Davidson Microaggressions Project

Wrong Table

I was out to eat dinner on Main St. and when my food came, it was taken to another table. Sure, mistakes happen. But the embarrassing microaggression occurred because my food was taken to the table of the only other person of color from my same racialized group in the small restaurant at the time. We were not together. We don’t know each other. The assumption was a clear lumping together of brown people as probably together because that’s how few brown people there are here. So, we must be together and they need not be burdened with distinguishing between two separate individuals who appear to be of the same racialized ethnic group. This incident is akin to the old racist attitude that goes something like this: all people from X group look/are the same. 

Toxic Waste Dump

If one more person talks about how “beautiful” and “great” the Town of Davidson is, I’m going to come unglued. It’s a white flight suburb that actively excludes and marginalizes people of color. We get pulled over, our children are excluded in the schools, and the only poc left are actually living in a toxic waste dump. Stop saying how much you enjoy living here. It’s super racist. 

Angry, Uncivil, and Unreasonable

If I raise my voice or speak passionately about an issue, I am framed as angry, uncivil, unreasonable, as someone who “clearly has some problem(s),” and who is not interested in getting along with or seeing the perspectives of others. These “others” are typically white, able-bodied, cis-hetero or otherwise privileged. I am angry. Because this treatment would not happen if I were a white man. I see that it does not happen to white men because the framing for the exact same interaction is completely different. 

Fellow White Students

I’m a white first generation student from a working class family. I am often frustrated with the assumption that whiteness equals socioeconomic privilege (which sometimes simply means middle class stability, certainly a privilege). I am included among other white people as socioeconomically privileged in the way people talk about SES class-based things but I am always shocked to realize my whiteness provides me the automatic assumption of not having money problems. I don’t identify with many fellow white students because of my lower income upbringing and current realities. But I experience white privilege and it is uncomfortable. 

The Future of White Men

I once overheard a conversation in which a white man wondered aloud about the role and place of white men in academia as the future unfolds. I thought to myself, Seriously? You are not a minority or an endangered species. You are not outnumbered or even close to being outnumbered. You still make up upwards of 70% of the professoriate. Not only that but whiteness is embedded in our systems and institutions. It’s so “normal” that you don’t even see it. 

Diversity & Social Justice

A colleague once mocked #BlackLivesMatter by jokingly referring to #BlueLivesMatter (referring to police) and #RedLivesMatter (referring to firefighters) because #AllLivesMatter. This took place in the tone of *nudge, nudge, chuckle chuckle* ‘what’s all this diversity and social justice stuff about anyway?’ Clearly this person doesn’t understand that occupations are not the same as people’s lives and that there is a systemic pattern of police brutality against black people -whether they are actually committing a crime or not- in this country that is undeniable in recent years’ public memory. I was stunned by this level of ignorance and lack of empathy but mumbled through points about why and how his comment was grossly shortsighted and a perversion of #BlackLivesMatter. I am not confident he really understood what I said to him. 

“Something he felt, but couldn’t quite place”

A student of color once came to my office to talk about something he felt but couldn’t quite place. He told me he had gone to the tutor center for clarification on class content. The center personnel seemed to think he was not studying or doing the reading. This student has earned top grades his entire Davidson career. He had extensive notes with highlighted marks with him. He simply wanted extra time to go over some class content. He said he sensed that they thought he was from a poor public school background in the way they made comments about his education. He has attended only expensive private school his whole life. He was surprised by these microaggressions he was experiencing because he knew it was about the conflation of race with class that was guiding the assumptions and patronizing tone. I told him about the research on stereotype threat and gave several well-known examples. I attempted to validate his concerns. We discussed strategies to handle this and navigate the tutoring center. I made it a point to check in with him routinely beyond this meeting. He felt comfortable telling me because I’m also a person of color and he had had classes with me in the past. He knew that I would “get it.” 

Transfers

In my first two years teaching at Davidson, I got to know two students who eventually transferred out. Completely separately and unrelated to one another, each student told me that they gave others common excuses to transfer. But behind those closed doors both times in my office, they told me that, honestly, the weight of being a black student and a biracial (and ambiguous “exotic”) student respectively had just become too much. They were tired of people imposing identities on them and making snap attributions about their attitudes or actions based on racial (and sometimes sexual) stereotypes. It had become so much that they felt constantly defensive and angry. I affirmed their frustration, told them I, as a person of color, knew that feeling well, and I supported their decisions to leave.

Moving In

When the moving truck showed up at our new home in Davidson, an older white woman with a child in a stroller stopped, waited for us to come back outside from inside the house, and barked at us without so much as a simple ‘hello’: “Moving out, or moving in?” We said, “Moving in.” She walked away without saying a word. That was my first experience with what I now joke about as peak Lake Norman white women’s entitlement. To spaces, to places, to answers to their demanding questions. I knew we might not love the town after all even if we did just move here for my dream job. Because on moving day, we were made aware of our hypervisibility and undesirability

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