http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2980522193469128149&hl=en&fs=true
Here I am practicing for a promo of an upcoming speaking engagement.

A thoughtful friend forwarded an article to me called “Unmasking ‘Racial Micro Aggressions'” featured in the Monitor on Psychology. It was a good read since I’m gearing up to speak again in the coming weeks on subtle racism in the Jewish community.

Microaggressions are really the key to subtle racism. They are “everyday insults, indignities and demeaning messages sent to people of color by well-intentioned white people who are unaware of the hidden messages being sent to them” in Columbia University psychologist Derald Wing Sue’s definition.

Sue had a couple of other definitions that I also found illuminating:

• Microassaults: Conscious and intentional actions or slurs, such as using racial epithets, displaying swastikas or deliberately serving a white person before a person of color in a restaurant.

• Microinvalidations: Communications that subtly exclude, negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings or experiential reality of a person of color. For instance, white people often ask Asian-Americans where they were born, conveying the message that they are perpetual foreigners in their own land.

As I read these terms (and was overwhelmed by them), I thought of the latest emails I’ve received from Jews of color around the globe. A Japanese Jew told me that he’s stared at so much at shul (synagogue) that sometimes it’s hard to concentrate on the prayers. A mixed race Jew said that she’s sick of having to explain her background with every new encounter. And then there’s me with my four typed pages of microaggressions and overt racism I’ve experienced in the Jewish community.

I forwarded the article to someone who attended my talk at LimmudNY.

He was particularly disconcerted at the talk by the fact that my husband and I noted that the question “Where you from?” can be offensive to a person of color since it often really means “What are you?” And maybe, “What are you?” and “Where are your grandparents from?” aren’t actually topics for polite conversation.

Personally, I think if someone doesn’t volunteer information about their “exotic” heritage then perhaps they’ve decided that their heritage is nobody’s business but their own. How many times do white Jews get asked about their heritage after all?

But the someone I sent the article to didn’t agree with me after he read what the white expert had to say about microaggressions:

“Implementing [Sue’s] theory would restrict rather than promote candid interaction between members of different racial groups,” maintains Kenneth R. Thomas, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one of the critics. In the therapy relationship, for example, having to watch every word “potentially discourages therapist genuineness and spontaneity,” says Thomas, who is white.

Likewise, aspects of Sue’s theory enforce a victim mentality by creating problems where none exist, Thomas asserts. “The theory, in general, characterizes people of color as weak and vulnerable, and reinforces a culture of victimization instead of a culture of opportunity,” he says.”

I would argue that people of color aren’t weak but they are weakened and made vulnerable by a constant barrage of racism they experience in their daily lives. Constantly being asked “Where you from?” after responding “New York” makes me feel like I’m not and I’ll never really be accepted as an full-fledged American or a Jew. And if I have thicker skin and I’m feeling this way, I’m really worried about other people.