Microagressions, political correctness, innate bias, and hypersensitivity.

In My Humble Opinion
101

I think some people don’t realize that this is just a human (possibly American) thing no matter who you are. I am a white male with Southern heritage all the way down yet I live in New England and I work in an industrial facility that is very much blue-collar and multi-ethic (primarily people of Portuguese descent but we have examples everything). People ask me where I am really from all the time because I obviously don’t have a New England accent. When I reply ‘The South’ or, more specifically, Louisiana, the questions really start because my accent and attitude don’t match the Southern stereotypes either. I don’t take offense by it because they are all just being curious and really want to learn something about how I came to be here. I developed a short explanation about how my mother was from Texas and a teacher and she never let her kids develop a really strong Southern drawl but plenty of my friends growing up could curl paint by opening their mouth because theirs is so strong.

There is plenty of prejudice against Southerners too and I have to restrain myself every time an ignorant Northerner goes on a long screed about Texans in particular because half my family is from there (my graduate school adviser was particularly offensive and unapologetic about that). However, I always love a good Southern or redneck joke (there really are plenty of stereotypical ones in real life; bless their little hearts) and the others generally do too.

In my case, being a white, straight, male, Protestant, American isn’t even enough for people to find some small difference to either question or rib you over and I believe that is true for everyone. Most people don’t mean anything offensive when they comment on someone’s red hair like my mother has and I can see how the cumulative effect can get old just like cashiers that have to hear the same old jokes many times a day but there is generally no harm intended. It is usually just someone trying to be friendly and failing at it like all of us tend to do sometimes. In my experience, the difference between someone saying something awkward and being an asshole is a clearly bright line. ‘Microaggressions’ aren’t common at all because most people aren’t that subtle or nuanced. In the vast majority of cases, people are reading things into common behaviors that aren’t intended or implied because people sometimes say dumb or awkward things even when they mean well.

102

No, I mean Latin as in “from the Latin”. There is nothing “foreign” about either of my names, but especially my surname. Isn’t the surname the best indicator of a person’s nationality? I know that’s what I refer to when I see someone of ambigious racial appearance. If it’s an English/Welsh/Irish last name and they look like they could have African ancestry, I just assume that they are black and that any ambiguity stems from European admixture. If it’s a Spanish name and they don’t look black, then I assume that any ambiguity is the result of European and Native American admixture. If they have a English last name and they look East Asian, but they speak with a Caribbean accent, then I assume they are Trinidadian. If they have a Spanish last name and they look Asian, I assume they are from the Phillipines.

It’s weird because truly American names often get hated on because they are so “made up”. Names like Temika and Keisha, for instance. The majority of Americans have names that hail from a different country. “John” isn’t American. It’s Anglicized version of a Latin name.

Since I know I have a racially ambigious appearance, I’m not offended when people ask me about my genetic heritage. I’d prefer they not do this during the introductions, but I don’t have a problem with talking about my race like it’s just another interesting tidbit about myself. My problem is only when they won’t accept the answer I give them because they’re too afraid to come out and ask what they really want to ask.

(Though, I probably would be on high alert if my boss asked about my racial background. My experience has shown me that people can have different perceptions of you if they believe you are one race versus another one. So you probably did good by not asking your employee.)

103

I’d explain why that doesn’t work for women, but I’d have to commit a micro-aggression in doing so. :wink:

104

Even worse: Anglicized version of the Latin transliteration of the Greekified version of a Hebrew/Aramaic name :smiley:

It’s been a while since I’ve been told I don’t resemble my identity in places where it counts by people that I’d care, but it still happens once in a while. Heck, I’m about as often asked by people of my own origin community. Interestingly, outsiders go by that I don’t look it, compatriots by that I don’t *sound *it.

105

You look a lot like my older sister when she was younger in that picture.

I know a little about what it’s like to be asked questions about where you or your family is really from, although I don’t hear it nearly as often anymore. Nowadays I just get the BS about being a mafioso, especially when I used to wear my hair long and keep it back with pomade.

My mom’s family is Calabrese, so she has a dark complexion. We grew up in the Southside of Richmond in the early 80’s, where everybody was either black or white, so nobody knew what we were, especially at the beginning of the school year after spending all summer at the pool. We would always get asked “What are you?” Most of the kids would ask we were Native American. They used to call my older sister Pocahontas, which upset her greatly.

My paternal grandmother did not want my dad to marry an Italian, and she didn’t keep it secret. She wanted him to marry a “fat Ukrainian girl” like her. My sisters and I once overheard her telling other members of the family that we looked like “niggers and spics.” Stuff like this when it comes from your own family hurts way worse than if it had come from a stranger.

My mom was mistaken for being black quite often back then, especially when she kept her hair short and had it permed because she always wanted curly hair like the rest of her family. She married my dad because he had white hair. Not so much blonde, but white. His hair changed to brown some time in his late 20’s, which she was not too pleased about. My mom wanted to have a blond child, so she was disappointed when all four of us came out with dark brown hair like hers. So one summer she tried to turn us all blond with Sun-In. Shit didn’t work. It turned our hair orange, like a clown.

When my brother wandered off at Virginia Beach, the lifeguard at first brought back a black child instead of my brother. Once at work I was showing pictures of my family and one of my co-workers asked me why I had a picture of a black dude in my wallet. When I told her that he was my brother, she did not believe me, which kind of pissed me off. She was black, if that matters at all.

My younger sister worked at the hotel that my mom worked at in high school, and her co-workers didn’t believe that my mom was really her mom because they always believed that my mom was black.

When my older sister moved into her current house in Northern Virginia, one of her neighbors mistook her for a maid because she was carrying in the vacuum cleaner into the house while moving in. I guess she thought that my sister looked kind of Hispanic.

Since I have the lightest complexion among my three siblings, I get the questions and comments less frequently than them. Nowadays I won’t be mistaken for anything but another white dude because I purposely stay out of the sun for fear of skin cancer and to keep my skin from looking like an alligator purse when I get older. It’s more like a minor nuisance whenever it happens, but shit just gets kind of old after a while. We laugh about all of this now, but it still bothers me a little thinking about it.

Is this what microaggression feels like?

106

My name is John, and anyone complaining about being made fun of for having a hard to pronounce or uncommon name, let me tell you that you’re not the only one to get it. Think of a nickname containing John or Johnny, and I’ve been called it, along with shit you’d never dream. The most creative one was “John jackass finger in his shit,” sung to the tune of “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.”

107

And we chanted it because someone’s words hurt our feelings, and so we were fighting back. Just like “I’m rubber and you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” The whole point was to get them to stop, and why would we want them to stop if it didn’t bother us?

Not that I don’t think people are going overboard with the claims of “microaggressions.” I still hold that being annoyed because people ask you the same questions over and over is just something to deal with. A microaggression needs a bigoted assumption behind it, even if it’s unintentional. And, even then, the problem is the underlying assumptions and how that reflects our culture, and not a slight against people themselves.

Oh, and that guy saying women cry when criticized? That’s not a microaggression. That’s just a plain old sexist belief.

108

I don’t get the animus towards these “Where are you from?” questions. They are obviously ambiguous and may mean different things.

If I live on Upper side of Long Branch Road, outside of Clarksville, Franklin County, North Carolina, USA, and my grandfather came from England, and my grandmother from Ireland, I might respond to the question either more specifically or more generally than the person asking the question meant, causing the asker to repeat the question in a different way.

This happens to us straight white guys as well. It is a WAG on your part to jump to the conclusion that the asker is assuming that you are not a “real American” or some such thing. Much of this “micro-aggression” falls into the same category: simple communication breakdowns that some automatically attribute to a nefarious motive when none exists.

109

And then the asker when given a plain answer, and even had their refined question answered, then just denies what you said and labels you with what most makes sense in their own perception.

110

It’s not a microaggression when someone asks the question without knowing how irritating it can be.

But I assert that if anyone reading this thread continues to ask certain people “Where are you REALLY from?”, then they are indeed being a jerk. Because you (general you) have been educated on how irritating it is and why, and yet because you don’t “get it”, you feel like you can keep asking it with impunity. I don’t use the word “microaggression” when “shitty question” works just as well, but ignoring the feelings of others is the very definition of “microaggression”.

You don’t have to empathize in order to respect where someone is coming from. Maybe a white person who gets asked the question “all the time” like Shagnasty doesn’t get why it is irritating because he “outranks” the people who ask him that question. Or maybe that’s the only reminder he ever receives that he is different. Or maybe that question just isn’t a sensitive one for him, but there are other questions that drive him nuts. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t assume that because a white guy can’t grok why “Where are you REALLY from?!” isn’t offensive, it’s just something minorities have to shrug off.

111

When a white person is asked “where are you REALLY from?” its not going the affect them the same way it does an ethnic minority. Not a shocker as to why: The white person is secure in the knowledge that they are members of the dominant group and thus, generally afforded the privileges of such membership. The question may even elicit wry amusement at the quaint notion that they look exotic enough to wonder about. So them disclosing their background isn’t a big deal.

When ethnic minorities get this question, it serves as reminder of something they never can really forget, because they are reminded of it all the time. That they are seen and treated as foreigners. And the assumptions that come with this can be exasperating. A white guy being queried on his origins is not going to come against this like an Indian- or Asian-American will, unless they can say they’ve been told they speak Enlish so well or casually regarded as an expert in the cuisine of their “mother” country from 3 generations back.

112

I invite everyone who thinks it’s no big deal to spend a few months in small town China, where white people can enjoy micro-aggressions all day long.

From the ubiquitous calls of “Oh look, a foreigner” and “That person doesn’t understand what I’m saying” to being asked for the 5,836th time that week if you can use chopsticks, it’s a nonstop adventure of your race being the topic of conversation. My favorite was the animated pro-condom ad I saw where every character was Chinese except the blonde-haired, blue-eyed diseases prostitute. Thanks, guys. A city of a thousand brothels-- and I’m sure it’s definitely the handful of people like me who spread the STDs.

I’ve know a couple hundred foreigners who lived in China-- all of them relatively flexible, adventurous people. ALL of them find the nonstop crap annoying. Sure, we shrug it off, but it gets under everyone’s skin. And many people choose to leave because it is THAT obnoxious. I can’t imagine what it’s like to experience it in your own country, where leaving is less of an option.

Anyway, seems silly to tell people to shrug it off when you’ve never experienced it yourself.

113

Even that is different because it is easy to shrug something off when you’re secure in the knowledge it is temporary, or you can leave if it gets bad enough and go “home”.

If you’re born in and lived your whole life in the country where it is happening, it gets a bit more annoying.

114

One good reason is that being offended, angry, and frustrated every day of your life will not likely result in your life turning out good. Sometimes we’re so focused on our justification for being upset and angry that we don’t think about what’s actually good for us.

Microaggressions can and do happen to almost all of us. Race, religion, gender, and sexuality are often targets, but so is any lifestyle choice that puts you in a minority. Try not driving. Try being married for a long time without having any children. Heck, haven’t you all been kids? Adults commit microaggressions against kids like every day, assuming you’re an idiot. I guess culturally we accept that because kids are legally incompetent, but most of us didn’t feel that way as kids and it pissed us off. And while as kids we usually overestimated our own abilities, adults usually underestimated ours.

115

Recently I read an article that reported on the findings of a survey showing that something like 60% of black and Hispanic female professionals report to having been mistaken for janitorial or administrative staff at least once in their careers.

In the comments section, the majority of comments were of the “durrr, I don’t get it” variety, with white guys not hesitating to talk about how it doesn’t bother them how they get mistaken for store managers every time they wear a short-sleeved shirt at the grocery store. Or how that one time they showed up to work in a dirty t-shirt and holey sweat pants, someone mistook them for a contractor instead of the boss. Then there were the myriad of commentors who kept saying stuff like, “There’s nothing wrong with being a janitor or a secretary!” Apparently you are a classicist snob if you want people to think you are the leader of an organization rather than the person cleaning its toilets.

But what was the most annoying to me were the comments which justified the prejudice on the basis of statistics. Yes, it is true that the majority of cleaning staff are women of color. But if you want to not piss off prospective colleagues, managers, or business associates, then treating everyone you meet as individuals rather than statistics would be the wisest, safest course.

The knee-jerk dismissal of a valid complaint can be just as infuriating as the complaint itself.

116

Awesome. I have been feeling all left out what with being white and male and all. I think I’ll switch up my vacation plans and go to small town China instead of the mediterranean cruise I was going to take.

117

I’m wondering what the alternative is. Humans can’t get by in this world by acting only when they know all the facts. And if they ignore the patterns they recognize, they are even more likely to be wrong than they normally would be.

People don’t address workers they see as cleaning staff, or stocking staff, or service staff, unless they need something done and are looking for somebody. Did those doing the survey find out how often whites face the same assumptions? Did they find out if the people assuming the minority workers were service staff were minorities themselves? Because news flash: being mistaken for someone lower on the economic scale happens to everyone. Racism is real. Well-meaning people making wrong assumptions about you because of your race is real. But that doesn’t mean that everything that makes you angry is due to your race.

118

Yeah, I’ve already scared a child of Asian extraction with my white-faced, blue-eyed, reddish-blonde haired visage.

And yeah, I’ve already had the chopsticks question 4,000 times. “Oh, you use them so well…” [unspoken: “for a white girl”] That’s tedious.

119

Heh, when I went to rural China in the 1980s, I drew crowds of curious folks.

I never thought of it as “aggression” of any sort, micro- or otherwise; I just thought it was interesting - they were quite friendly. Though admittedly, I was only there for a month.

Similarly, in rural eastern Thailand, lots of locals found my GF and myself an amusing oddity. Again, I thought it was sorta endearing. In particular, my long nose came in for a lot of comment! (The locals, mostly Khmer in ancestry, tended to have quite short noses). Plus my GF’s blonde hair - I remember on one bus trip, some local women were fascinated by her hair, and asked permission to touch it (which she gave). It seemed that they had simply never seen anything like it.

The annoying thing in SE Asia was that everyone insisted on knowing how many kids we had - and felt free to berate us when the answer (at the time) was “none”. But that wasn’t something particular to foreigners.

120

I spent enough time in Japan where school kids giggled at me (I’m 6’ 2"), old ladies whispered “gaijin” as I walked past them in the Ryokan, men would get out of the baths when me and my compatriots got in, etc. We laughed.

As for the chopstick thing (you use them well!), I just say I’m from CA and chopstick use is a requirement in all the schools.