What Would You Do?

My junior year of high school, every student was required to take a class on social justice.  We spent time discussing every controversial topic you could possibly name: abortion, euthanasia, the LGBT community, and (of course) racism.  I honestly haven’t thought about it much about this class since then.  However, something recently brought it back to mind.

In my FYS class over the issue of Race in America, we learned the definition of the word micro-aggressions: the everyday verbal and/or nonverbal slights and insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.   And it was this word – this definition – that took me back to my junior-year self, sitting in my social justice classroom, watching a documentary on this very topic.

In this documentary, children from age 10 to age 18 were placed unknowingly into situations where they would face racial injustices.  I remember one instance in particular quite clearly.  It was a staged talent competition, called “The Next American Teen Singing Sensation”, and two young teens thought they were simply going to join a panel of judges.  Well, they were placed on the panel, but on either side of them sat actors – actors who were told to be slyly racist toward one contestant in particular.  The contestants, too, were actors, and everyone was aware aside from the two teen judges (ages 14 and 16).

The competition started, with two white competitors and one Latino.  Although the Latino contestant was clearly the best singer (the other two had been told to intentionally mess up by the directors), the judges that were hired as actors said things such as “How can we trust he isn’t lip singing?” or “Is he really even American?  He is probably just another illegal” in order to convince the two teens to vote him off.  What really got me was this: one of the actors, in their private discussion between judges, said “He can’t be the face of this show, because he simply doesn’t look American.”  The only thing worse than this comment was the fact that the two teen judges (who were not in on the ploy) agreed with the actor and voted out the Latino because he wasn’t “American” or “white” enough to fill the role.

Now, these two kids would probably claim that they are not racists.  I am sure they would have said, prior to going on this show, that they would have stood up for someone being discriminated against in a blatant fashion.  They would have thought of themselves as brave enough to fight back against the crowd.  The problem is, racism in the form of micro-aggressions isn’t always blatant, and it isn’t always easy to call out and put to an end.  I guess the question is: what do you think you would have done?  And then ask yourself that again, because clearly, it isn’t always as easy to do the right thing as it seems.  Let’s all think about that next time we are in a situation similar to this.