Hello everyone, I just wanted to come on here and talk about microaggression. Microaggression is defined to be “a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.
Now I’ve lived a little while as a black man, and I just turned 17 this past week (Happy birthday to me). But during this time I’ve encountered many instances of microaggression
Over the past year though there was a certain instance with two different people. The first person who at the time could be seen as a “boss” to me decided that me and my fellow black friend were fighting in class because of the way we were speaking. We were talking jokingly about how we knew each other’s dads, nothing more nothing less. But the “boss” thought we were arguing even though we told her we weren’t, and she decided that she would threaten us with going to the office.
And the second instance had to do with me being in an argument with someone within a group of people, and when in that situation we had to let the person/the “boss overlooking the situation that it felt like they were being biased and microaggressive because of the way they were calling us aggressive/loud.
So with both people they were picking apart certain mannerisms we had and that’s what I thought was microaggressive. And people can disagree and say that this may not be the case but I feel like for someone to say that my experiences in both of these situations are not how I felt them is dismissive and perpetuates ACTUAL racism. Because for so long black people have been dismissed.
And look, I don’t think that everything is microaggressive but in these two situations it definitely was microaggression. What both parties did after was what made each situation very different. In the first situation, the person had talked to me one on one and asked what my definition of microaggression was, instead of apologizing when I had called it out and other people agreed. They then went on to defend themselves and just not see my point of view so I thought talking was pointless because they themselves didn’t want to grow.
In the second situation I talked to the person a little after and they sincerely apologized and that’s what it’s about. It’s about growing from the situation because some things are ingrained and you may be microaggressive without truly knowing, but what you can do is look inward when someone tells you that you are being that way, and try to change certain things you are doing without blaming that person.