Microaggressions and Marginality

Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact

Derald Wing Sue, Derald Wing Sue

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470627204
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Sozialpsychologie

A landmark volume exploring covert bias, prejudice, and discrimination with hopeful solutions for their eventual dissolution

Exploring the psychological dynamics of unconscious and unintentional expressions of bias and prejudice toward socially devalued groups, Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact takes an unflinching look at the numerous manifestations of these subtle biases. It thoroughly deals with the harm engendered by everyday prejudice and discrimination, as well as the concept of microaggressions beyond that of race and expressions of racism.

Edited by a nationally renowned expert in the field of multicultural counseling and ethnic and minority issues, this book features contributions by notable experts presenting original research and scholarly works on a broad spectrum of groups in our society who have traditionally been marginalized and disempowered.

The definitive source on this topic, Microaggressions and Marginality features:

• In-depth chapters on microaggressions towards racial/ethnic, international/cultural, gender, LGBT, religious, social, and disabled groups
• Chapters on racial/ethnic microaggressions devoted to specific populations including African Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, indigenous populations, and biracial/multiracial people
• A look at what society must do if it is to reduce prejudice and discrimination directed at these groups
• Discussion of the common dynamics of covert and unintentional biases
• Coping strategies enabling targets to survive such onslaughts

Timely and thought-provoking, Microaggressions and Marginality is essential reading for any professional dealing with diversity at any level, offering guidance for facing and opposing microaggressions in today's society.

PART I

MICROAGGRESSIONS AND MARGINALITY

CHAPTER 1

Microaggressions, Marginality, and Oppression

An Introduction

DERALD WING SUE

MICROAGGRESSIONS ARE THE everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership (Sue et al., 2007). In many cases, these hidden messages may invalidate the group identity or experiential reality of target persons, demean them on a personal or group level, communicate they are lesser human beings, suggest they do not belong with the majority group, threaten and intimidate, or relegate them to inferior status and treatment. While microaggressions are generally discussed from the perspective of race and racism (Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, & Willis, 1978; Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000; Sue et al., 2007), any marginalized group in our society may become targets: people of color, women, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered people (LGBTs), those with disabilities, religious minorities, and so on (Sue, 2010).

The most detrimental forms of microaggressions are usually delivered by well-intentioned individuals who are unaware that they have engaged in harmful conduct toward a socially devalued group. These everyday occurrences may on the surface appear quite harmless, trivial, or be described as “small slights,” but research indicates they have a powerful impact upon the psychological well-being of marginalized groups (Brondolo et al., 2008; Swim, Hyers, Cohen, & Ferguson, 2001; Szymanski, Kashubeck-West, & Meyer, 2008) and affect their standard of living by creating inequities in health care (Sue & Sue, 2008), education (Bell, 2002), and employment (Purdie-Vaughns, Davis, Steele, & Ditlmann, 2008).

Racial, gender, sexual orientation, disability, class, and religious microaggressions deliver hidden demeaning messages that often lie outside the level of conscious awareness of perpetrators. These hidden messages, however, have detrimental impact upon recipients through the contradictory metacommunications they convey. Some sample microaggressions and their hidden meanings are given next (taken from Sue, 2010; Sue & Capodilupo, 2008).

Racial Microaggressions:

• A White man or woman clutches her purse or checks his wallet as a Black or Latino man approaches or passes them. (Hidden message: You and your group are criminals.)

• An Asian American, born and raised in the United States, is complimented for speaking “good English.” (Hidden message: You are not a true American. You are a perpetual foreigner in your own country.)

• A Black couple is seated at a table in the restaurant next to the kitchen despite there being other empty and more desirable tables located at the front. (Hidden message: You are a second-class citizen and undeserving of first-class treatment.)

Gender Microaggressions:

• An assertive female manager is labeled as a “bitch,” while her male counterpart is described as “a forceful leader.” (Hidden message: Women should be passive and allow men to be the decision makers.)

• A female physician wearing a stethoscope is mistaken for a nurse. (Hidden message: Women should occupy nurturing and not decision-making roles. Women are less capable than men).

• Whistles or catcalls are heard from men as a woman walks down the street. (Hidden message: Your body/appearance is for the enjoyment of men. You are a sex object.)

Sexual Orientation Microaggressions:

• Students use the term “gay” to describe a fellow student who is socially ostracized. (Hidden message: People who are weird, strange, deviant, or different are “gay.”)

• A lesbian client in therapy reluctantly discloses her sexual orientation to a straight therapist by stating she is “into women.” The therapist indicates he is not shocked by the disclosure because he once had a client who was “into dogs.” (Hidden message: Same-sex attraction is abnormal and deviant.)

• Two gay men hold hands in public and are told not to flaunt their sexuality. (Hidden message: Homosexual displays of affection are abnormal and offensive. Keep it private and to yourselves.)

As indicated previously, microaggressions can be based upon any group that is marginalized in this society. Religion, disability, and social class may also reflect the manifestation of microaggressions. Some of these examples include the following.

• When bargaining over the price of an item, a store owner says to a customer, “Don’t try to Jew me down.” (Hidden message: Jews are stingy and moneygrubbing.)

• A blind man reports that people often raise their voices when speaking to him. He responds by saying, “Please don’t raise your voice; I can hear you perfectly well.” (Hidden message: A person with a disability is defined as lesser in all aspects of physical and mental functioning).

• The outfit worn by a TV reality-show mom is described as “classless and trashy.” (Hidden message: Lower-class people are tasteless and unsophisticated.)

MARGINALITY AND OPPRESSION

Groups that are marginalized in our society exist on the lower or outer limits of social desirability and consciousness. Whether racial/ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, LGBTs, or women, these groups are perceived negatively, given less status in society, and confined to existing on the margins of our social, cultural, political, and economic systems. The result is often exclusion from the mainstream of life in our society, unequal treatment, and social injustice. The inferior status and treatment associated with marginality are constant, continuing, and cumulative experiences of socially devalued groups. Racial, gender, and sexual orientation microaggressions, for example, are active manifestations of marginality and/or a reflection of a worldview of inclusion/exclusion, superiority/inferiority, normality/abnormality, and desirability/undesirability (Sue, 2003). Because most people experience themselves as good, moral, and decent human beings, conscious awareness of their hidden biases, prejudices, and discriminatory behaviors threatens their self-image. Thus, they may engage in defensive maneuvers to deny their biases, to personally avoid talking about topics such as racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism, and to discourage others from bringing up such topics. On the one hand, these maneuvers serve to preserve the self-image of oppressors, but on the other, they silence the voices of the oppressed. In other words, keeping oppression from being acknowledged and enforcing a conspiracy of silence allows oppressors to (1) maintain their innocence (guilt-free) and (2) leave inequities from being challenged (Sue, 2004).

Microaggressions reflect the active manifestation of oppressive worldviews that create, foster, and enforce marginalization. To be confined to the margins of existence in mainstream life is to be oppressed, persecuted, and subjugated; denied full rights of citizenship; imprisoned or trapped to a lower standard of living; stripped of one’s humanity and dignity; denied equal access and opportunity; invalidated of one’s experiential reality; and restricted or limited as to life choices (Freire, 1970; Hanna, Talley, & Guindon, 2000; Sue, 2004). Oppression can occur through imposition or deprivation. In both cases, they span a continuum from its direct/concrete nature to those with more symbolic or psychological manifestations and from being consciously perpetrated to being unintentional, indirect, and subtle.

IMPOSITION

Oppression by imposition, force, coercion, and duress has been defined by Hanna and colleagues (2000) in the following way: “It is the act of imposing on another or others an object, label, role experience, or set of living conditions that is unwanted, needlessly painful, and detracts from physical or psychological well-being. An imposed object, in this context, can be anything from a bullet, a bludgeon, shackles, or fists, to a penis, unhealthy food, or abusive messages designed to cause or sustain pain, low self-efficacy, reduced self-determination, and so forth. Other examples of oppression by force can be demeaning hard labor, degrading job roles, ridicule, and negative media images and messages that foster and maintain distorted beliefs” (p. 431).

Most of us can immediately recognize the horror and heinous nature of overt and concrete acts of rape (imposition of a penis), torture (imposition of physical and psychological abuse), murder (taking away life), and unjust imprisonment as obvious forms of injustice and unfairness visited upon individuals and groups. Racial hate crimes, for example, are recognized by an overwhelming number of citizens as abhorrent actions that they strongly condemn. They are the actions of White supremacists such as Klan members and Skinheads. Good, moral, and decent folks do not condone such actions. Yet, acts of oppression by imposition or force through microaggressions can be many times more harmful to racial/ethnic minorities than hate crimes (Sue, 2010).

The power of microaggressions lies in their invisibility to perpetrators and oftentimes the recipients. The definition of oppression includes imposing “abusive messages” (microaggressions) that both reflect and perpetuate false beliefs about people of color. Those beliefs cause humiliation and pain, reduce self-determination, confine them to lesser job roles and status in society, and deny them equal access and opportunities in education, employment, and health care. Most of the pain and detrimental impact of racism does not come from that of overt racists but from ordinary, normal, decent people who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice for all. They are unaware of their racial biases and prejudices but act them out in the form of racial microaggressions.

DEPRIVATION

Oppression can also take a second form—that of deprivation. It can be seen as the flip-side of imposition and involves depriving people of desired jobs, an education, health care, or living conditions necessary for physical and mental well-being. Food, clothing, shelter, love, respect, social support, or self-dignity can be wrested from any marginalized group (Hanna et al., 2000). In our history, we once banned the Sioux nation from practicing their spiritual and religious traditions, deprived them of their lands, and took away their dignity as Indigenous people in their own country. Taking away a group’s humanity and integrity through forced compliance is a very common practice directed toward marginalized groups. When African American students are told to “calm down” and to speak objectively and without emotion because “emotion is antagonistic to reason” and when Asian Americans are admonished because they are too quiet and nonparticipative in classroom discussions, we are not only imposing Western standards of communication styles upon them but also depriving them of their cultural communication styles. When nursing home attendants address their elderly residents as “sweetie” and “dear,” they are unaware of how these microaggressive terms belittle and infantilize the elderly and how they deprive them of their roles as capable and competent adults. “Elderspeak” has been identified as a very harmful and humiliating form of microaggression and can result in a downward spiral for older persons, low self-esteem, withdrawal, and depression (Leland, 2008).

FORMS OF MICROAGGRESSIONS

Microaggressions may take three forms: (1) microassault, (2) microinsult, and (3) microinvalidation (Sue et al., 2007). Figure 1.1 briefly defines each, illustrates their relationship to one another, and lists some common hidden messages/denigrating themes under each category that are directed toward people of color. We use racial microaggressions to illustrate more specifically the forms they take when racism is the primary culprit. Please keep in mind that other marginalized groups either may share or may experience different group-specific themes and hidden messages. Research on gender, sexual orientation, disability, class, and religious microaggressions is needed to identify commonalities and differences that may be directed toward other socially devalued groups.

Figure 1.1 Categories and Relationship of Racial Microaggressions. Reproduced from Sue et al. (2007, p. 278).

MICROASSAULTS

Microassaults are conscious biased beliefs or attitudes that are held by individuals and intentionally expressed or acted out overtly or covertly toward a marginalized person or socially devalued group. They differ from the other two forms of microaggressions (to be discussed shortly) in that the perpetrator harbors conscious bias toward an identified and socially devalued group. This bias may be directly and publicly expressed through racist, sexist, or heterosexist statements (using racial epithets or making catcalls toward women, for example) or acted out in any number of ways (preventing a son and daughter from dating or marrying outside of their race, giving second-class service to a woman, and so on). In extreme forms of microassaults, LGBTs may experience teasing and bullying in schools, isolation, physical violence, hate speech, and anti-LGBT legislation.

The case of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was tortured, beaten, and tied to a fence to die by two homophobic men, represents extreme acts of hate. Conscious-deliberate bigots generally possess a strong belief in the inferiority of a devalued group and will discriminate when an opportunity arises. Because of strong public condemnation of such undemocratic beliefs and actions, overt expressions of bigotry are most likely to occur when perpetrators feel safe to express their biases and/or they lose emotional control. Social scientists have referred to these forms of overt bigotry as “old-fashioned racism, sexism, or heterosexism” and believe that they have transformed into more disguised, subtle, and less conscious forms (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000; Salvatore & Shelton, 2007; Sue, 2010; Swim & Cohen, 1997). Interestingly, some research suggests that socially devalued groups may find it easier to deal with old-fashioned forms of bigotry, because no guesswork is involved in discerning the motives of the perpetrator. Unconscious and unintentional bias, however, is ambiguous, and subtle and prejudicial actions are less obvious. As we will shortly see, they create psychological dilemmas for marginalized group members.

MICROINSULTS

Microinsults are also forms of microaggressions, but they differ significantly from microassaults in that they likely occur outside the level of conscious awareness of the perpetrator. These are either interpersonal interactions (verbal/nonverbal) or environmental cues that communicate rudeness, insensitivity, slights, and insults that demean a person’s racial, gender, sexual orientation, or group identity and heritage. Microinsults are subtle snubs often unconsciously disguised as a compliment or positive statement directed toward the target person or group. The contradictory communication starts with what appears to be a positive statement but is undermined with an insulting or negative metacommunication.

For example, an African American student who has done outstanding work in his economics class is told by the professor, “You are a credit to your race.” On the conscious level, the professor appears to be complimenting the Black student, while on the other hand, the metacommunication contains an insulting message: “Blacks are generally not as intelligent as Whites. You are an exception to your people.” This type of microinsult does several things: (1) it disguises a racial bias or prejudicial worldview of the perpetrator; (2) it allows the perpetrator to cling to the belief in racial inferiority, albeit unconsciously; and (3) it oppresses and denigrates in a guilt-free manner.

Microinsults can take many other forms. For example, they can occur environmentally. Men who display nude pictures of women from Hustler or Playboy magazines in their places of employment (offices, desks, locker rooms, etc.) may be unknowingly contributing to sexual objectification. The hidden message is that women’s bodies are not their own and they exist to service the sexual fantasies of men. The impact is to strip women of their humanity and the totality of their human essence (intelligence, emotions, personal attributes, and aspirations) and to relegate them to being only sexual beings. Environmental microaggressions are generally invisible to those in the majority group but quite visible to those groups most disempowered (Sue, 2010). When a Fortune 400 company displays pictures of its past CEOs and presidents and they are all White males, there is a powerful metamessage being communicated to women and employees of color: “You will not feel comfortable working at this company.” “You do not belong here.” “People of color and women do not belong in leadership positions.” “If you choose to stay, your advancement is limited.”

MICROINVALIDATIONS

Microinvalidations are similar to mic...