Microaggressions Research Article Summary

Today’s society sees college as a very fundamental step to obtaining success. Carmen Lugo-Lugo argues that instead of being focused on education, college is beginning to convert into a marketplace and a business. She states that colleges are now more interested in making a profit from their students than the actual education they are there for. Due to this mindset, the flow of the classroom environment and how students treat professors is affected. She also makes it known how prevalent systematic racism and racial profiling exist and tells the readers by her first hand accounts. In her essay “A Prostitute, A Servant, And A Customer-Service Representative: A Latina in Academia”, Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies, Carmen Lugo-Lugo uses emotion and language to communicate her claim. Throughout her writing she demonstrates strong emotion-evoking words, and hyperboles.

I have read and fully understand the article Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: the Implications for Clinical Practice. However, I must admit the article does not sit well with me and I have learned I have been a microaggressor since my early days; specifically, I have offered microinsults many times over without even realizing it. Through the years, I have thought of myself as one who consciously believes in equal rights for “all”; not just the American people, but people of all races across the entire globe. Granted, I have never

Microaggressions manifest in many ways such as, “You’re lucky that you're black”, “Don’t you wish you were white”, and “What are you”. These comments can be very insulting to a person. “Don’t you wish you were white” can be very insulting to an African American or Hispanic person. In other words, this example illustrates that the colored person is viewed down upon since they are not white. An African American is viewed down because they were slaves and since they are not white, whites are seen as rich and powerful. Sometimes a simple insult like, “You’re smart,” can offend a person without you knowing it. When someone says, “You’re smart,” people can start questioning themselves about their abilities and intelligence, but there is a way to respond.

Racial diversity is something that is often discussed on college campuses. As a student who self-identifies as a minority in more ways than one I often feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the subject of racism and race. However, often times when these issue are discussed I learn something new; this was the case when reading the articles this week. This week’s articles examined the issue of race from different perspectives. This allowed me to re-examine the issue in a fuller manner; it also allowed me to question some of my own notions that I hadn’t really challenged before.

Microaggressions have been further generalized under a category of racism identified as aversive racism, where discriminating parties tend to find security by associating with those similar to them, thus marginalizing other parties. While working with his colleagues, Sue further categorized microaggressions into three different divisions: microassaults, microinsult, and microinvalidation. This further categorization has let those guilty of using microaggressions how they have the negative effect that they do.

You may not know any bigots, you think “I don’t hate black people, so I’m not racist”, but you benefit from racism. There are certain privileges and opportunities you have that you do not even realize because you have not been deprived in certain ways. Racism, institutional and otherwise, does not always manifest itself in a way that makes it readily identifiable to onlookers, victims, or perpetrators; it is not always the outward aggression typically associated with being a hate crime. Racial microaggressions are a type of perceived racism. They are more subtle and ambiguous than the more hostile or overt expressions of racism, such as racial discrimination (CITE). Microaggressions are everyday verbal, visual, or environmental

Despite changes in the landscape for treatment of ethnic minorities in the United States over the past 200 years, issues with racism has never stopped being an issue and continues to tarnish and tatter the very fabric of our nation. There has been a history of violence against Black people that dates back 400 years, to a time when the first slave was forcefully brought here to the USA (Rogers, 2015). From that time on, people of African descent have been dehumanized and treated as second-class citizens and this has become an ongoing community issue (Diversi, 2016). Racial classification was created as a way to condone slavery and maintain the primacy of the white race (Tolliver, Hadden, Snowden, & Manning, 2016). Aymer (2016) explains that the Critical Race Theory (CRT) provides a way to understand that the violence that Blacks face in America originates from the societal belief in White superiority and, when trying to understand the Black reality, centuries of racial oppression must be discussed (Aymer, 2016). CRT acknowledges that racism is primarily a problem in America and has contributed to the social disparities in the U.S. In addition, it notes other forms of oppression that are important to discuss and work through. CRT does not believe in the legal rhetoric that there is an impartial, equal way of dealing with individuals in the community that has nothing to do with color and everything to do with achievement and hard work. It also takes on an interdisciplinary

These spaces, some have argued, should be free not only of overtly critical language, but also of “microaggressions,” a term coined in the 1970s. Susan Robbins defines microaggressions as “subtle, often unconscious verbal slights or actions that convey derogatory, racist, sexist, homophobic, or other hostile messages conveying inferiority, that become cumulative over time.” Though microaggressions may not be intentional, overt, or part of a pattern, they can have a negative effect on the person or group targeted nonetheless.

66). Research on racial microaggressions has been examined to explore the campus climate for African American students (Solórzano et al., 2000) and Latina/o students (Yosso et al., 2009) and Chicana/o scholars (Solórzano,1998). Sue et al. (2007) define microaggressions as the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership. Thus, microaggresssions manifest in various ways (i.e., they are not just verbal) and in spite of intentionality (i.e., the offense occurs no matter the enactor’s

Critical Race Theory and Conflict Theory Society contains groups with diverse interests, where competing interests encourage conflict (Hutchison, 2013). The racial ideology in the United States is the belief in a hierarchy of races with whites at the top and other races grouped underneath (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2011). One way minorities are depicted as different from whites is through imagery that creates detachment and seclusion between groups (Ortiz & Jani, 2010). Critical Race Theory Critical race theory (CRT) assumes this society was created to empower White people; CRT is focused on transforming the relationships between race and racial power assembled by law and culture (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). This theory suggests that racism is embedded in American society (Helms, 2006), looking at how racial pride in being White can be exhibited in tolerable ways or as White superiority (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012).

Critical race theory is an approach to examine race as a social construct, and it looks at the social and economic inequality among the different races in society. This theory better understands the different values of the race at different level such as individual, interactional, institutional by highlighting those narratives of minorities that typically do not have the power. The privilege is typically silence those narratives by holding more power in the social position as being White than those narratives. Social position refers to the position that is given to a person given by society and culture, which influenced by the person’s social status. The power of the social position can relate to the privilege and power of whites in politics

An intelligent Black boy, who dumbs himself down to avoid criticism. The Hispanic girl who stays at home to take care of her family, instead of going to school. The Asian who pursues a career in medicine, despite wanting to be an actor. All of these strange actions can be explained by the Critical Race Theory. In short, the Critical Race Theory examines how victims of racism and stereotypes counter prejudice. Under the Critical Race Theory falls stereotype threat in which victims assume the roles that they think are prescribed for them based on popular stereotypes. The aim of stereotype threat and the Critical Race Theory is to explain both negative and positive ways minorities are effected by their race and how this reflected in our society as a whole.

The chapter we read from Jim Crow to Affirmative Action and Back Again: A Critical Race Discussion of Racialized Rationales and Access to Higher Education, introduced me to the concept of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Essentially the concept hints at the idea that studying different topics through the context of race can radically change education. I believe this could be extremely important for students of color. Non--STEM classes are taught through a filtered white perspective. Eurocentric world history classes, for example, have a tendency to be extremely Eurocentric talk about ethnic people in regards to their interaction with whites. English and literature classes tend to be filled with “classics” mostly written by white men and, occasionally, white women. These classes usually make up the core curriculum both K-12 schools and universities.

Discrimination lingers under the diversity of the United States. Minorities across the country are targeted and eventually fight for their respect or learn to ignore the harassment. These struggles have caused beautiful revolts and renaissances throughout history. What are a few examples of these cases?

Based on the themes of Critical Race Theory, it is believed that all groups in American society are affected by racism, often unintentionally. Again, theorists that agree with this idea argue that racism is engrained in American culture and society. You could go as far as relating Critical Race theory to Social learning theory. According to the article, Social Learning Theory, Social learning theory is defined “The social learning theory emphasizes the importance of observing and modeling