Читать книгу Microaggressions in Everyday Life онлайн | страница 48

Third, many people who privately hold notions of minority inferiority will display their biased attitudes only when they lose control. The opening examples in this chapter, especially that of Rosanne Barr, demonstrate this third condition of losing control. According to Barr, she was taking a sedative, Ambien, which resulted in her being an “idiot.” It is also possible that she was less controlled on this sedative and thus she was unable to censor her racist assumptions.

Microassaults are most similar to “old‐fashioned” racism: They are the type the public generally associates with “true racism”: direct, deliberate, obvious, and explicit. The key to understanding microassaults is that there is no guesswork involved in their intent, which is to harm, humiliate, or degrade people of color, women, and LGBTQ individuals.

At a fraternity sports party, a group of White fraternity brothers were sitting around their living room during a late Sunday afternoon, chugging down beer after beer tapped from a keg. They had just finished watching the first half of a football game and were obviously quite inebriated. Excitedly talking about the last play from scrimmage that resulted in an incomplete pass, one of the guys exclaimed, “Them n*****s can't play quarterback!” This brought out a howl of laughter, and another member said, “That's because they're just jungle bunnies!” More laughter erupted in the room and others produced a flurry of racial slurs: “monkey,” “coon,” “burr head,” “oreo,” and “Uncle Tom!” Each slur brought on laughter and renewed attempts to outdo one another in finding the most degrading reference to Blacks. As they exhausted their list, the game became a form of free association with blackness. “Black pussy, black sheep, criminal, rapist, castration, welfare family, cattle prod,” and so on, they shouted. It was clear that some of those in the group were quite uncomfortable with the game, but said nothing and chuckled at the responses anyway.

(D. W. Sue, 2003, p. 88)