On Microaggressions

    My brother, who's in middle school, recently received a report card which mentioned that he sometimes fails to notice that his "microaggressions" hurt others' feelings. This was apparently discussed in class and my brother reportedly understood why he might have hurt someone, but he insisted that since he didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, it shouldn't count against him that he did.
    (Now, I don't know what exactly he said that was considered a microaggression--I'm guessing it was probably race-related, maybe gender-related, but I can't be sure. I don't know that it matters.)
    My mother was a bit upset that this incident, whatever it was, had been explicitly referred to in the report card, and it fell to me to explain microaggressions and the damage they do.
    My examples came from an online graphic I saw which portrayed people's interactions with/reactions to a white woman versus a black woman. In one panel, a college admissions officer asks the white woman if her family's a legacy at the college. The admissions officer asks the black woman if she's the first in her family to go to college. In another panel, the white woman is walking with a young girl and is asked if the girl is her sister. The black woman, in the same scenario, is asked if the girl is her daughter. 
    The experiences of the black woman are examples of racial microaggressions--insidiously offensive comments that don't necessarily mean badly but clearly make assumptions that perpetuate stereotypes and demean the black woman, while making positive assumptions were it a white person instead.
    This is significant because although these exchanges shown in my examples may seem like social faux pas, or meaningless stupid assumptions, they are contributing to ongoing stereotypes, hurtful and demeaning to receive, devaluing of people of color through negative assumptions, and revealing that these negative subconscious judgments are very, very common and easily overlooked.
    My mother initially defended my brother's point that if you don't mean it, you shouldn't be held accountable.
    But the hurt people experience is not contingent on whether it was intended. A stereotype or an assumption doesn't have to be maliciously intended for it to do damage. The point of calling them microaggressions is that they aren't overt examples of racism and may easily be made by people who would never believe they harbor racist tendencies.
    The message I was trying to impart to my family is that well-intentioned or not, the microaggressions in question are often assumptions that would not be made were the recipient white. And therein lies the problem--not that the microaggressor meant to insult, but that their assumption would have been more positive had it been directed at a white person. That my brother didn't mean to offend anyone, but he judged someone based on a trait like race which made his comment or reaction to them insulting instead of complimentary. That he is unknowingly operating on stereotypes. That anti-microaggressions rhetoric may seem like a nitpicky hallmark of political correctness--as my brother probably wrote it off as--but that it is necessary to understand why it is hurtful, since people believe that to not intend harm is as good as not committing it. It means, of course, that we still have a long way to go towards open minds and societies, and that curtailing more overt prejudice is not enough.