nothing micro about micro aggressions

Angela:

You I have I've had troubles with the word microaggression, I've had troubles with it for quite some time. We hear, I think I've been hearing it more and more over the last few years in particular, the last year, I've been hearing it a lot more in the workplace. And because people are trying to be woke or aware, but the reality of living it, it's not micro,

Patty:

right. it's not meaningless.

Angela:

And so when we, for me, when we talk about it as a micro thing, the parallel is that when somebody is behaving that way, it becomes a dialogue or a narrative of that person's too sensitive, or I didn't mean anything by it. So I don't know what the big deal about it is, or, well, you know, she's just bringing it up, because she's hurt. And it's not, it's not about being hurt, it's about every instance of those things that have transpired over your life for a long period of time, continuing to open a wound of a larger viewpoint that you don't belong, or there's something not quite right with you, or those, we have to contain you, as opposed to the larger picture that you're not wanted to hear. And, or you're not wanted to be a participant in that society, or that structure in within the society.

And so, for me, when I've been looking at this end, a lot of my writing over the last year has been about microaggressions, because of experiencing it, and while, you know, a lot lot different areas of my life. I go back to the beginning point of erasure. So, the eraser of, of my identity. So you know, being born, being taken from my Black mother, my birthday being changed, my name being changed, and my Black mother not being allowed to take me back to Jamaica, or make arrangements for me to go to Jamaica, because realizing that it's, she's going to lose me, right?

So, and then that whole erasure are going to a small community where there's no people of color. And so I think one of the biggest macro regressions you can do to transracial adoptee, is to put them in a white family and not have any mentors. And, and so in that, you know, that whole, it becomes a series of events from from earlier in your childhood, basically, from your birth, to try to unpack, and try to find a place within living in a social structure that doesn't include you. And so how do we find that?

So, you know, my writing is about that, but it's also that place of moving from that place to a place of where do you find your place within all of that, so that you can actually have good mental health? Is that possible? You know, and what is the generational impact of that?

When I watched my, my son growing up, and facing these horrible aggressions, as a Black Indigenous child, young man, he's not a child. He's a young man.

And I was, you know, I was gonna, with all that, you know, been paying attention to and relistening to interviews from in particular Robin Maynard and Desmond Cole, and defund the police. I’ve been listening to a lot of that lately. And I was framing an essay around around the police involvement in my life, and what and the transition of that from being a young young girl in kindergarten to late teens, early 20s. And that, and that experience, and so I never really thought much about it. But I've thought more and more about it by watching my son get stopped by the police. Recently, you know, in, in his teenage years, he shared with me recently that the reason he decided to go bald, from the time he was like 14 to 20 was because he found that he got stopped less by the police. So, I thought, yeah, and it didn't help. He still got stopped a lot. As he's got a look that people quite don't know. You know what he is right? Which is really a horrible thing to say. But that's,

Patty: 

I don't know, they don't know where he belongs,  do you belong in this neighborhood? Or do you work in this neighborhood? What do you look like, you know, do you look like the people who live here? Do you look like the people who work here? You know, do you look like the people who you know who I think are going to be dangerous here. You know? Who have no business being here.

In the book Traces of History that I did that I just finished, he, he quotes a woman who's saying, you know, when we talk about dirt? Well, all we're really talking about is things out of place. Right? That's all we're really talking about, you know, you know, things are, you know, I don't particularly object to dirt, you know, being out in my yard, I don't want it, I don't want it in my living room, I'm gonna vacuum it, I'm gonna say that it's dirty, you know, or dust or, you know, any of the things that my dogs drag like they have their place.

And you know, and as, you know, racially marginalized people we're dirt, we're out of place. And we know, you know, so you know, to be racially marginalized, in the colonial West, is to be forever out of place, you know, whether you're Black or Indigenous, or some combination, you're out of place, you know, you're meant to be erased, you're meant to be moved around, you're meant to be, you know, you're meant to serve, particularly, you know, serve sort of particular purposes.

And, and I am increasingly using the term racially marginalized, as opposed to just racialized because when I say that somebody is racialized, I'm still centering whiteness as not being racialized. Right? And, you know, so it's more words, and it takes up more, you know, more characters on Twitter. But yeah, that's okay. But I feel like, you know, that's just something because when I, because that's what we were racially marginalized, and it's the race has pushed us to the margins and centered whiteness, but their whiteness is racialized as well to its own purpose. So that's just kind of explaining a little bit about my language.

Angela:

Well, I like that when you say “to its own purpose” to clarify, because I think that that's important in when we share and talk about our stories into in particular, and I'll use your term racially marginalized. And, you know, I really wanted to talk about the police stuff, because it occurred to me how early that involvement is, like, I never really thought about it.

But when I was working on this essay, I was talking about, you know, when I, when I was five years old, I was pretty determined young person, which probably got me a lot of trouble with my mother. But I was very determined so. And I really liked school. I like being at school much more than I like being in my parents’ home. So I was just set to go to school, and it was a PD day or some holiday or something. So I got up. And my, you know, mind you, my parents had three kids, they adopted four Black kids, so they, you know, and I was the youngest, so they somehow missed me in that whole thing. So I got dressed, and I went to school. And I didn't even notice that there wasn't anybody else. Any kids walking to school, I was just on my own determined to get to see my kindergarten teacher because I loved her, I was absolutely in love with this teacher. So anyways, I get to the school. And there's no school, I can't get into school. And I feel that I'm locked out. Like, I feel like nobody wanted me. So I'm crying. And I'm trying to get into school, and I'm banging on the doors. And finally I decide to leave and I'm walking up the path to go back to my parents house and a police car shows up. And the police says, “Are you Angela?” And I said, “Yes.” “Your mother's looking for you.” So I get in the back of the car, and I go home.

And so the idea is framed in my mind is that the police saved me they from what I'm not sure, but they saved me from something. And you know, a couple years later, my favorite bike, my parents bought me this bike and I love this bike was stolen one weekend when we were away. So when we got back from this trip, the first thing I wanted to see is if my bike was okay, so I run and get, I look for my bike and it's not there. So my parents called the police and two weeks later they find my bike. And I overhear the conversation with the police. And what they say to the to my parents is we found in somebody’s back yard, not off the Herkimer drive and and they were “known to us.” So this is a very this is a key that they were “known to us.”

So years go by and I'm 12/13 years old, and I'm out playing with my friends and my parents knew where I was the police show up. And they the police knew exactly where I was. So my parents knew exactly where I was, but they called the police to come and get me to bring me home rather than getting into the car. And this is what I'm setting up and what you know, Robyn Maynard talks about in terms of the police being involved with, you know, overly involved with people that are in care, right. And my parents used the police as part of their parenting, so they the police would show up and bring me home.

And it and it didn't occur to me at the time, like I was embarrassed that this wasn't happening to any my white friends. So I was the only Black kid there, I was the only person of color. And so the police would come, and they would pick me up and take me home. And every now and again, my father would joke about well, I was at the mall, well, we weren't sure if we needed to call the police to come and get you. And as we got a bit older, my mother she had, by this point, she'd gone back to school. And later, in probably 48-ish, she went back to school, got her grade 12 became a social worker, and became very involved the police because she, part of her work was investigating social welfare fraud at the time.

So she continued to use the police to parent her Black children. So, every time I use the phone, there was a card by the phone, it was taped to the wall that had ins