Page 144 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

118 microaggressive perpetrators and oppression

Transformation Two — Power to Impose a Biased Racial Reality
Elsewhere, we have indicated that true power lies in a group ’ s ability to defi ne
reality. If one looks at the history of the United States, it is the history of racism:
enslavement of Black Americans, taking land from Native Americans, the World
War II internment of Japanese Americans, and many other racist actions (Jones,
1997; Ponterotto et al., 2006; Ridley, 2005). In each case, such actions were justi-
fied by a racialized worldview that was primarily Western European in origin

and filled with racist beliefs, attitudes, and myths: (1) Blacks were intellectually

inferior, not truly human, and freedom was an unnatural state for them; (2)
Japanese Americans, despite “ two - thirds ” being citizens by virtue of birth, were
still more loyal to Japan and potentially spies; and (3) “ manifest destiny ” decreed
it a divine mandate for Whites to expand across the continent and take land
away from Native Americans (Jones, 1997; Sue, 2003). These views, which have
been challenged and subsequently found inaccurate and harmful, were shared
by the general populace in recent history. In all three cases, beliefs that one ’ s own
group held the corner on “ truth ” and that imposed a view of White superiority
and minority inferiority resulted in oppression toward groups of color.
To this very day, White supremacist notions, whether intentional or unin-
tentional, conscious or unconscious, continue to be transmitted to its citizens

via a racial curriculum that glorifies the history of certain groups (White
Western Europeans) while denigrating others and portraying them as inferior,
primitive, and undesirable (Hanna et al., 2000; Jones, 1997). People are
conditioned and taught to believe that Asian Americans are sneaky, foreigners,
disloyal, and lack leadership skills; African Americans are dangerous, crimi-
nals, drug addicts, and intellectually inferior; Latinos are illegal aliens, wel-
fare recipients, poor, and lazy; and Native Americans are alcoholics, primitive,
savages, superstitious, and uneducable. These images teach children that certain
groups are to be feared and avoided and evoke feelings of revulsion, fear,
disgust, and contamination.

Transformation Three — Using the Tools: Socialization
Mechanisms to Enforce Social Conditioning

The actual imposition of power to create a false racial reality and to enforce
mistruths occurs through social and cultural conditioning where schooling
and education, the mass media, significant others, and institutions collude in

perpetuating a racial curriculum that is equated with “ truth ” and “ reality ”
(Jones, 1997; Ridley, 2005; D. W. Sue, 2003).

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