Page 76 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

50 the psychological dilemmas and dynamics of microaggressions

with other onlookers, the appropriate behaviors become less clearly defi ned
because other reasons (excuses) can be given for lack of involvement. For exam-
ple, when asked why the White bystanders did not help, reasons such as “ I
thought someone else had already called, ” or “ I planned to call when I got
to the office, ” and so on. But, if those reasons were valid, why did the White

bystanders continue to help White victims at such a high rate (75% of the time)?
Dovidio and colleagues (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1996, 2000; Dovidio et al., 2002;
Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005; Kawakami, Dunn, Karmali, & Dovidio, 2009) have
also concluded the following:

• Modern forms of bias, especially the unconscious kind, are most likely
to be manifested in a failure to help rather than in a desire to hurt. This
is especially true when “ inaction ” is the center of bias expression. Many
believe that Hurricane Katrina was the prime example of inaction and a
failure to help because those left behind were people of color, the poor,
and those with disabilities (Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs, 2006).

• Modern forms of bias are most likely to emerge in ambiguous situations
where right or wrong behavior is not clear or when other reasons may be
given for biased actions. Being able to give legitimate - sounding reasons
for actions taken protects the individual from realizing their uninten-
tional discrimination; it allows people to maintain the illusion that they
acted properly and without bias.
• All these examples reveal that unintentional and unconscious bias, while
seemingly trivial, can cause significant and major harm to the recipients.

If indeed the injury to the Black motorist was life threatening, one can
only conclude that the Black motorist is twice as likely to die as the White
one. As we will shortly discuss, unintentional bias may seem small, but
the consequences can be devastating.

Thus, we return to the actions of the flight attendant. Like White bystander
reasons for not helping the Black motorists in distress, the fl ight attendant
can provide many reasons for her actions: balancing weight for safety reasons,
giving the passengers of color greater privacy and space, or that it was a
random act, and so on. It is truly difficult for her to even entertain the notion

that her actions might have been tinged with racial overtones. Because her
biases may be invisible and outside her consciousness, no amount of convinc-
ing arguments by the passengers of color will allow her to see her actions in a
contextual manner. Given this psychological dilemma, how do we make the

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