Journal #5

In “The Manifestation of Racial, Gender and Sexual-Orientation Microaggressions”, we learn what microaggressions are and how this affects marginalized communities. A microaggression is an unintentional/intentional, verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignation remark on a marginalized community. These microaggressions as this chapter explains can be gender or racial based. An important aspect to note is the unintentional microaggressions. Unintentional microaggressions address the need to educate and express minority identities to people in power. Highlighting a women’s gender in a situation or environment where it is not needed might insinuate your thoughts of differentiation between men and women. In a place where racism has been institutionalized, many might not even be conscious that they are experiencing these microaggressions. The only other evident awareness from the person receiving these insults is what they feel in response. Sadly, in a place where minorities have so much at stake there is a reluctance to speak up. The risk with this is the retaliation of doing so. When is it okay to speak up? What are the repercussions of speaking up? Are my feelings validated by some scholarly research? All of these are possible questions many may ask themselves when they encounter an uncomfortable situation. There are many types of microaggression, and they can negatively highlight your identity, in turn having devastating effects. These devastating effects produce systemic harm. For example feeling uncomfortable about the deliverance of content in a classroom might put you at disadvantage of learning. Something that reinforces these microaggressions can be social institutions. Institutions are socially and corporately constructed environments in which people in power have the ability to largely control your life. An example of this can be as simple as deciding if they give you a job or not. Institutionalized discrimination is powerful because it has been designed to put certain people at disadvantage. Breaking this is not as easy as changing someone’s mind of an inappropriate perception they had. Prejudice is on an interpersonal level rather than a system. Knowing this can help you navigate and negotiate your identities. We know that social institutions are maintained by dominant groups therefore there needs to be a point where we stop learning to cope and assimilate these environments but rather integrate ourselves to create changes.