Unpacking Race Fall 2016 Week 3: What Are Microaggressions?

In the Fall of 2016, T.O. Philly hosted a workshop series on race and undoing racism. Each week we posted material here for folks both in and outside of the workshop to use. Links:

• Week 1: Who Am I?
• Week 2: What Is This Thing Called Racism?
• Week 3: What Are Microaggressions?
• Week 4: What Does Solidarity Look Like?
• Week 5: Because Your Liberation Is Bound Up With Mine

This week instead of meeting as a whole group, we buddied up and had a couple of check-ins with that buddy about our race journals and last week's videos and essays. This week we have another short video and chart detailing different sorts of racial microaggressions. First, some definitions:

• Racial Microaggressions: Brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults towards people of color.
• Internalized Racism: The conscious or unconscious assimilation of racist attitudes or beliefs by people in the subordinate or dominant group towards members of their own ethnic group, including themselves. This can include the belief in ethnic stereotypes relating to their own group.

Next, this week's assignments:

1. WATCH this short animation about microaggressions:

2. READ through this chart, which lists 10 common themes of racial microaggressions with examples and the messages that these microaggressions transmit.

3. WRITE in your Race Journal!

4. CHECK IN with your buddy about what you've been reading, writing, and experiencing.