice that she calls Colorinsight, which includes such practices as ‘making caring visible’. Rhonda Magee includes other contemplative practices in her trainings, as far as I know, including midnfulness.
This is all to say, in the same way that we can inhibit aggression through awareness, we can probably also double our impact by developing and promoting affection. In fact, in the same way that our aggression can go far beyond ‘micro’, our affectionate consideration of others can grow immeasurably.
References
Flook, L., Goldberg, S. B., Pinger, L., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Promoting Prosocial Behavior and Self-Regulatory Skills in Preschool Children Through a Mindfulness-Based Kindness Curriculum, 51(1), 44–51.
hooks, bell (2006). ‘Towards a Worldwide Culture of Love’. Shambhala Sun, July.
Kondrat, M. E., (2002). Actor-centered social work: re-visioning ‘person-in-environment’ through a critical theory lens. Social Work, 47(4). 435–448
Kang, Y., Gray, J. R., & Dovidio, J. F. (2014). The nondiscriminating heart: lovingkindness meditation training decreases implicit intergroup bias. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 143(3), 1306–13
