While overt bigotry is rare at Berkeley, experiences of exclusion are quite common. Forty-eight percent of Berkeley undergraduates who responded to the 2019 My Experience Survey thought that faculty prejudged their abilities based on perceived identity background. Furthermore, only 39% of Black students reported that their race/ethnicity is respected on campus. These statistics show that, even in the absence of overt discrimination, many students do not feel welcome at Berkeley.

The concept of microaggressions is pertinent in this context. Microaggressions are subtle comments and behavior that perpetuate ableism, xenophobia, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression. An example of a microaggression is a GSI suggesting that a student with disability accommodations may not really need them. Microaggressions are not openly hostile, and people often commit them unintentionally in daily interactions. Nevertheless, these aggressions cause serious harm. College students report that experiencing microaggressions makes them doubt themselves and feel invisible, and after weathering repeated microaggressions, many students feel both on guard and exhausted. Beyond the basic injustice of harming students with marginalized identities, microaggressions increase students’ stress in the classroom and make it harder for them to cognitively process course content.

GSIs who are committed to inclusive teaching sometimes hesitate to address microaggressions out of fear that they will somehow make the situation worse. However, research shows that students prefer for their instructors to respond to these aggressions. One Berkeley undergraduate explains, “it is important to note that by remaining silent when an offensive comment, name or pronoun is used, you do not remain neutral. Permitting such episodes to go unchecked is tacit endorsement of the error, and failing to highlight this to the aggressor and the entire class leads to a snowball effect. Without an immediate response, students are not aware of the nature and importance of the incident, and subtly now believe that the comment could be considered appropriate in certain contexts” (“Creating Inclusive Discussions” workshop for Berkeley Connect mentoring program, November 12, 2020, UC Berkeley Division of Equity & Inclusion).

Recognizing and effectively addressing microaggressions takes practice. We invite you to attend the GSI Center’s workshop on Creating Inclusive Classrooms to learn more about how to:

• Flag microaggressions that occur in section/studio/lab and let students know how you will follow up.
• Check in with the student(s) on the receiving end to understand how they experienced a given aggression. Give them the opportunity to tell you how they would like you to respond without burdening them with the responsibility of managing the situation.
• Use the ACTION Framework to facilitate a constructive conversation with the student(s) who committed the aggression and request appropriate next steps.
• Address the aggression with the class in an announcement, large group discussion, and/or email reminding students of your expectations and the class’s community agreements.

Note: A valid critique points out that the term “microaggressions” minimizes their harm. At the GSI Center, we use this term to link our work to the decades of scholarship on a specific type of discrimination. We also interchange “microaggressions” with “aggressions” to acknowledge the severity of their impacts.