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Recently I attended a workshop on “Identifying and Responding to Microaggressions” developed by the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Diversity Outreach Collaborative. I have been hearing a great deal about
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Recently I attended a workshop on “Identifying and Responding to Microaggressions” developed by the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Diversity Outreach Collaborative. I have been hearing a great deal about microaggression within the library professional community over the past couple of years, and I have personally experienced it myself. So, I was looking forward to what I might learn and share in the workshop.
It was led by Jody Gray, Diversity Outreach Librarian, Jody Kempf, Coordinator for Instruction and Outreach, and Todd Fenton, Manager, InfoNow of the University of Minnesota Libraries. They incorporated a meaningful variety of presentation, video (http://z.umn.edu/microaggressionssting), small group discussion and large group sharing.
From the website The Microaggressions Project:
“The term “microaggressions” was originally coined to speak particularly to racialized experiences.”
“Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.”
The concept, however, has been expanded to include all social otherness. Microaggressions are typically defined within the context and intersection of power, privilege, and identity (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, education level, ability). Experiencing microaggressions can create uncomfortable and unsafe environments in the workplace, home, school, and public spaces, for example. Microaggressions, regardless of intention, can negatively affect one’s work and life experience. The workshop also included four handy tips for those of us who experience microaggressions in our daily lives.- remain calm
- assess the situation (e.g., Are you safe? Is it worth the risk to confront?)
- model the behavior you'd like to see
- focus on the event and not the person