Page 158 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

132 microaggressive perpetrators and oppression

and German citizens needed to believe that the Jews were subhuman and
unworthy of life.
In essence, oppression inevitably means losing one ’ s humanity for the
sake of the power, wealth, and status attained from the subjugation of others.
It means losing a spiritual connection with fellow human beings. It means
a refusal to recognize the polarities of the democratic principles of equality
and the inhuman and unequal treatment of the oppressed. It means turning
a blind eye to treating marginalized groups like second - class citizens, impris-
oning groups on reservations or in concentration camps, inferior schools, or
segregated neighborhoods, in prisons, or in lifelong poverty. To allow the
continued degradation, harm, and cruelty to the oppressed means diminish-
ing one ’ s humanity, and lessening compassion toward others. People who
oppress must, at some level, become callous, cold, hard, and unfeeling toward
the plight of the oppressed.

The Way Forward
The Ethical Mandate

Racial, gender, and sexual-orientation microaggressions are manifestations

of oppression. They reflect a worldview of superiority – inferiority, albeit in
a much more subtle but equally harmful manner as overt forms of oppres-
sion. They remain invisible because of a cultural conditioning process that
allows perpetrators to discriminate without knowledge of their complicity
in the inequities visited upon people of color, women, LGBTs, and other
marginalized groups.
Because bigotry is such a despised concept in our society, the actions of
others are protected through a conspiracy of silence that allows perpetra-
tors to benefi t in good conscience and innocence. The herculean task of
making the “ invisible ” visible is met with many psychosocial defenses that
consistently prevent oppressors from realizing their biases and acting in
ways to change themselves, others, and systemic injustices.
The costs of inaction for perpetrators can be calculated in the cognitive,
emotional, behavioral, and spiritual toll to oppressors. As we have indicated,
even when perpetrators recognize and acknowledge their responsibility in
combating oppression, and even when they state they will take action, they
tend not to do so.
(Continued)

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