Micro-Assaults -Part 3

Imagine that two colleagues –one Asian-American and the other African-American board a small plane. They are told by the flight attendant that they can sit anywhere they choose. They decide to sit in the two adjacent seats up front so they can talk to each other across the isle. Then, three white males board at the last minute and are seated in the seats in front of them. Shortly, before the plane takes off, the flight attendant, who happens to be white, asks the two colleagues if they would mind moving to the back to better balance the load. Both react with anger, arguing that they are being asked to “sit in the back of the bus”. When approached, the attendant, indignantly denies the charge, and says she is merely trying to ensure the flights safety. (DeAngelis 2009)  She has no clue that she has just committed a micro-assault. 

Micro-assaults, typically are both deliberate and purposeful, yet they can also be subtle. Several examples can be identified:

1.     White person shouts a racial slur at a person of color walking down the street, then that white person quickly speeds away.

2.     When, at the office cooler, a racially/sexually charged joke is told, then excused as being only a joke.

3.     When the white cashier at your local store greets and thanks the white customer, yet barely recognizes the customer of color next in line.

4.     When cisgendered persons are automatically perceived as being a sexual pervert.

5.     When binary constructs are presumed to be the real world.

6.     When white/European sensibilities are the norm

7.     When one automatically assumes that people of color are by definition hopeless victims, in need of white sympathy and acknowledgement.

Over the past year, anti-Semitic incidents have risen 57% in the U.S. as the very humanity of Jews are being challenged. This represents the largest single year increase since the Anti-Defamation League has been reporting this data in 1979. Some 457, nearly doubling for the second year in a row, of these incidents have occurred on non-Jewish colleges and school campuses.  According to Jonathan Greenblat, ADL national director, “Less civility has led to more intolerance”. (CBS/AP 2018)

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/rise-in-hate-crimes-following-donald-trump-election-win/

Micro-invalidation's

Several examples of micro-invalidations can be identified as Black women and women of color have been frequently left out of the labor and feminist movements. Often, what should be allies become the chief architects of some of these micro-invalidations. For example, early feminist Anna Howard, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, charged that Black women, during the early suffrage movement, worked to “put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women”. Often ignored are black women in the labor movement. For example, Mississippi’s first Labor Union was established by a group of freed black women working as laundresses in Jackson, Mississippi. One of the first strikes in this country occurred in 1881 as thousands of black laundresses in Atlanta went on strike to demand state officials grant them higher wages and better working conditions. (Branigin 2018)

As we consider science, particularly the Renaissance and so-called scientific revolution, we are frequently told of the insights offered by Galileo Galilei often referred to as the “father of modern science”. But few discuss how Islam, Christianity and Judaism merged to produce the basis of science, art, medicine, and philosophy during the 10th and 11th centuries that made the scientific revolution even possible. Rarely does one discuss Al-Haytham, born in Iraq in 965, or his experiments in light and vision thus not only creating the scientific method but also laying the foundation of modern optics. Or the mathematician, astronomer, and geographer al-Biruni, born modern day Uzbekistan in 973, whose 146 works and over 13,000 pages laid the foundation for not only the sociological but the geographical study of India. And let us not forget Ibn Sina, physician and philosopher (modern Uzbekistan) born in 981 who compiled the first medical encyclopedia used as a textbook in the premier European medical schools until the 17th century. (Overbye 2001)

More specific forms of micro-invalidations occur as persons of color are suspect, and have to constantly prove their competencies, civility, worthiness, innocence, and their right to be at the table of humanity.  So rather than being afforded the benefit of the doubt, they share the burden of race as everything they do is first filtered through this abhorrent crucible. Several examples of these tendencies can be identified. For example, throughout October, the President of the United States, and major conservative news organizations such as Fox News, repeatedly described refugees fleeing violence in Latin America as being “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners”. Department of Homeland Security twitter account “confirmed” that the caravan consisted of “gang members or (those) hav(ing) significant criminal histories. And while there has been no evidence to these charges, the James Mattis, Defense Secretary, ordered hundreds of troops to the border. (Serwer 2018)

Who gets to claim identity, and which identities are deemed legitimate has frequently been utilized to invalidate individuals and groups. Historically, we can identify our use of First Nation or Indigeneity as a means of certifying or decertifying which Native Tribal groups are “authentic”.  Within the U.S., so called “Indian Termination” policies (mid-1940's to mid-1960’s) were intentional policies and laws whose aims were to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American society. The House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953 official articulated the federal termination policy. It covered the immediate termination of the Flathead, Klamath, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Turtle Mountain Chippewa, as well as tribes throughout the states of New York, Florida, California and Texas. Such policies, hearkening to those days when we honestly believed that we needed to “kill the Indian, to save the man” have been the basis of policy for centuries. Congress established these specific policies, with or without consent, allowed the U.S. to terminate tribes. The policy ended U.S. government’s recognition of sovereignty of tribes, trusteeship over Indian reservations, and the exclusion of state laws applicable to natives. The effects of these invalidations impacted the tribes directly by making them ineligible for educational, health and economic benefits. Thus delegitimized, these peoples they have gone into our collective memory as a people that once was. (Walch 1983)

A major form of racial stress, with impacts upon both mental health and well-being, often is associated with racial identity invalidation, others’ denial of an individual’s racial identity, particularly of multiracial individuals. Typically such individuals are challenged and invalidations attempted because of behavior, phenotype, or identity in-congruent discrimination. (Franco and Obrien 2018)  Now imagine a biracial student, attempting to affirm her black identity, yet being rejected as black by your black peers. As reported by one middle schooler, we shall name Stephanie, had to develop several strategies to “prove her cultural identity”. (Khanna 2011:126)

Similarly, sexual-minority identity may become overemphasized or tokenized in efforts to delegitimize minority LGBTQ individuals. Sexual-minority individuals experience stress and the perceived inability to express their sexual identity in those settings where their racial identity is perceived at risk. (Goldberg 2016: 270)