The formal definition of a microaggression is listed behind me. Simply put, microaggressions are insults that are rooted in stereotype and are directed at someone because of their membership within a marginalized group. Now, because they are rooted in stereotype, they limit a person's ability to be able to see people as individuals. In 1970, Dr. Chester Middlebrook Pierce, a professor at Harvard, coined the term microaggressions to describe insults and dismissive behavior he witnessed black people enduring.
But now the term has been expanded to include offensive comments and behaviors that are directed at anyone in a marginalized group, including but not limited to women, people of color, people with disabilities, and people who are older. So... One of the things about microaggressions is that they're very prevalent in society, and I could do a full day's discussion about that. I actually developed a training that I share with companies to help them address offensive comments in their workplace. We're just going to go through a couple examples here today, but it's important to note that we all have biases, and anyone can be guilty of making a microaggression or being subjected to one.
So why does it matter? Well, for some people, just being themselves can be a revolutionary act because their very being is crushing stereotypes of who and what they should be. Microaggressions wound people. If we were to compare it to getting a paper cut, one paper cut is manageable, but paper cuts all over your body is something quite different.
And it's this accumulation of offensive comments in social settings and professional settings that begin to take a toll on a person's spirit. Microaggressions can be an amorphous concept, but it's my hope through the examples I'm going to provide for you that I can provide a more definitive understanding. Microaggressions regarding disability are prevalent. For example, making comments like, I'm so OCD about my files, or ugh, I can't read today, I'm so dyslexic. When someone does not actually have dyslexia or OCD, can be perceived as a microaggression.
These phrases are examples of ableist language, and they trivialize something that is quite serious. For some historical context, I want to discuss what happened when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in 1990. The ADA makes it illegal in employment to discriminate against someone because of a mental or physical disability. It also guarantees access to buildings and to public and private transportation. Shortly before the act was passed, several disability activists came to D.C.
and they climbed the 83 steps outside the Capitol building. They met at the base of the stairs and they got out of their wheelchairs, they took off their crutches and any kind of assistive walking devices, and they dragged or crawled themselves up all 83 steps. Now, I like to share this story because it's a good reminder about the historical exclusion that people with disabilities have had to face. And it's also a good reminder that there was a group of people that felt so disenfranchised, so marginalized, and so unseen they felt the need to do this.
Microaggressions regarding race are also very plentiful. Some people might be surprised to know that professing colorblindness can actually be a form of a microaggression. Examples would be, I don't see color.
I was raised to treat everyone the same. I work in a diverse environment. I was in the Peace Corps. It's important to note...
That is funny. It's important to note that mere proximity to people of color does not make someone woke. No, right? Nor does it make them automatically knowledgeable about social injustice issues.
These comments actually deny the existence of people of color's experience in the world. And me personally, I've seen these phrases used in a defensive posture when someone's being challenged about something that they may have said that's offensive. What it actually does is shut down this conversation and it allows stereotypes to continue.
The last microaggression that I want to talk about is the phrase, that's so ghetto, or that's ghetto. Now, Saturday Night Live has done a sketch about this phrase, and it's tossed around in the workplace and in professional settings, but this phrase can be very offensive to people, and I'm going to provide some historical context as to why. So the word ghetto is an Italian pronunciation. The word is used in 1516 to describe an area of the city where Jewish people are living in the city of Venice.
Then in 1899, the word is being used to describe where minority groups are living in the city, and again, it tends to be a low-income area. From a U.S. perspective, the word has been associated with black and brown people who live in low-income areas. What we're essentially talking about is a place in the city where people are being regulated because of poverty, disenfranchisement, and reasons that point to systemic racism.
Now, when I'm talking about systemic racism, what do I mean by that? Well, the GI Bill would be a good example. In 1944, President Roosevelt signed the first version of the GI Bill into law, and that bill essentially made it possible for veterans to go to college and also gave them the ability to get low-interest mortgages, which this sounds like a really good program, and it is.
Unfortunately, the way it was administered, it was very discriminatory to Black veterans. The Veterans Administration refused to guarantee loans for developers who planned to sell homes to Black people. When I'm talking about systemic racism, I'm also talking about redlining.
Redlining is the practice of drawing a circle around black and brown neighborhoods and then refusing to give loans to those areas. What I'm also talking about is pushing and shuttling people into a specific area of the city and then setting up situations so that the property remains undervalued. When people use the phrase, that's ghetto or that's so ghetto, It's a way of making fun of someone or something, and for the reasons I just shared, it's not funny. So now that I've given you a couple examples of what a microaggression is, I want to give you a couple tools to avoid making these kind of comments in the workplace.
The first tip is pretty simple. It's pause. Before you ask someone a personal question in the workplace, pause.
Before you compare someone to something or to someone else, pause. Before describing someone's personality, pause. And when you're pausing, think to yourself, what could potentially be the impact on what I'm about to say to someone?
Not just my intention, but what could be the possible impact that the way this person could take what I'm saying? Could they be possibly offended? The next thing I want to think about is, is this comment necessary?
Is it promoting a growth mindset? Because remember, my number one priority when I'm at work is to be productive. The next thing that you can do to try to avoid making a microaggression is research. As I discussed in the previous example about That's So Ghetto, a lot of American English is slang.
So before adding a new word to your vocabulary, just do a quick Google search just to make sure that what you're saying is not offensive. So before I leave here this afternoon, what I want to leave you with is, during the course of this conversation, I've been talking about inclusion and respect, which is important, and I hope that you leave this talk with that understanding. But I hope you also took from this talk the concepts of kindness and human decency. Thinking about something before I say it, that's a form of kindness.
And treating people the way I want to be treated is one of the highest forms of kindness. Thank you.