The Microaggression Question
My voice quavers, an octave higher than it normally is, and I squeak out a close variation of the questions: “Over the span of your career, how have both the music media and the industry itself changed in terms of sexist attitudes? Or is the Internet really making it easier for people to combat sexism by connecting marginalized groups together?” It’s not quite as thorough as I’d like and doesn’t quite express the exact query I have, but perhaps that’s because as soon as I say “sexist,” I see someone in the row in front of mine turn around, snicker, and my stomach plummets in an all too familiar way.
The scene: A book tour stop. The crowd is a mix of different genders, mostly white. The writer being spotlighted is an outspoken critic of homogeneity in the rock music world. I’m biased because I’m a fan, but she’s tough and kind and thoughtful, and I’m sure she has an insightful answer to my question.
There was nothing to worry about. I had nothing to worry about! I’d measured my comfort with posing something that could even kind of, even the liiiittlest bit, be framed as “the diversity question” in a room of white people, and went forward.
But then the sight of this (white, male) someone snickering, and all the doubt I’d suppressed flooded into my throat. It’s a doubt that splits you into two: your public self and your private self; your self-confidence and a reality that chips away at it; your race or your sex or the self seen by the world and the you that exists, whether you like it or not.
Whenever you project anything into the public sphere, there’s always the fear that someone will call you stupid and shut out your opinion. That’s a given; that’s the baseline upon which knee-jerk criticism begins, and sometimes, it’s not completely invalid. But if you’re not a straight cis white man (and at this, many readers will tune out), all criticisms of your actions, statements, and self-presentation are then filtered through another level: “Oh, you just think that because you’re a woman;” or its flipped but not inverted sentiment, “Oh, why do you have to see racism and gender inequality everywhere?” It may not appear in such an explicit way, but the conceit can be cloaked in gestures as well — in an eye roll, in a loud sigh, in a knowing look.
It’s part of the myth of Political Correctness, that these “microaggressions” are meaningless compared to the real tragedies of the world. Real sexists and racists are the enemy; the Republicans are the enemy; why can’t movements coalesce around the bottom line and move forward together? Those small things that get under your skin are flies to swat away, and if you get your panties in a twist about the smallest things (side note: wanna have a discussion about gendered expressions for denoting discontent?), how can we talk about anything at all?
Naturally, these critiques focus on those who would get in trouble with the “PC police.” Stepping aside from the fact that PC-ness is described with language connoting militarization that many social movements often openly abhor, men, and mostly, white men, worry not about the impact of their actions, but the blowback from trampling wildly around the world. In their eyes, the n-word is now post-racial; jokes about abortion and rape with a male focus are edgy material; media representation doesn’t really matter because it’s all fiction, guys!
When the blowback comes, it’s seen as misguided, or as shifting the conversation into unnecessary territory. But the idea that microaggressions are meaningless is to ignore the very real effect they have on people’s interactions, self-expressions, and health.
As Jay Caspian Kang put it in a debate about online discourse (specifically political, but the critique extends beyond the focus of the discussion):
[I]f the fear is that small happenings on that platform will be excised by the right and blown up into outrage campaigns about ‘PC Gone Wild,’ the last thing progressives should do is do the work in advance.
That means we absolutely should engage the idea of microaggressions, those “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color” and marginalized communities of all stripes. (See here for plenty of examples.) The word “microaggression,” coined in 1970 by Harvard professor and psychologist Chester M. Pierce, was created to describe discomfort of a singular kind. They’re like bug bites, in that once bitten, you’ll do all you can to forget about their existence, and when you scratch them, you only hurt yourself.
The hurt, in question, as documented by Derald Wing Sue in a piece published in Psychology Today in 2010, is less what’s actually done and more what it discourages:
Let me use an example to illustrate how microaggressions can influence the standard of living and quality of life for women and persons of color. Statistics support the fact that White American males constitute only 33% of the population. Yet, they occupy approximately
80% of tenured positions in higher education
80% of the House of Representatives
80–85% of the U. S. Senate
92% of Forbes 400 executive CEO-level positions
90% of public school superintendents
99.9% of athletic team owners
97.7% of U. S. presidentsThe questions we must ask are: ‘Where are the women?’ ‘Where are the people of color?’ ‘If these are due to racism and sexism, who are the culprits?’ ‘Are these outcomes due to the overt racist or sexist?’ ‘Are they due to the hate mongers, the White supremacist, Klan or Skinheads?’ I contend that it is not the overt racist or sexist which control the tools that result in such unjust and damaging disparities. It is people we elect to office, teachers who educate our children, business leaders who carry out the policies and practices of their corporations, government leaders, law enforcement officers, physicians, dentists, construction workers, your family, friends, and neighbors. It is well-intentioned people like you and I!
In a paper addressing microaggressions in the workplace, CUNY faculty Jennifer S. Rubain and Maryann McKenzie add to the discussion, writing that “people often complain about comments or actions from supervisors or peers that do not rise to the level of illegal discrimination, but nonetheless make the receiver feel devalued and unappreciated and seem to communicate unconscious biases.” As employee well-being is factored into productivity of any kind, these small seeds of resentment bloom into anger or burrow deeper to coalesce into self-loathing. Rubain and McKenzie warn of “[the impact of] one’s morale and self-worth and potentially leading to anxiety, shame, depression and other health issues.”
And here we get to the health, the physical effects of microaggressions and/or as a catalyst for depression or anxiety or other mental health conditions. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health, conducted on race and ethnic intersections with healthcare, revealed that:
It was our goal to highlight the importance and need for research that examines racial/ethnic discrimination as a putative risk for racial/ethnic health disparities. Noticeably absent from this themed section [of our study] are articles that focus on institutional racism. Perhaps the most insidious form of racism is the structural or systemic factors that influence differential availability, access, appropriateness and utilization of and access to health care. This form of racism is less easily recognized than personal discrimination because the perception of what is racist in the United States is largely shaped by our system of legal remedy for discriminatory behavior, which focuses on the presence of conscious intent. Whether regulations, policies, rules and customary procedures within health systems, organizations, or governments have a discriminatory intent is an important question. Equally important, however, is whether these regulations, policies, rules, and procedures have a discriminatory impact.
Other search suggests that perceived discrimination, as read without knowing the exact intent of the person meting out the microaggression in question (as is often the case), can lead to worse sleep behaviors, PTSD symptoms, negative self-esteem, and anger that’s often read as overreaction.
For those of us who seek to dissect our experiences and dig up the root of our discontent: The more “minority” titles you personally embody — regarding race, gender, sexuality, self-expression — the more likely you are to be pigeonholed as “the person who talks about x because they are x,” and the more fine tuned you are to microaggressions regarding any part of your person. While this doesn’t totally go away in genuinely diverse circles, it’s certainly amplified when you are the Few and they are the Many, when their eyes fix on you as you weigh the pros and cons of actually chiming in. And then, to actually express your displeasure out loud — then the floodgates open. The self-satisfaction of those who charge you with overthinking “identity politics” doesn’t need to be seen to be felt; and no matter how reinforced you feel your assumptions are, you’ll feel the blow, even though it’s fueled by nothing but willful ignorance and deliberate misdirection.
Regarding the anecdote that I opened with: Which was it? What brought on that man’s sudden smirk? Was it the thought that my question was stupid, or that he was thinking “Of course. . . ”? Whatever the answer, the better question is: What does it mean that I even have to ask?
