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MICROAGRESSIONS AND THE ART OF CALLING IN

Definition of Microagression

Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership. 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. --Derald Wing Sue Ph.D., Columbia University

Examples from Microagression.com: http://www.microaggressions.com/

1. “A queer-friendly pastor from a major urban centre...in response to a question from a student about being queer in a small town, said ‘Maybe you should leave the village,’ to chuckles. It made me feel angry, frustrated, like urban LGBT and Allies feel like rural LGBT people should just leave our communities.”
2. “When a doctor dismissed my abdominal pain as period pain. Turns out I had a severe kidney infection.”
3. “This was from an opera auditions notice sent to my black arts themed group:
1. Lyla (light soprano)
2. Tara (mezzo soprano)
3. Jenna (mezzo with a belt up to F)
4. Nurse/Bailiff (West-Indian or African American mezzo)”
4. “I waited tables at a restaurant and a regular stated to me on several occasions that I walk *so* well. I’m 37 and it’s only in the last 2 years that I have begun openly exposing my prosthetic leg (I’ve had it since I was 12) and I will never go back to covering it. He once gestured for me to come over to him...and explained to me, as though he was letting me in on some big secret, that if I just covered it up, no one could tell.”
5. “The word ‘illegals.”

Calling In, Excerpted from “Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable,” by Ngọc Loan Trần on Black Girl Dangerous: http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2013/12/calling-less-disposable-way-holding-accountable/

“Most of us know the drill. Someone says something that supports the oppression of another community, the red flags pop up and someone swoops in to call them out. But what happens when that someone is a person we know — and love? What happens when we ourselves are that someone?

...I’ll be the first person and the last person to say that anger is valid...But these are people I care deeply about and want to see on the other side of the hurt, pain, and trauma: I am willing to offer compassion and patience as a way to build the road we are taking but have never seen before.

So, what exactly is “calling in”?

• The first part of calling each other in is allowing mistakes to happen. Mistakes in communities seeking justice and freedom may not hurt any less but they also have possibility for transforming the ways we build with each other for a new, better world...
• When confronted with another person’s mistake, I often think about what makes my relationship with this person important. Is it that we’ve done work together before?...Where is our common ground? And is our common ground strong enough to carry us through how we have enacted violence on each other?
• I start “call in” conversations by identifying the behavior and defining why I am choosing to engage with them.
• I prioritize my values and invite them to think about theirs and where we share them.
• And then we talk about it. We talk about it together, like people who genuinely care about each other. We offer patience and compassion to each other and also keep it real, ending the conversation when we need to and know that it wasn’t a loss to give it a try.

Calling in [is] a practice of loving each other enough to allow each other to make mistakes; a practice of loving ourselves enough to know that what we’re trying to do here is a radical unlearning of everything we have been configured to believe is normal..

We have to let go of a politic of disposability. We are what we’ve got. No one can be left to their fuck ups and the shame that comes with them because ultimately we’ll be leaving ourselves behind.

I want us to use love, compassion, and patience as tools for critical dialogue, fearless visioning, and transformation. I want us to use shared values and visions as proactive measures for securing our future freedom. I want us to be present and alive to see each other change in all of the intimate ways that we experience and enact violence.”