Taking the aggression out of microaggressions

“Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells, and they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes.” — President Obama

Chug chug chug drip drip drip whirred the Keurig machine doing its best to churn coffee for the line of sleepy eyed office laborers being ejected from the elevator right into the kitchen. As if chanting the mantra “I think I can I think I can,” the machine rumbled as each person took their place to fill their mug of morning brew.

A friendly colleague engaged me in light conversation as we waited our turn. As I placed my mug, he asked a mundane question that all Americans have a ready response to:

“So, which is your favorite dynasty in China?”

I squinted at him and wondered what triggered him to think I would have an opinion on such an esoteric topic. I filled up my mug and said — “I think I skipped that class in school,” and excused myself.

I walked to my desk as my mind was just waking up and catching up to the question. My left brain began to situate the offbeat inquiry within some social context of intersectional baggage. However, my right brain burst into comedic laughter as I pictured my colleague eagerly clanging a gong at any Chinese person passing him on the street à la Eddie Murphy in Coming to America.

Periodically, especially during these politically and culturally divisive times in America, I think about this odd question and other risible comments that I have encountered in my professional life. The victimhood spiritus mundi tells me that I should frame these interactions as ‘microaggressions.’

Derald Wing Sue who popularized the term explains that microaggressions are “everyday slights, put downs and insults” that historically marginalized populations (people of color, women, LGBT ) experience in their everyday interactions.

Microaggression, as with all theoretical social frameworks that strive to make sense of complex human behaviors and social environments, is worthy to understand and explore. However, like lily pads overrunning a pond, this framework has rapidly propagated and pushed out diversity in dialogue and perspectives. In this destabilized ecosystem, it has enveloped academia, the media, and government agencies around a single call to action — root out microaggressions.

I am often suspect of one directional characterizations of interactions determined by immutable traits, like race and ethnicity. A simple google search will tell me that I, as an Asian women in a predominantly White society, lived an alternate aggrieved life marked by microaggressions:

The numerous times when I’ve been referred to as oriental and called Lucy Liu, when I’ve been confused for another Asian in the workplace, when I’ve been asked where I am really from, and when people greet me with “Ni Hao” instead of “Hello.”

I would have never considered that such unimaginative comments could undermine my dignity. Nonetheless, like a pushy salesman, the microaggression framework tries to coax me into believing that each of these interactions were tiny annoyances that I had swept aside, and have allowed to accumulate significant burden onto my psyche.

Sue says: “Microaggressions are constant and continual in the life experience of people of color. They experience these offensive behaviors every day from the moment they awaken in the morning until they go to sleep at night and from the time they are born until they die.”

Just reading such an assertion is exhausting, disempowering, and dare I say — macro aggressive.

Moreover, microaggressions are only labeled as such when committed by White people. Should I feel somehow less affronted with “fellow” Asians who ask me where I am from, than when White people ask me the same question? Should I feel more beleaguered the times when I was misnamed by White colleagues versus by people of color?

Sure. If I were racist maybe?

According to Sue and the mainstream media class, microaggressions are committed by well-intentioned people who unfortunately harbor implicit bias. The fact that the receivers may also apply their respective implicit bias onto interactions is conspicuously left outside the realm of the discussion. Moreover, it seems that absolving implicit bias from people of color, who are the receivers, implicitly denies the agency and humanity of those individuals.

Emory University psychologist Scott Lilienfeld, a lonely critic of microaggression in academia, conducted research that indicates that people with “particular identities, ideological commitments and personality traits” are more likely than others to perceive to have experienced an instance of microaggression, and are prone to feel aggrieved by it.

When a coworker complained that her eyes looked too Chinese one morning, I could have internalized this mocking comment to feel as some forever foreigner in my own country. However, the only emotion the comment elicited in me was pity that she was not satisfied with herself that morning.

So, I empathized with her and reassured her that her eyes looked just like my grandfather’s.

She chuckled, paused, and immediately apologized that she didn’t mean what she said. Thereafter, we continued to have an interesting conversation that revealed that her grandmother was half Chinese and sometimes her family would reference ‘Chinese’ eyes without thinking about the social implications.

At the end, although a social media mob would have responded differently, I am glad I did not write her off as some racist White lady. Instead, I expanded my scope of understanding the complexities of the racial and social fabric of this great country — that there could be a racist White lady in every Chinese!

And then there was that one time I was asked if I knew how to sing the Chinese National Anthem. I said sure, and started to sing the Star Spangled Banner in a Chinese accent, before we both burst into laughter.

As a member of a pluralist society, it is inevitable that we all navigate silly, kooky, and (gasp!) inconsiderate comments due to some bias of a racial group. The antidote is not to bake “aggression” into interactions by applying immutable group characteristics onto the person feeling the grievance and the person who made the comment.

We are each individuals, after all.

Pointing out natural human behaviors within the framework of “microaggressions” would restrict, rather than promote candid, interaction between individuals. On the other hand, shedding this framework will open opportunities for conversation and humor that binds the humanity in all of us.

Proponents of microaggression’s insidious presence in American society choose to posit the singular narrative that this country was founded on racism. But the growth of any individual, let alone an entire country, cannot be attributed to any one experience, but influenced by a composite of experiences and legacies.

For me, the values of freedom of speech and expression and open discourse, interweave with the history of discrimination to underlie this country’s formation and progress.

However, as long as we indulge in the victimhood culture, perhaps I can, for once, gratuitously participate in it by blaming my implicit biases against the microaggression framework on the supra structure in which I grew up — my family.

You see, my parents escaped an authoritarian regime where speech, expression, and the growth of human potential was controlled by government fiat. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, youth were mobilized to expunge ‘impure’ capitalist elements in Chinese society, without judge or jury.

Similar to today, people were pitted against one another based on group identity and association. Ideological incantations replaced public discourse to uphold the national narrative that Mao wanted to actualize.

Although without the violence, certain elements have seeped into American culture today, where discourse is monitored by language vigilantes. Short of government sanctioned struggle sessions, institutions have mobilized the populace to interact in highly static and preset frameworks. I have taken mandatory trainings where labeling a series of situations as micro aggressions was the only correct answer, without any discussion.

Knowing that I had the choice of wearing a dunce hat or fall in line with the dominant ideology — I chose to tow the party line and submitted the correct answers.

Chug chug chug drip drip drip whirred the coffee machine as I served a line of sleepy eyed office laborers pouring into the coffee shop. As I pulled my next espresso shot, I heard a chippy voice behind me say, ‘Ni Hao!’ I glanced over and said ‘Yo! Nihao!’ As I placed the grande latte on the counter, the customer came over and thanked me with a bow.

After several months of this salutary morning ritual, I decided to quench my boredom during one slow shift, to finally tell the customer that I actually never say ‘Ni Hao.’ Instead, I say ‘Neih Ho’ because I am Cantonese. In fact, I also never bow as a greeting and have only bowed when honoring the dead.

He was surprised and curious as I shared this new information with him. The next day, the rhythm of my morning changed when he greeted me with ‘Neih Ho!’ I made his grande latte and expected a bow, but instead he said, ‘Thank you!’

I reflect on these interactions from time to time — the misidentification of cultures and the quirky inappropriateness. I view these interactions as the consequences of being part of this unique American project of uniting a nation of people from different cultures and background.

As former President Barack Obama said: “The world is messy; there are ambiguities.”

Fortunately for us in this open society, we can work through the messiness and ambiguities through candid conversations, and hopefully, even humor, between individuals. That is, if we choose a narrative of the country based on pluralist principles over group identity and tribalism; and choose influencing minds through dialogue and good will, over victimization and ideological indoctrination.