Game For Change 

Microaggressions

PLAY: http://www.philome.la/deidrene/microaggressions-and-the-asian-american-experience

This assignment was particularly frustrating because of the software and fickle internet connection. But I think the repetition of process forced me to engage with this issue that is simultaneously important yet painful to me. I mulled around with different issues that I might explore, but microaggressions are something I deal with on a daily basis and I didn’t have a word or language to describe their impact on me until recently. Not one day goes by where I get to forget my Asian-Americanness, and it is not always pleasant. White people get to have nuanced and complicated narratives, but people of color are often tokenized, fetishized, marginalized, and our narratives are isolated to single characteristics that reduce our individuality and our dignity. One microaggression is manageable, but many microaggressions piling on top of each other can be unbearable. A lifetime of passive-aggressive racist comments can feel dehumanizing.

The worst part about microaggressions is that most offenders are well-meaning people who mean no harm. How someone reacts when you tell them they’ve said something offensive can be really indicative of their character, and usually determines the amount of trust a person can put in the offender. In the last year alone, once-important friendships have fallen apart because my identity was constantly invalidated by well-meaning people who decided that I was too sensitive. The moments highlighted in this game are based on real experiences that have happened to me and are written without hyperbole or exaggeration. I wanted to create what it feels like to have these microaggressions pile up.

In an excerpt from “Racial Microaggression and the Asian American Experience” by Derald Wing Sue, Jennifer Bucceri, Annie I. Lin, Kevin L. Nadal, and Gina C. Torino at Columbia University, the researches made the following conclusions about their study:

“Our study provides strong support that microaggressions are not minimally harmful and possess detrimental consequences for the recipients. Most participants described strong and lasting negative reactions to the constant racial microaggressions they experienced from well intentioned friends, neighbors, teachers, co-workers, and colleagues. They described feelings of belittlement, anger, rage, frustration, alienation, and of constantly being invalidated. Common comments from the groups were they felt trapped, invisible, and unrecognized.”

Many more insightful conclusions were drawn from this study, which can be found at the following link: http://goo.gl/VfJzKv