- [Shajira] Welcome to the National Disability Institute's course on how to prevent and respond to microaggressions. I am Shajira Brown, the director of Equity and Inclusion, and I will be your facilitator. This course will help you define what microaggressions are and also recognize what they are not. You will spend time reviewing how to prevent microaggressions and obtain strategies on how best to handle occurrences that include them. In this course, we will cover content that will bring you to understand what microaggressions are, including how to recognize them and their impact in the workplace. We'll spend time on discovering the impact of microaggressions, especially how they affect people with disabilities. We will also offer a number of strategies and considerations on how to address instances of microaggressions. Let's officially begin our course by providing the definition of microaggressions. Microaggressions are everyday subtle, intentional, and oftentimes unintentional interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias and are often towards historically marginalized groups. On this slide, there are three individuals who appear to be displeased. One has a face of annoyance, another is pointing thumbs down, and the last has their hand out in an attempt to tell someone stop. All of these gestures reflect the negative tones of the following microaggressions that they potentially just heard. Here are some examples. "Oh, you were in the military, huh? You weren't able to get into college?" "You are so articulate." "You don't look like you have a disability." "You're so brave. I could never live with a disability." "When I look at you, I don't see color." "We thought you can give us design advice, you know, because you're gay." We will discuss this further and review the definitions a few times as we move along our training today. Now, let's take a moment and put microaggressions into the context of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, also known as DEIA. The concept of stereotypes, stigmas, discrimination, microaggression, and ableism are all related and can serve as building blocks to each other. Discrimination occurs when a person acts on prejudice by treating someone differently. One type of discrimination, you may have guessed, is microaggression. The target of discrimination and microaggressions are mostly towards stigmatized people, including but not limited to people with disabilities. When discrimination is systemized and pervasive, it is considered oppression, and when discrimination is systemized and pervasive and targeted at individuals with disabilities, it is ableism. To further explore the link between microaggressions to prejudice, stereotypes, and bias, we'll look at the definition for each. These words are often thought to mean the same and to be interchangeable, but I'm happy to share that they do not. Stereotypes are judgments or characteristics that's attributed to a specific group of people, so it can be a stereotype that someone may have towards a specific race, a group, or let's just say a age group, for example. Implicit bias is subconscious attitudes, perceptions, and stereotypes that influence our understanding, actions, and behavior when interacting with various identities. Microaggressions, on the other hand, are subtle, verbal or non-verbal messages directed towards an individual due to their marginalized identity. If you think about it, stereotypes and bias are what we think and microaggressions are the actions that come from these stereotypes and bias that we hold. Here's an example that shows the correlation between stereotypes, implicit bias, and microaggressions. A stereotype is the notion that people with disabilities should be pitied. This belief enables someone to feel or think that people with disabilities are not self-sufficient and will always need help from others, which is an implicit bias. A microaggression that could come from these thoughts is when someone says to a person with a disability, "You are so inspiring," or when someone appears shocked when observing a person with a physical disability performing everyday tasks. There are three types of microaggressions: verbal; nonverbal; and environmental. A few examples of verbal microaggressions include making comments that are dismissive of a person's perspective, like questioning the validity of a new employee's viewpoint. Comments based on stereotypes, like asking a tall person if they play basketball, or using code language. Let's define that first. Code language is substituting terms describing racial identity with seemingly race neutral terms that disguise explicit and/or implicit racial animus. For example, coded language looks like this particular scenario. Two or three shoplifting incidents occurred in a downtown area, allegedly by eight to 10 African American junior high school students and it draws the attention of local news media. Quotes from witnesses characterize the 11 to 12 year olds as thugs or delinquents instead of children. Examples of non-verbal microaggressions include behaviors that communicate distrust or disrespect, like not acknowledging someone's presence or ignoring a statement or idea made by someone, actions that communicate invalidation, like slowly addressing a complaint because, in your opinion, the person is being too sensitive. And environmental microaggression includes building names that reflect only one particular race, like statues and buildings in southern states that people with historic pasts get the honor of, displaying certain symbols associated to a certain religion in public buildings, or the use of a certain flag over others, or having a public message on display that says, "Only English should be spoken here."