Page 101 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

The Microaggression Process Model 75

my authentic feelings with, so that there ’ s sort of this healing, there ’ s just this healing
circle that I have around myself, and these are people who I don ’ t have to be rational

with if I ’ m battling racism. ” One Black coworker described how he checks

things out with other Blacks in the worksite nonverbally, “ I mean, you see it
in their eyes, like a connection across the room . . . and they tell you all the things

that have been going on in their office that ’ s been driving them crazy. ” The sanity

check serves multiple purposes: (1) it reaffirms one ’ s experiential reality, (2) it
communicates that the target is not alone and that others experience similar
things, and (3) it creates a validating group experience that immunizes targets
against future subtle expressions of racism, sexism, or heterosexism.

Empowering and Validating Self
Victim blaming is a common process often facilitated because of attributional
ambiguity (Crocker & Major, 1989). Is the plight of people of color (high
unemployment rates, low educational attainment, poverty, etc.), for example,
due to internal weaknesses and undesirable attributes (less intelligence, weak
motivation, poor family values), or does the blame reside in the larger external
environment (prejudice and discrimination, structural inequities, etc.)? Are
targets of a microaggression simply misreading the situation due to oversen-
sitivity or a defect in reality testing, or have they accurately assessed the hostile
and invalidating external situation?
One of the adaptive mechanisms used by our participants against microag-
gressive incidents is the shifting of “ fault ” to the aggressor rather than the target.
People of color in our study reported this type of reaction as “ empowering ”
and “ shielding ” because it locates blame and fault in the perpetrator rather
than themselves. One participant stated, “ I don ’ t blame it on myself; it ’ s not like,
what ’ s wrong with me? It ’ s like, oh, that ’ s that White unconsciousness that they ’ re so

well trained in. ” This sentiment is also shared by others in our study:

African American male: “ I feel good in that, you know, ‘ cause I won ’ t want

to go home anymore trying to figure out what happened, and it does take a
certain amount of courage for me to say, you know, I ’ m going to stop asking
myself this question, I ’ m going to ask it to you. ”

African American female: “ I find that is keeping your voice . . . . If I decide
I want to do an intervention, I ’ m not necessarily doing it for them. I ’ m doing
it for me. ”
In many respects empowering and validating the self seems to be highly
correlated with people of color, women, and LGBTs who are fi rmly rooted

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