"It assails their self-image of being good, moral, decent human beings to realize that maybe at an unconscious level they have biased thoughts, attitudes and feelings that harm people of color." "It's a monumental task to get white people to realize that they are delivering microaggressions, because it's scary to them," he contends. Sue and his team are developing a theory and classification system to describe and measure the phenomenon to help people of color understand what is going on and perhaps to educate white people as well, Sue says. In other words, she was acting with bias-she just didn't know it, he says. In his view, she was guilty of a "racial microaggression"-one of the "everyday insults, indignities and demeaning messages sent to people of color by well-intentioned white people who are unaware of the hidden messages being sent to them," in Sue's definition. Were the colleagues being overly sensitive, or was the flight attendant being racist?įor Teachers College, Columbia University psychologist Derald Wing Sue, PhD-the Asian-American colleague on the plane, incidentally-the onus falls on the flight attendant. Both react with anger, sharing the same sense that they are being singled out to symbolically "sit at the back of the bus." When they express these feelings to the attendant, she indignantly denies the charge, saying she was merely trying to ensure the flight's safety and give the two some privacy.
Just before takeoff, the flight attendant, who is white, asks the two colleagues if they would mind moving to the back of the plane to better balance the plane's load. A flight attendant tells them they can sit anywhere, so they choose seats near the front of the plane and across the aisle from each another so they can talk.Īt the last minute, three white men enter the plane and take the seats in front of them. Two colleagues-one Asian-American, the other African-American-board a small plane.
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