Showing posts with label psychology of race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology of race. Show all posts

Saturday, June 27, 2020

Microaggressions Dynamics and Categories




Based on a summary by Nadal (2018), I will review four dynamics and three categories of microaggressions.

Four Microaggression Dynamics or Dilemmas

1. Clash of Different Realities
People who experience the same event perceive it in different ways. The offender becomes defensive if the offended person complains and may add insult to injury with such remarks as: ”You’re too sensitive,” “You need to toughen up,” “Get over it!”

2. Invisibility or unintentional bias
Most of the US government leaders and heads of large corporations are healthy white men born in America. They continue to support their traditions as the standard way to live and behave. They are the ingroup having an unrecognized implicit bias that is hard to recognize because their ways seem so normal. Immigrants and minorities are expected to adapt to the cultural norms. If those in the dominant group are confronted, they may respond with denial or rationalization. They may even overcompensate (e.g., showing a photo of Black or gay friends).

3. Minimization of harm
This dynamic is the mistaken belief that the impact or these offensive actions is minimal and does not cause much damage. The reality is of course that people who are constantly hit with nonlethal verbal pellets end up sore and angry. Offenders may be totally unaware of the constant verbal hits a minority absorbs even by the time they reach adulthood.

4. The response trap
If an offended person does not respond, the offender will never learn but the offended person pays a price. The cost of responding can be measured in the time and effort it takes, the risk of dealing with a defensive and uncaring response, or even retaliation in physical or other ways such as demotion or job loss.

Three Categories of Microaggressions

1. Microassaults
Microassaults are short but high impact verbal or nonverbal insults. Protesters may be labeled as looters or rioters suggesting violence is justified to stop them. Immigrants may be labeled as criminals, spies, or rapists justifying incarceration and deportation.

2. Microinsults
These small but identifiable actions can include following a minority or poorly dressed person around a store as if they were a thief or ignoring a Black person in a group of white people as if their opinion was of no consequence.

3. Microinvalidations
Microinvalidations are statements that contradict and therefore dismiss the experience of marginalized groups. A woman or man subject to unwanted touch or an insulting story may experience here complaint as unsubstantiated or irrational. An angry complaint is dismissed with comments like the person is too angry, too insensitive, paranoid, and other words denying the validity of the complaint.

Related Posts







Reference
Nadal, K. L. (2018). What are microaggressions? In Microaggressions and traumatic stress:Theory, research, and clinical treatment. (pp. 39–52). American Psychological Association.


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Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Race and Racism

There is one human race, known as homo sapiens. Humans are identified by their DNA. Humans share about 99% of their DNA (Chou, 2017).





The concept of race in psychology has been problematic because the word race has come to mean different things to different people. Scientists do not think about race the way the word is used in the general population.

Race is a social construct. A social construct is a generally accepted idea. Race is an idea based on variations in skin color and a few other visible features such as hair and the shape of noses and eyes. Such physical characteristics were associated with humans from different geographic regions known as the "five races:" African, European, Asian, Oceanian, and Native American. The observable physical differences have been associated with different mental abilities and behavioral characteristics.

At a genetic level, the variations in people within a geographic region show a great diversity compared with variations between people from different geographic regions. In reality, humans are physically similar.

Scientists do not completely agree on the definition of race, but the American Anthropological Association (AAA), has a position statement on race. A 2012 survey of anthropologists revealed a consensus that there are no human biological races (Wagner et al., 2017).

Humans did interbreed with other beings. Recent discoveries identified shared DNA in some humans with two other species--Neanderthals and Denisovans (Worrall, 2017).

Racism

Racism is prejudice, discrimination, and hostility toward people identified as members of a different race. The idea of race is usually based on superficial differences in appearance such as skin color as mentioned above. Racists assume that the observed physical differences mean that people with similar observable differences are also similar in other ways like intelligence and behavior. The supposed differences are described in insulting language describing one racial group as inferior to another group.

Racism is a long-standing problem that has been used to justify killing, slavery, and all sorts of horrific treatment of those considered inferior to others based on observable differences and having ancestors who were considered to be of an inferior racial group.

Race and Ethnicity in Surveys

Asking identifying information in a survey is a problem because many people use the words race and ethnicity in imprecise ways. See chapter 8, "Assessing Social Context" in Creating Surveys for suggestions on asking about race and ethnicity and other traits in surveys. Researchers will need to rely on how the terms are used in their local cultures if such identities are relevant to understanding survey results.

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See Creating Surveys on AMAZON 



Race and Ethnicity in History

Some have argued that race and racial prejudices were not present in the ethnically diverse Roman empire. Cambridge professor, Mary Beard sums up her thoughts on the subject in an interview related to a television documentary on the Roman Empire (Telegraph, 2016): 

"Romans were as xenophobic and ethnocentric as any people there’s ever been."

In a PBS series on race, the authors make the point that race is a modern concept. They provide a useful history of the concept of race and the concept of slavery related to race.

Although some report the lack of race based on limited or no findings about discrimination based on skin color in ancient literature, the argument is no reason to suspect that the people in Roman times or in other cultures were free from prejudices that relegated some people to groups considered inferior or undesirable.

Measuring race and racism

Following are links to scales measuring racism.






Connections

My Page    www.suttong.com

My Books  
 AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

FACEBOOK  
 Geoff W. Sutton



Publications (many free downloads)
     
  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)
     
  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)