Читать книгу Microaggressions in Everyday Life онлайн | страница 45

Environmental macroaggressions are powerful and can be transmitted through numerical imbalance of one's own group (Purdie‐Vaughns et al., 2008), mascots or symbols, and inaccurate media portrayals of marginalized groups in films, television, radio, print media, and educational curriculum (books, course content, films, etc.). The sheer exclusion of decorations, literature, and ethnic aesthetic‐cultural forms like music, art, language, and food can also assail the racial, gender, or sexual identity of various groups.

Empirical research has begun to document environmental macroaggressions. In a revealing study, for instance, researchers found that “diversity cues” (number of minority members at a worksite, diversity philosophy communicated through company brochures, etc.) in corporate America directly affected the perception of threat or safety experienced by Black American job applicants (Purdie‐Vaughns et al., 2008). The researchers explored institutional cues rather than interpersonal ones that signaled either safety or threat to African Americans. Environmental conditions directly influenced how marginalized groups perceive whether they will be valued or demeaned in mainstream settings. The term “social identity contingencies” refers to how individuals from stigmatized groups anticipate whether their group membership will be threatened (devalued or perceived negatively) or valued in corporate America. When the cues signal threat, lack of trust ensues, feelings of safety diminish, and vulnerability increases. This in turn has a major detrimental impact on the group identity of the employee and potentially lowered productivity.

Studies focused on university students also provide evidence for environmental macroaggressions. Among Aboriginal university students in Quebec (e.g., Mohawk and Cree), for example, findings indicate that participants lived with daily cultural and social isolation on a campus with few Aboriginal students and pressure to fit into White, Canadian European norms and practices (Clark, Kleiman, Spanierman, Isaac, & Poolokasingham, 2014). In a related study at the same university, Muslim and Arab students reported being exposed to cultural insensitivity in the campus milieu (prayer space was situated adjacent to a rowdy campus pub that serves alcohol; Najih, Spanierman, & Clark, 2019). At another Canadian university, research findings suggest that Asian international students faced structural barriers and other environmental stressors on campus. Support for these students, and those in other studies, came from participants' communities outside of the university (Houshmand et al., 2014). Among U.S. undergraduate students, Yosso, Smith, Ceja, and Solórzano (2009) found support for experiences with institutional microaggressions (or what we now refer to as macroaggressions) reflecting negative campus racial climates.