 Hi, let's talk about social inclusion once again. Today we explore the concept of racial microaggressions and how it relates to white supremacy. Two amazing guests with us today, speaking from different parts of the globe. So we have Johnny Williams from Trinity College in the United States and David Embrick from the University of Connecticut in the US, speaking from Barcelona right next to us here in Portugal. So revealing a bit of what our guests will explore today and as a kickoff to this episode, we'll be talking about the limitations of viewing microaggressions. We'll get into this concept shortly. The limitations of viewing microaggressions as individual behavior only. And we're gonna talk about as well about the importance of recognizing historical roots, systemic roots in capitalism and colonialism, indigenous erasure, et cetera, as source for these microaggressions. Johnny, David, welcome. Thank you for having me. You're welcome, yeah. Johnny, racial microaggressions, what are we talking about here? Well, this is a concept that was developed by an American by the name of Chester Pierce back in the 1970s. And the concept he designed it to try to make sense of the kind of mental kind of incursions that white supremacy makes upon blackened people, people who we refer to as black in the United States but I just refer to them as blackened because they're just human beings, right? But, and so what he was trying to do was to diagnose him that is how does it that these subtle forms of assaults, right, these micro assaults he called them, microaggressions that are daily experienced by people in a white supremacy society, how does that then affect them mentally as well as physically? But he was dealing with them mentally as a psychiatrist because he was a psychiatrist. He's kept it at the level of the pre-conscious as well as the unconscious when looking at these things that the aggressors in this instance are people who are white and white people and they then interact with people on a daily basis with these slight kinds of aggressions, right? Like say, well, I didn't know you were that smart. I didn't know that you could articulate it that way. Oh, you are articulate, you're very articulate. Like if you aren't articulate and stuff like that, these are various forms of microaggressions and stuff. So, as the period stand, what he wanted to do was to diagnose that and blackened people how it affects them and stuff. But he also looked at the structural components of it too. We call these offenses, these micro offenses that they are very collective in their orientation because they're designed to maintain white supremacy. Now, that part of his analyses was left off when microaggressions appeared again in the 1990s with this fellow by the name of Dabrod Sue who came up with a, yeah, he published an article in I think the American Psychological Journal that reintroduced the concept to the American public as well as to the world. And it just basically neglected the structural component and it only talked about individual kinds of interactions that are going on. Of course. That's essentially what he's talking about. Yeah, okay. It's a good contextualization that I thought was important for us to address before we jump into the remaining questions. And, Johnny, I read your article and the importance of this research seems quite clear. So there are structural systemic sources to racist behavior. Tell us more about that. Yes. Well, the first thing you need to understand is that when you look at the social sciences or any science that's basically coming out of Europe that dominates the world today, that it's a concept, science itself obscures at least from its beginning obscures white supremacy. And the microaggression concept as a social scientific concept has currently used, not as Charles Pierce used it but as it's currently being used now around the world in the United States particularly, obscures how white supremacy works. And it obscures the reality of black and people as a result of that, right? And it obscures that by it talking about transforming white people's attitudes when it comes to their interactions with black and people, right? The United States, right? So it's not gonna look at the systemic nature of white supremacy itself. It's only gonna examine those individual kinds of transformative ways that somehow you can reeducate and make white people aware of what they're doing but it's not designed to eliminate white supremacy. Now that's a big gap that we're looking at with this concept that most sociologists, most social scientists do not look at this as a problem. They just uncritically adapt the concept and apply it but it's not doing what they think it is doing because some people not even believe that by reeducating white people, right? Making them aware of what they're doing that that's how they eliminate white supremacy. And it's just not the case because we're talking about our social system. And the social system consists of these kinds of discourses, these actions, these mental constructs, ideology, belief systems and so forth that just don't fall by the wayside in terms of practice. Okay, David, would you like to follow up on this part? Yeah, and I think that I think what's important here is that we're not trying to really sort of reconceptualize racial microaggressions. What we're trying to do is go back to Chester Pierce's original kind of theorization of this concept and add in the second part of the equation. I think it's important. One of the things that has happened is, and as Johnny mentioned, is that sometime in the 1990s, psychologists in general started with Daryl Wingsu sort of pursued this line. Now, prior to Daryl Wingsu, there were some sociologists, right? Philomena Essit, for example, Ronan Everyday Racism that sort of captured some, I think more structural kind of understandings of these microaggressions, right? But sociologists kind of the way we look at it kind of fell by the wayside and psychologists picked it up for the most part. And if you look since then, the majority, not all, but the majority of research on racial microaggressions has a theoretical underpinnings using Daryl Wingsu's concept or something sort of similar, right? Which is very individualistic. And so what we wanna do and what we tried to do with this article was to sort of bring it all back. Not to dismiss what's been written already, but to say that the equation is both at the individual and structural levels and what has been sort of forgotten is the structural sort of issues of white supremacy. And that's what we really need to look at. And there are major implications that I'm sure we're gonna talk about soon. Of course, exactly. I was thinking about that. So you merged, I think, both the importance and the research gap that you were following. So I'm just gonna jump this one and ask you, David, even though it's hard, it's more like a theoretical discussion, as you told me, Bert, let me know about some potential findings that some reflections that you did, many reflections of your work. Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you sort of think about it more holistically, then you can sort of translate that to... And I'm gonna go back to Johnny's point earlier, right? Because if you're really thinking about racial microaggressions only at the individual level, then you're gonna be thinking about the consequences at the individual level and the implications will be done at the individual level. The solutions will be done at the individual level, right? So then it becomes just about people. So it's about the tolerance of people, right? As opposed to the continuation of how racism operates within a system, right? And then there's also, and I don't wanna jump in too far, but for example, one of the things that we've learned is the cumulative, deleterious cumulative effects of racial microaggressions that are important. So it's not about a slice in time when an actor does or says something to another person that results in a micro salt. It is that this happens according to Philomena S said every day, right? And so there's a cumulative effect, but here's where we come in if you bridge both the individual and the structural together is that it's much more egregious than that, right? So it is not just that in an everyday life situation, a person of color, a black person may be, may face racial microaggressions by individuals daily, but it's also their interactions with the environment, their interactions with the institutions, right? I mean, using in a US example, walking to the store and seeing a Confederate flag, right? Which sort of brings up kind of a lot of memories and ideas and thoughts and symbols that will also raise your blood pressure and also create anxiety, right? As a student living in a dorm that's named after a former slave owner, right? Walking into an institution, not seeing anyone who looks like be represented on statues or on the wall, having a curriculum that fails to include women and people of color, right? So, and there are countless examples, right? And so you have to add to that. And if it's that plus the daily kind of verbal assaults that you get, micro assaults that you get from people, then it's not just cumulative, but the damage to your health and the damage, the physiological damage to one's person is much more than I think we give credit even in terms of understanding from a health point of view, right? The racial health disparities is much more than what we're even writing about. So I think it's just, it's not necessarily making it complicated, but I think it's drawing awareness to just how serious this is when you wanna talk about mortality rates or those kind of issues, right? And you have given also several almost real case scenarios on which this situation applies. And Johnny, I'd like to follow up on this and discuss potential policy impacts about your reflections. Well, first of all, I think, well, let me put it this way. In a white supremacist society, and in academia, which is basically a tool of white supremacy in a white supremacy society. And the academic tool within these institutions, as well as say the political institutions, the educational institutions that are not in academia, but at large, the cultural institutions and so forth, they are all basically tools for their very everyday interactions of recreating this reality, right? So one of the policy implications of this is to move people along to make this kind of interactive connection between this kind of everyday kinds of assaults and these kinds of structural mechanisms that these everyday assaults maintain, right? Because this is a collective endeavor. This is not something that, most people in the United States like to think of the world as if our institution is working on its own, when in fact the institution depends on the people in it to make it go, the institution wouldn't be without the people, right? So if people understood that when we talk about white supremacy, systemic racism, that it is about election, right? And not merely just belief systems and transforming the way one thinks, even though that's important, right? That maybe then we can actually work to eliminate white supremacy globally as well as the United States, right? So this is what the biggest policy implication is, but it's also another one when it comes to just academia, it's just making people aware, academics and scholars aware that this is what they're doing because a lot of people are not reflective about the fact that they're only talking about this individualistic notion. Now, let me say this, this stuff was before us, as we say in our piece, Amir Kaur Kabrao, WED Du Bois, right? All of these people who came before us, France Fanon, they all made us aware of this problem through the process of global capitalism and colonialism and imperialism, right? They made us aware of it in the United States. I'm only talking about the United States because this is what I know, right? United States, people want to forgive that kind of legacy and how that legacy continues to operate in the present day through these various concepts that we make up. So it becomes problematic, as far as I'm concerned. So if people are made aware of this, we can begin to start to address in this mental, this system of white supremacy, which no doubt also has to dismantle capitalism, which is a big part of it. Capitalism and white supremacy go hand in hand. Of course, and as you said, Johnny, so these reflection your debate touches upon several concepts, a lot of social dynamics. David, I would like you to tell us a bit now how to continue this reflection. Also, what doors does it open for future debate on the topic? Where should we go now? Well, that's the thing. I think that, and again, I'm a sociologist, so for sure I'm gonna target this population, but I think it's time that sociologists get back on the bandwagon and really look at racial microaggressions from the vantage point that, you know, filomena asset folks like filomena asset, but also the references that Johnny has sort of brought up have done already, right? Because again, what's happening is, I think there's great research out there, but it's all being sort of, you know, I guess strung along theoretically by psychologists, right? And again, good stuff, but it's a half of equation. So I think part of it is for social scientists in general, you know, to maybe, you know, think a little bit more broadly about how to bridge it to, or at least how to think about this more structurally when you're thinking about racial microaggressions, because the implications are there. The implications are, they're strong in terms of like the real effects that these have on people's lives. A tip for the sociologists who are listening to us. Johnny, could you provide some materials, some other content that our listeners can follow up to further explore these reflections? Well, in the piece, we list out, and we say strongly that the neglected scholarship of people who came from the Caribbean, the African continent, as well as the United States, and just the Americas, period, to be explored and connected and linked to this. So people should go and lead, I mean, institutional racism by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton. I mean, a very important piece, right? W.E. Du Bois, anything you can get, trans, phenomenon, everything he ever wrote before he passed away at a young age, you just need to read this stuff because it nets this stuff together about the interaction between structure, right? And belief systems, right? How they interact together, right? In action itself, structure and action, right? So I think that's where your readers can go to try to figure out where to go further. Now, you can read what everybody else is saying in racial microaggression right now, but the overwhelming majority of the scholarship is still individualistic. It's not really talking about this kind of structural, this interactive process between structure and belief systems. And I would add quickly to that, if I can. I keep mentioning her name, but I would encourage people to read Filomena Esset, right? I mean, that's a good starting point. And I would also encourage people to read fully more Chester Pierce, right? It's also about, I think we need to give more recognition to him as sort of the person who coined racial microaggressions, but also to sort of read beyond the individualistic kind of analysis that he does. And look at the second part of the equation that people sort of seem to forget. Could he have gone further? Well, probably, but he's not a sociologist. So there's some limitations, but I think that's something that most people sort of gloss over. And so to bring that back, bring that back home. Of course, to the listeners that are watching us on YouTube or on our website, sorry, you can scroll down and see some of the materials that David and Johnny have just suggested and some of them will be able to consult. David, you have done this several times in our conversation, but I'm gonna ask you now as a punchline to tell us in two, three sentences, what's the grand finale of this conversation? So what would you like our audience to remember about this? Well, I think the important thing here is to understand that there's much more to racial microaggressions than just the individualistic kind of notions of racial micro-assaults or some of the concepts have been sort of thrown around in the directions. And it's really important in terms of thinking about issues of diversity or thinking about issues of racism or talking about them that we sort of move beyond, that we think about systemic racism, that we think about white supremacy in the larger sense. And this includes with racial microaggressions. Straight to the point. Johnny, David, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Though that are watching us on YouTube, you can find all the resources, all the materials of this conversation on the Let's Talk About Social Inclusion websites. And you can also listen to this episode. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can also subscribe to the newsletter, follow us on Twitter at KojitatuLTA.