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This activity teaches students to recognize how different audiences can interpret language and microaggressions. It teaches students to understand the implications of their speech.

Students will learn to identify microaggressions and will be able to reflect on how they can modify questions or comments in ways that are less likely to reflect stereotypic assumptions and beliefs. Using two versions of the worksheet provides more examples for students to consider, but the activity works equally well with either version.

Estimated Time

10-20 minutes

Group Size

This activity works best with a class size of 30 or fewer, but could be modified for larger class by having students work in groups. For larger classes, the instructor can rotate among the groups during discussion and/or have teaching assistants facilitate discussion in the smaller groups.

Instructions

This activity will be more effective if the instructor first defines microaggressions and provides examples of how they operate. Then, pass out the worksheets so that different groups have different versions of the activity (there are five possible versions). Ask students to follow the provided instructions. Students then answer the discussion questions and discuss them in small groups or as a whole class. A sheet with suggested interpretations, possible intent, and possible impact is also provided for Instructor use. We thank Angela Linse, Executive Director and Associate Dean of the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Pennsylvania State University for creating this list, for suggesting additional microaggressions, and for providing other feedback on this activity.

Materials:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This activity teaches students to recognize how different audiences can interpret language and microaggressions. It teaches students to understand the implications of their speech. Students will learn to identify microaggressions and will be able to reflect on how they can modify questions or comments in ways that are less likely to reflect stereotypic assumptions and beliefs.

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The goal of this game is to illustrate as clearly as possible the accumulation of [[microaggressions]] and [[acculturative stress]] upon the physical and mental body, so that it may be better understood by people who may not understand how these incidents play out. Hopefully, this can be something to spread awareness and unveil the violence of standing out, and even more about the violence of blending in. Because it is not feasible to represent every single experience within every single marginalized community, this game portrays microaggressions relevant to the characters within the game. These microaggression may or may not be generalizable to other experiences of marginalized persons. Thank you for Playing. <<set $happiness to 100>><<set $hasHR to false>> [[How to Play]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Start'); >>Who do you want to be? Pick your character. <table style="width:100%"> <tr> <td>[[Alex]]</td> <td>[[Leslie]]</td> </tr> <tr> <td>white</td> <td>Black</td> </tr> <tr> <td>able-bodied</td> <td>straight</td> </tr> <tr> <td>gay</td> <td>disabled</td> </tr> <tr> <td>man</td> <td>woman</td> </tr> <tr> <td>large social circle</td> <td>has partner</td> </tr> </table> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Begin'); >>What are microaggressions? They are commonly defined as brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults. Since then it has been expanded to slights and insults related to other marginalizations such as gender, sexuality, disability, etc. Because of unconscious biases and the perceived minimal harm of the interactions, microaggressions are difficult to confront. [[Back.|Start]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'microaggressions'); >>What is acculturative stress? Well in simpler words it is culture shock. First defined in the realm of immigrating to a new country, it has expanded to explain the psychological, cognitive, and behavioral effects present in assimilating into a dominant culture rife with racism, sexism, ableism, etc. [[Back.|Start]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'acculturative stress'); >>You are Alex. An early-20s man in an urban area. You have been living in the area for years now and have a large [[social circle|Alex sc]] and [[Tyler]], your go to brunch buddy. You have a very active nightlife. You are happily single. You're just about to start your new job and are excited about it. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Start Playing|Alex Start]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex'); >>You are Leslie. A mid-20s women in an urban area. You are happy with your partner [[Jesse]], and have a small [[social circle]]. You have a chronic illness, which your partner helps you with as needed. You're just about to start your new job and are anxious but optimistic about it. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 15>> [[Start Playing]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Leslie'); >>You and Jesse met at a summer cookout. While you had been in the same circles for a while, this was the night the stars aligned, and you started talking. Soon you were going on dates, and soon after that you went steady. You have been together for just over two years and have recently moved in together. (Jesse goes by they/them pronouns.) [[Back.|Leslie]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Jesse'); >>You have a few close friends and that works just fine for you. Because most of the circle are homebodies, and some have disabilities of their own, there is not a lot of high-impact activities that would exacerbate your chronic illness. [[Back.|Leslie]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'social circle'); >>It is bright and early on a Monday morning in June. Today is your first day of work! It's your first real job out of school and you are a bundle of nerves. As you look through your closet you come up with three different outfits. You decide to: [[Dress up- got to make a good impression!]] [[Wear something casual but appropriate- don't want to look like you're trying too hard.]] [[Basics-Can never go wrong with the basics.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Start Playing'); >>You throw on a women's suit and put on some makeup. The effort of putting the outfit together as well as the anxiety exhausts you. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Head to Work]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Dress up- got to make a good impression!'); >> You take a deep breath and walk into the building. Your future supervisor quickly greets you and welcomes you to the company. He escorts you around the office introducing you to colleagues who are too many to count. Finally, you sit in your cubicle. The coworker in the cubicle next to you leans over and says "Where are you from?" [[NJ]] [[Why?]] [[My family has been in NJ for as long as we remember.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Head to Work'); >>You throw on a button down and slacks. At the last minute you decide to put a cardigan over it. You think about putting makeup on but decide to go straight to work instead. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Head to Work]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Wear something casual but appropriate- don't want to look like you're trying too hard.'); >> A blouse and a skirt and you are ready for the day. In lieu of makeup, you put on lip gloss and call it a day. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[Head to Work]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Basics-Can never go wrong with the basics.'); >> //No, where are you really from?// (doesn't look like they will take NJ for an answer) [[Try again.|Head to Work]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'NJ'); >>//Jeez it was just a question!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Continue.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Why?'); >>//That is so weird. You look so exotic!// "...thanks?" <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[Continue]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'My family has been in NJ for as long as we remember.'); >> The rest of the day passes relatively quickly. You end up really liking your work (at least so far). At the end of the day there is talk of going out to happy hour. A bunch of the younger workers look to you and invite you to happy hour. What do you say? <span class="explanation" title="try again">==Sure! That sounds like fun!== <span style="width:500px;">This option is not available to you due to the energy you have expended dealing with prior microagressions</span></span>[[Maybe for an hour?]] [[Nah, I'm totally beat.]] [[Yeah that's not my thing. Thanks though.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Continue'); >>//Awesome! Here's the address. See you there!// [[Go to Bar.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Maybe for an hour?'); >> //Lame! Alright; see you tomorrow!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[The Next Day.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Nah, Im totally beat.'); >>//Lame! Alright; see you tomorrow!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[The Next Day.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Yeah that's not my thing. Thanks though.'); >> The rest of the day passes relatively quickly. You end up really liking your work (at least so far). At the end of the day there is talk of going out to happy hour. As they talk and laugh amongst themselves you aren't sure if their invitation applies to you. So you start to pack up and one of the younger colleagues finally asks if you'd like to come. <span class="explanation" title="try again">==Sure! That sounds like fun!== <span style="width:500px;">This option is not available to you due to the energy you have expended dealing with prior microagressions</span></span>[[Maybe for an hour?|Maybe for an hour?]] [[Nah, I'm totally beat.|Nah, I'm totally beat.]] [[Yeah that's not my thing. Thanks though.|Yeah that's not my thing. Thanks though.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Continue.'); >><div class="bar"> <img src= "images/bar.jpg" alt="liquor bottles on a wall"/> You go to the bar. The bar is loud and boisterous. (Just the thought of being surrounded by so many drunk people for an extended period of time makes you tired, but you want to make a good impression). You and your coworkers have a couple of drinks. As the drinking continues so does the boisterousness. After a while, the joking begins. You start to feel uncomfortable as the jokes become less and less funny, and more and more sexist. As you try and figure out the best exit strategy, a coworker drunkenly leans on you, puts her hands in your hair, and says how your hair isn't as ghetto as she thought it'd be. You freeze. And: [[Laugh uncomfortably and say thanks.]] [[Push her off and say don't touch me.]] [[I know you probably meant well but that's not ok.]] </div> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Go to Bar.'); >>The next morning you throw on some clothes, and head to work. When you get there many of your coworkers are talking about how great the happy hour was. Throughout the day they make inside jokes and references to the night before you wonder if it would have been good for you to go. As you walk home, the streets hiss from the recent rainfall. You know that Jesse will be in classes until late, another couple hours at least. You consider using this solitude to catch up on your guilty pleasure television show you'd neglected in the past couple of weeks. As you picture adorable British judges talking about soggy bottoms, you notice that this old woman keeps glancing back at you from further up in the street. On her fourth turn around, she stops, walks towards you, and says, //You look like you have a good job unlike the rest of your people. You're a credit to the race.// And walks away. [[Next.|Humpday]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'The Next Day.'); >>//No problem!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Party Continued]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Laugh uncomfortably and say thanks.'); >> //Jeez, calm down.// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Party Continued]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Push her off and say don't touch me.'); >> You leave early, disheartened by the long day and the party. You go home and Jesse looks up from the couch and asks about your day. You [[Tell them about the day- good and bad.]] [[Tell them about the day-just good.]] [[Just shake your head and say nothing.|The Next Day]] [[Kiss them goodnight and go straight to bed.|The Next Day]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Party Continued'); >> //My bad.// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[Next.|Party Continued]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'I know you probably meant well but that's not ok.'); >> Humpday is hitting you hard. There are too many days until the weekend and there is a lot of work to be done before you can leave. You put your headphones on, crank up the music, and try and tune everyone out. It takes a couple of tries before a colleague gets your attention, and you take off your headphones and: [[Ask what's up.]] [[Say I'm busy can I talk later.]] [[Listen while still working.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Humpday'); >>The next morning you're feeling kind of anxious and tired from the night before. You decide to throw on some clothes, and head to work. When you get there you can feel the difference in how your colleagues treat you. They laugh and joke about the happy hour the night before and seem genuinely happy that you came out with them. You can tell that they feel that you are now part of them. You're happy they like you, but it's hard to shake off the discomfort from the events last night. But, the day passes without any incident. As you walk home, the streets hiss from the recent rainfall. You know that Jesse will be in classes until late, another couple hours at least. You briefly consider using this serendipitous solitude to catch up on your guilty pleasure television show you'd neglected in the past couple of weeks. As you picture adorable British judges talking about soggy bottoms, you notice that this old woman keeps glancing back at you from further up in the street. On her fourth turn around, she stops, walks towards you, and says "You look like you have a good job unlike the rest of your people. You're a credit to the race." And walks away. [[Next.|Birthday Party]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'The Next Day'); >><div class="pool"> <img src= "images/pool.JPG" alt="outdoor pool"/> To celebrate your birthday Jesse and friends organize a pool party. You invite your colleague Sam that you've started to become close to. She's the only one at work that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out. The hot August day makes the cold pool water feel that much more amazing. The swimming tires you out easily so you lay on a lawn chair reading a book. After about 15 minutes, Sam asks why you're not getting back into the pool, and you mention that physical activity tires you out easily so you're taking a break. She responds, //Oh right I forgot you're like always sick or something.// While Jesse and some of your other friends speak up for you, it still stings. You try and shake it off, but you find yourself overextending at dinner to compensate for not acting healthier. Jesse is great and ends the after-party a little early so you can sleep, but you feel bad for having to kick everyone out early. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[Next.|Humpday]] </div> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Birthday Party'); >>The thought of opening up about your day in any capacity feels impossible. [[Try Again. |Party Continued]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Tell them about the day- good and bad.'); >> The thought of opening up about your day in any capacity feels impossible. [[Try Again. |Party Continued]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Tell them about the day-just good.'); >> <div class="hairpolitics"> <img src= "images/hairpolitics.png" alt="a picture of professional or white hairstyles vs unprofessional black hairstyles"/> <strong>//Just wanted to ask if any supervisors have ever had a problem with your hair?// You stare blankly and reply "No..." //No? Wow it's lucky we work in such an understanding place, right? And that it's not seen as unprofessional.// They then walk away. It takes a while before you get back into the groove of working, and hours later you realize that you've been self-consciously touching your hair all day. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Mall Day]] </strong></div> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Ask what's up.'); >> It's a Saturday morning. You and Jesse decide to go to the mall to get new clothes. It's been awhile since you treated yourselves to a nice day. You meander from store to store drinking smoothies and taking in the mall people. You both decide to go into a nice store to treat each other to something nice. When entering the store you split ways so you can surprise each other. You're putzing around the jewelry section when you notice that the sales associate has been asking if you needed help five times now. And hasn't been out of your peripheral for 15 minutes. With dread you realize that they think you're a "high risk" shopper. Your heart starts to beat faster and you look around for Jesse. When you spot them, you rush over and explain the situation. Thankfully they understand and you leave the store without buying anything. But you can't help but feel disappointed and anxious. Jesse asks if you still want to do dinner. [[Agree to go. It'll take your mind off the encounter.]] [[Say that you're tired and would rather go home.]] [[Say the experience rattled you and you don't want to be around people.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Mall Day'); >>//Well there's no reason to sound so angry!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Mall Day]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say I'm busy can I talk later.'); >> //Way to be rude!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Mall Day]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Listen while still working.'); >> Anxious about being in another public space after your experience, you almost back out. But deciding that food is more important than discomfort you agree to go. Jesse decides to treat you to the nice Italian restaurant the two of you had been eyeing for a while. You get seated and order your food. You realize that the server only talks to Jesse throughout your time there. Later on your way to the bathroom, you overhear the servers talking and your server complaining about how "your people" never tip well. You hurry back to the table and eat the rest of your food in silence. When it's time for the check you: ==Leave a stingy tip. The server gave you terrible service and insulted you.== ==Leave an extremely good tip. That will show her not to make assumptions!== [[Tell Jesse to pick up the tab.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Agree to go. It'll take your mind off the encounter.'); >> They give you a hug and offer to treat you to a milkshake on the way home. You feel your spirits lift slightly despite the events of the day. <<set $happiness to $happiness + 1>> [[Next.|Minority College]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say that you're tired and would rather go home.'); >> They give you a hug and offer to treat you to a milkshake on the way home. You feel your spirits lift slightly despite the events of the day. <<set $happiness to $happiness + 1>> [[Next.|Minority College]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say the experience rattled you and you don't want to be around people.'); >> It's a Thursday afternoon. You've arrived at the break room early to heat up your food and read quietly. As you sit in the corner with your food and book, colleagues come into the room speaking of college. They are discussing how expensive higher education is. You put the book down to commiserate about college loan experiences when the older colleague says, //Yeah the only way to get into an Ivy these days is to be a politician's daughter or be a minority.// [[Say nothing and pretend you didn't hear.]] [[Join the conversation and explain how the comment was hurtful.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Minority College'); >><br/> A game demonstrating how it feels to suffer microaggressions and acculturative stress day after day. <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0; width:80px;!important;position:relative!important;opacity:1!important" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/4.0/80x15.png"/></a><br /><span xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/InteractiveResource" property="dct:title" rel="dct:type">Killing Me Softly: A Game about Microaggressions</span> by <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://fobettarh.github.io/Killing-Me-Softly/index.html" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL">Fobazi M. Ettarh</a> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>You don't have the energy! Seems like the act of going all out this morning and the microaggressions have prevented you from picking this option. [[Try Again.|Continue.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Sure! That sounds like fun!'); >> You both head home. While Jesse raves about the great meal, your own stomach is in knots. When you reach home, you head straight to bed too tired to even say goodnight. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Minority College]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Tell Jesse to pick up the tab.'); >> Laughing they grab their food and leave. You go back to your book, but find it hard to focus and the comment stays with you all day. <<set $happiness to $happiness -10 >> [[Next.|Halloween 1a]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say nothing and pretend you didn't hear.'); >> You interrupt the conversation to say that is not a fair thing to say. The back and forth continues on for a while. //Well you don't count, you're obviously one of the good ones....Well there are fewer opportunities for white people....It's reverse discrimination....quality has been diminished to fill quotas...why are you getting so emotional?// Realizing that the conversation is going nowhere you "agree to disagree" and the colleagues leave the room with their food. You head to the bathroom, splashing water on your face feeling exhausted and alone. <<set $happiness to $happiness -25>> [[Next.|Halloween 1b]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Join the conversation and explain how the comment was hurtful.'); >> You come back from work on a Tuesday evening early in October and see Jesse has started to decorate the apartment with cobwebs and spiders. You smile and start to help. By the end of the evening, you're tired but content. You both turn in early. Jesse falls asleep almost immediately, but thinking about going to work tomorrow starts to fill you with anxiety. You lay in bed, each minute ticking closer and closer to "wake up time" and passing on a swelling wave of ever-encroaching dread. Recurrent intrusive thoughts about things people have said at work, and what might happen in the future keep you up. Finally, you pass into a fitful sleep. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Halloween 2]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Halloween 1b'); >>You come back from work on a Tuesday evening early in October and see Jesse has started to decorate the apartment with cobwebs and spiders. You smile and start to help. By the end of the evening, you're tired but content. You both turn in early. Jesse falls asleep almost immediately, but thinking about going to work tomorrow starts to fill you with anxiety. Day after day it seems, people make comments and invalidate your expertise. You lay in bed, each minute ticking closer and closer to "wake up time" and passing on a swelling wave of ever-encroaching dread. Recurrent intrusive thoughts about things people have said at work, and what might happen in the future keep you up. Finally, you pass into a fitful sleep. <<set $happiness to $happiness + 5>> [[Next.|Halloween 2]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Halloween 1a'); >>Halloween falls on a Friday this year. You adjust your curls and head into work feeling especially cute and humming "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile." Most of your colleagues have dressed up in some capacity. You breathe a little sigh of relief when you don't see any terrible costumes. A couple of hours pass, and you head to the Halloween work luncheon. And gasp. The administration has taken upon themselves to go as the prisoners from //Orange is the New Black//, including darkening their skin to "authenticate" the costumes. It hits you just how alone you are at work. None of your colleagues seem to have a problem with the costumes. In fact, your supervisor comes over and puts his arm next to yours and exclaims that you match now. You ==Force yourself to say something== <<if $happiness gte 70>> [[Talk to Supervisor]] [[Talk to HR]] [[Notice your hands are shaking. Why do you feel so helpless?]] [[Say nothing.]] <<else>> ==Talk to HR. But that's so official...== ==Just open your mouth and let it happen. Why can't you say anything?== ==Notice your hands are shaking. Why can't you stop stressing out for five seconds?== [[Say nothing.|Say nothing B]] <</if>> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Halloween 2'); >>You find your supervisor by the food and try to explain why you feel uncomfortable, but your supervisor just laughs it off and tells you to stop being so sensitive. You grab food and hurry back to your cubicle still distraught. The rest of the day passes in a daze. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Talk to Supervisor'); >>You grab food and hurry back to your cubicle still distraught. The rest of the day passes in a daze. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say nothing.'); >>You find your HR representative, and ask to speak to them about the incident. You go into their office and begin to explain how it hurt you. Suddenly, you're crying, and unloading some of the microaggressions you have been experiencing throughout the job. They hear you out, and state next steps. You leave feeling drained, but relieved. <<set $hasHR to true>> <<set $happiness to $happiness + 5>> [[Next.|Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Talk to HR'); >>You desperately want to say something. You look down and notice that your hands are shaking. All of the previous incidents at work come rushing back. You haven't tried to speak up before. Can you start now? You grab food and hurry back to your cubicle still distraught. The rest of the day passes in a daze. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Notice your hands are shaking. Why do you feel so helpless?'); >> The alarm rings the next day for work. You groan and hurriedly turn it off. The thought of going to work seems impossible. Not only are you exhausted from the party, but you know you're going to have to deal with uncomfortable comments about your chronic illness. You- ==Force yourself to go to work.== ==Decide to go in late.== [[Call in sick. It's just not happening.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Halloween Aftermath'); >>You send a quick email to your boss. As you throw the covers over your head you realize just how relieved you are. Work has really been wearing you down lately. [[Next.|Christmas]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Call in sick. It's just not happening.'); >> As you walk into work, your heart sinks as you realize that the office has been decorated to the nines for Christmas. You walk to your desk and hunker down for some work. Noticing that you're less than enthused a coworker calls you a Grinch. You roll your eyes and continue working. You just think it would be nice to leave religion out of the workplace. Then another coworker responds, //Don't be rude! She probably doesn't even celebrate Christmas because she celebrates Kwanzaa instead, right?// You cringe and state that you actually celebrate Chanukkah. Both colleagues look at you perturbed and say //you don't look Jewish?// Throughout the day various coworkers come up to you and mention how "un-Jewish" you look. By the time the day gets out you're exhausted from having to explain the mechanics of your Judaism. You get home and sink into the couch. ==Make food.== [[Order takeout.]] [[Wait for Jesse to cook when they get back.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Christmas'); >>As you eat, you realize just how bad your job is starting to wear you down. How long has it been since you've looked forward to the work day? It seems like ages ago. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Lazy Day A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Order takeout.'); >>Jesse gets back not long after and you help them cook. As you eat, you realize just how badly your job is starting to wear you down. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Lazy Day B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Wait for Jesse to cook when they get back.'); >> You and Jesse are having a lazy day in bed. After a while the conversation turns to work. Jesse excitedly talks about all the amazing things that have been happening at work. As you watch their face light up as they talk about it, you can't help but feel resentful that your own workplace isn't as supportive. As you listen, you resolve to try and make things better at your own workplace. While you have no idea how you're going to do that, the act of making a plan makes you feel better. [[Next.|Park Day]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Lazy Day A'); >>You and Jesse are having a lazy day in bed. After a while the conversation turns to work. Jesse excitedly talks about all the amazing things that have been happening at work. As you watch their face light up as they talk about it, you can't help but feel resentful that your own workplace isn't as supportive. As you listen, despair at having to go back into the job day after day. Later that night, you find it impossible to fall asleep. Every time you close your eyes, you're overcome with anxious thoughts that wrap themselves around each other. Worries about your job lead overwhelm you and you're unable to shake them off long enough to doze off. Your eyes won't even stay shut as your mind races through the various things that have happened at work. ==Force yourself to sleep.== ==Do some relaxing breathing exercises to help you fall asleep.== ==Walk around to shake off some of the anxiety jitters.== [[Turn on the tv. It is just not happening any time soon.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Lazy Day B'); >>Nothing else seems to be working so you turn on the tv. Flipping through channels, you finally settle on some nature documentary. After what feels like lifetimes you finally fall asleep. [[Next.|Park Day]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Turn on the tv. It is just not happening any time soon.'); >> <div class="park"> <img src= "images/park.jpg" alt="park bench with a fountain in the background"/> It's a beautiful April day and you have decided to take a personal day. You put on leggings and a tank and head to the gym. Afterward, you get a milkshake and sit in the park enjoying the weather. With your eyes closed and face up to the sky you think that the life can't get any better than this moment. You hear your name being called out and open your eyes and there is Sam your colleague from work! //Playing hooky too?// She asks as she joins you on the bench. You smile and agree. As you both recount your day she exclaims, //I knew you weren't actually disabled!// Confused, you ask for clarification and she says that disabled people don't go to the gym. As you try and explain your chronic illness (again) she mentions that one time she was sick for a while, but that diet and exercise made her totally better. [[Try and explain the difference between sickness and disability.]] [[Joke about wishing that those things could fix the disability.]] [[Change the subject.]]</div> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Park Day'); >> As you try and explain the differences, Sam shrugs and apologizes. //Didn't know it was such a big deal.// Unsure of her sincerity, you change the subject, and head home soon after. [[Next.|Period Joke]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Try and explain the difference between sickness and disability.'); >> As you joke about how even the superfood kale won't take away the disability unfortunately, you feel good about saying something even if it might not be taken seriously, but sad that you couldn't be more explicit about it. The rest of the conversation passes without incident and you head home. [[Next.|Period Joke]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Joke about wishing that those things could fix the disability.'); >> You laugh uncomfortably and change the subject. The conversation ends soon after and you head home. [[Next.|Period Joke]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Change the subject.'); >>You wake up in the middle of the night in a lot of pain. Jesse helps get your medication and water, but it takes a long time before the pain subsides, and it leaves you exhausted. When your alarm goes off 4 hours later, you groggily turn it off and decide to do a half-day. You wake up later tired, but feel slightly better and go into work. An older male coworker sees you walk in and jokes about coming in late because of a hangover. When you ignore him, he says, //Wow are you on your period sweetheart? You sure are grumpy!// <<if $happiness gte 70>> ==Confront him.== [[Say something sarcastic]] [[Keep walking.|Promotion A]] <<else>> ==Confront him.== ==Say something sarcastic== [[Keep walking.|Promotion B]] <</if>> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Period Joke'); >>You roll your eyes and say, "If I had to bleed to find you annoying, I'd be anemic." <<if $hasHR is true>>[[Next.|Promotion B]] <<elseif $hasHR is false>>[[Next.|Promotion C]] <</if>> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say something sarcastic'); >>It's a hot day in May. //Summer is definitely here,// you think as you walk into work and put your stuff down. You're excited but nervous because there is talk about a promotion and you and your colleague have both been gunning for it. And according to the rumor mill, it will be awarded today. Hours pass and you don't hear anything. Finally, you hear a bunch of colleagues planning a congratulatory happy hour for the promotion. It takes everything in you not to cry. You have worked really hard for the promotion. And you wonder if the fact that your supervisor and some people at work have called you confrontational has anything to do with not being chosen. As you think about all the times you have tried to stay true to your morals but still hit walls, you decide then and there that this job isn't worth all of the stress. While you have no idea what you're going to do next, the act of making a plan makes you feel better. [[Next.|Disney World B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Promotion B'); >>It's a hot day in May. Summer is definitely here you think as you walk into work and put your stuff down. As you get started on the work for the day, your supervisor comes up to you and asks to see you in his office. Heart sinking you follow him into his office and see some other people from administration there. As you sit down you wrack your brain thinking about what you could have possibly done badly to warrant this. They talk about your time here and how well you've fit the culture. The words "surprisingly well" stick in your head as they talk about your well your accomplishments fit their institution's values. They decide to offer you a promotion! As they tell you about what the new job will entail and what the benefits will be, you are flooded with mixed emotions. The job will give you more power to start making some very needed changes to the workplace culture, but the thought of staying for another year to begin those changes seem daunting. Is this job worth it? The stress? Sleeplessness? Anxiety? You think on all the things that have happened in this past year and: [[Accept right away.]] [[Ask for a few days to think about it.]] [[Decline.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Promotion A'); >>It's a hot day in May. //Summer is definitely here,// you think as you walk into work and put your stuff down. You're excited but nervous because there is talk about a promotion and you and your colleague have both been gunning for it. And according to the rumor mill, it will be awarded today. Hours pass and you don't hear anything. Finally, you hear a bunch of colleagues planning a congratulatory happy hour for the promotion. It takes everything in you not to cry. You have worked really hard for the promotion. And you wonder if the fact that going to HR about all of the microaggressions and stress you've been feeling has anything to do with not being chosen. As you think about all the times you have tried to stay true to your morals but still hit walls, you decide then and there that this job isn't worth all of the stress. While you have no idea what you're going to do next, the act of making a plan makes you feel better. [[Next.|Disney World B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Promotion C'); >>You accept and shake hands with everyone in the room. Now the real work begins. [[Next.|Disney World A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Accept right away.'); >>You take the few days to talk with Jesse about all of your experiences at this job. Talking through the whole experience really helps you. You go back into the office and [[make your decision|Promotion A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Ask for a few days to think about it.'); >> You decide to decline the position. A few days later you put in you put in your notice. The job is not worth the stress, insomnia, and anxiety. [[Next.|Disney World B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Decline.'); >>You grab food and hurry back to your cubicle still distraught. You've been doing your best to talk to people when the microaggressions happen, but the stress of trying to fit into this workplace has exhausted you. The thought of saying something again seems too daunting. The rest of the day passes in a daze. [[Next.|Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say nothing B'); >>Cheese! You and your friends smile as you get your picture taken with Minnie Mouse. It's been a long time since you've all been able to get together and do something, and while it's exhausting, you are feeling better than you have in a long time. You and your friends have dressed up as Disney's Princesses and you are rocking what is an amazing Belle costume. You still aren't fond of your job and the coworkers still make a lot of loaded comments, but you've started to speak up about the instances that upset you. Now that you have more power at work, it doesn't feel like so daunting a task. As you and your friends walk into a candy store, a girl turns to her mom and says, //Why is that lady dressed as Belle? Belle isn't Black!// ... <strong>End</strong> [[Epilogue]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Disney World A'); >>Cheese! You and your friends smile as you get your picture taken with Minnie Mouse. It's been a long time since you've all been able to get together and do something, and while it's exhausting, you are feeling better than you have in a long time. You and your friends have dressed up as Disney's Princesses and you are rocking what is an amazing Belle costume. You have found a new job and so far it seems to be going well. These coworkers make some loaded comments, but seem genuinely open to conversation when you speak up. It is still exhausting, but the support network, your friends and Jesse, bring make it manageable. As you and your friends walk into a candy store, a girl turns to her mom and says, //Why is that lady dressed as Belle? Belle isn't Black!// ... <strong>End</strong> [[Epilogue]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Disney World B'); >>Most of your circle are other gay and queer men. You found each other through various queer events in the city. Your hangouts tend to involve going out to various restaurants and bars which is how you like it. Rarely is there a night where at least one of the people in the circle aren't going out. [[Back.|Alex]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex sc'); >>You met Tyler at a rooftop party a couple of years ago. You had an immediate connection. After hooking up that night and for a couple of weeks after, you ended up dating. While it only lasted a couple of months you've been friends since then. Your shared love of brunch (and mimosas) make him the perfect brunch buddy. You both go every Sunday to share the latest work and friend drama. [[Back.|Alex]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Tyler'); >>It is bright and early on a Monday morning in June. Today is your first day of work! It's your first real job out of school and you are a bundle of nerves. As you look through your closet you come up with three different outfits. You decide to: [[Dress up- got to make a good impression!|Alex Dressy]] [[Wear something casual but appropriate- don't want to look like you're trying too hard.|Alex Casual]] [[Basics-Can never go wrong with the basics.|Alex Basics]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Start'); >>After spending 15 minutes putting pomade in your hair and making sure that your curl pattern is just right, you throw on a royal blue suit, adjust your rainbow flag tie bar, and [[Head to Work|Alex Head to Work]]. <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Dressy'); >>You throw on a button down and slacks. At the last minute you decide to put a blazer over it. You consider putting pomade in your hair; instead you put a dollop of mousse in your hands and quickly run it through your hair. After adjusting your rainbow flag tie bar you [[Head to Work|Alex Head to Work]]. <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Casual'); >>You throw on a button down and dark wash jeans. After running your hands through your hair with mousse a couple a times you call it a day. You adjust your rainbow flag pin in the mirror and [[Head to Work|Alex Head to Work]]. <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Basics'); >>You take a deep breath and walk into the building. Your future supervisor quickly greets you and welcomes you to the company. She escorts you around the office introducing you to colleagues who are too many to count. Finally, you sit in your cubicle. The coworker in the cubicle next to you leans over and says: //So I have a cousin like you so I'm super progressive.// [[Thanks?]] [[What does that mean?]] [[The gay community thanks you.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Head to Work'); >>//No problem! I consider myself an ally to the gays.// //...// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[Next.|Alex Happy Hour]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Thanks?'); >>//you know...swishy// As you open your mouth to explain that not all gay people look and act the same they go back to their own cubicle. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Alex Happy Hour]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'What does that mean?'); >>//Hah! You're so sassy I love it! You people are always so funny.// "... thanks?" <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Alex Happy Hour]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'They gay community thanks you.'); >>The rest of the day passes relatively quickly. You end up really liking your work (at least so far). At the end of the day there is talk of going out to happy hour. A bunch of the younger workers look to you and invite you to happy hour. What do you say? <<if $happiness gte 93>>[[Sure! Sounds like fun.]] [[Maybe for an hour.]] [[Nah, I'm totally beat.|Alex says no]] <<else>> <span class="explanation" title="try again">==Sure! That sounds like fun!== <span style="width:500px;">This option is not available to you due to the energy you have expended dealing with prior microagressions</span></span>[[Maybe for an hour.]] [[Nah, I'm totally beat.|Alex says no]] <</if>> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Happy Hour'); >>//Awesome! Here's the address. See you there!// [[Next.|Alex Bar]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Maybe for an hour.'); >><div class="bar"> <img src= "images/bar.jpg" alt="liquor bottles on a wall"/> You go to a loud and boisterous bar. You smile excitedly. This is your element. You and your coworkers have a couple of drinks. As the drinking continues so does the energetic atmosphere and you think this is going to be good fit. Everyone is really friendly and welcoming. After a while, however, the joking begins. You start to feel uncomfortable as the jokes become less and less funny, and more and more homophobic. As you try and figure out the best exit strategy, a coworker drunkenly leans on you and says, //I've always wanted a gay best friend! You can be like my personal stylist!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Laugh uncomfortably and say thanks.|Alex laugh]] [[Push her off and say yeah that's not happening.|Alex pushes]] [[I know you probably meant well but that's not ok.|Alex I know you meant well v1]]</div> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Bar'); >>//Awesome! Here's the address. See you there!// [[Next.|Alex Bar]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Sure! Sounds like fun.'); >>//Lame! Alright; see you tomorrow!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Lovely Girl A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex says no'); >> <div class="pool"> <img src= "images/pool.JPG" alt="outdoor pool"/> To celebrate your birthday Tyler and your friends organize a pool party. You invite your colleague Sam that you've started to become close to. He's the only one at work that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out. The hot August day makes the cold pool water feel amazing. After a while you get out and tan. As you're sipping your margarita, Sam sits in the pool chair next to you. He looks supremely uncomfortable and you ask him what's wrong. He replies, //Can you tell your friends to like tone it down?// "...Tone it down?" [[What do you mean?]] [[Yeah I'll tell them to butch up just for you.]] </div> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Pool'); >>The coworker kisses you on the cheek and stumbles away. The incident leaves a sour note in your mouth and you depart soon after. On your home, you call Tyler to talk to him about the Happy Hour. The conversation helps your frazzled nerves but feeling a little wary going into work the next day. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Lovely Girl B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex laugh'); >>//Jeez, calm down! It was just a joke!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Lovely Girl B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex pushes'); >>//My bad.// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 1>> [[Next.|Lovely Girl B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex I know you meant well v1'); >>The next morning you throw on some clothes, and head to work. When you get there many of your coworkers are talking about how great the happy hour was. Throughout the day they make inside jokes and references to the night before you wonder if it would have been good for you to go. As you walk home, the streets hiss from the recent rainfall. You briefly consider using this serendipitous solitude to catch up on your guilty pleasure television show you'd neglected in the past couple of weeks. As you picture adorable British judges talking about soggy bottoms, you notice that this old woman keeps glancing back at you from further up in the street. On her fourth turn around, she stops, walks towards you, and says //You know if you wore different clothes, I'm sure you'd find a lovely girl.// And walks away. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Alex Pool]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Lovely Girl A'); >>The next morning you're feeling anxious from the night before. You decide to throw on some clothes, and head to work. When you get there you can feel the difference in how your colleagues treat you. They laugh and joke about the happy hour the night before and seem genuinely happy that you came out with them. You can tell that they feel that you are now part of them. You're happy they like you, but it's hard to shake off the discomfort from the events last night. But, the day passes without any incidents. As you walk home, the streets hiss from the recent rainfall. You briefly consider using this serendipitous solitude to catch up on your guilty pleasure television show you'd neglected in the past couple of weeks. As you picture adorable British judges talking about soggy bottoms, you notice that this old woman keeps glancing back at you from further up in the street. On her fourth turn around, she stops, walks towards you, and says "You know if you wore different clothes, I'm sure you'd find a lovely girl." And walks away. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Alex Pool]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Lovely Girl B'); >>//You know...they're just acting...kind of gay...// You explain that a lot of your friends are, in fact, gay, but that stereotyping isn't cool. Sam laughs uncomfortably and leaves shortly after. The party continues, but you can't help but feel a little disappointed in his behavior and it affects your mood for the rest of the night. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Alex Humpday]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'What do you mean?'); >>Sam laughs uncomfortably and leaves shortly after. The party continues, but you can't help but feel a little disappointed in his behavior and it affects your mood for the rest of the night. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Alex Humpday]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Yeah Ill tell them to butch up just for you.'); >>Humpday is hitting you hard. There are too many days until the weekend and there is a lot of work to be done before you can leave. You put your headphones on, crank up the music, and try and tune everyone out. It takes a couple of tries before a colleague gets your attention, and you take off your headphones and: [[Ask what's up.|Homophobic Question]] [[Say I'm busy can I talk later.|Alex is sassy]] [[Listen while still working.|Homophobic Question]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Humpday'); >>//Just wanted to ask if any supervisors have ever had a problem with you being gay? .... No? Wow it's lucky we work in such an understanding place, right? And that it's not seen as unprofessional.// They then walk away. It takes a while before you get back into the groove of working, and hours later you realize that you've been subconsciously "butching up" or acting more stereotypically masculine all day. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 8>> [[Next.|Alex Sports]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Homophobic Question'); >>//Wow so sassy! I kind of love it. But sure I'll be back later!// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Alex Sports]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex is sassy'); >>It's a lazy Saturday morning. You get a call from a coworker. You've hung out with this colleague a few times during a few work happy hours, and you get along well enough but aren't particularly close. Slightly confused you answer the phone. He tells you that there's going to be a football game at the nearby stadium and that he had an extra ticket. You don't have work in the morning, and have nothing else in particular to do that day. As you open your mouth to acquiesce the colleague says //I know you people don't like do sports, but I figured I'd ask.// <<if $happiness gte 75>> [[My people?]] [[...right.]] [[Yeah my people only go shopping and decorate.]] <<else>> [[My people?]] [[...right.]] ==Yeah my people only go shopping and decorate.== <</if>> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Sports'); >>You meet your coworker at the stadium and end up really enjoying yourself, but the comment irritates you all day. You can't help but wonder if speaking up would have been the better move. Later as you're getting ready to sleep, you get a text from the coworker that says //Thanks for the save; you're not what I expected at all.// [[Next.|Alex Break Room]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', '...right'); >>//You know...your people...// You roll your eyes and: [[Go.|...right.]] [[Decline.|Alex no go]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'My people?'); >>It's a Thursday afternoon. You arrive at the break room early to heat up your food. As you sit in the waiting area for your food, two colleagues come into the room talking and laughing. You get up to join the conversation when you hear: //Gay guys make me uncomfortable. Well two guys, girl-on-girl is kind of hot. Guy-on-guy is just gross.// <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Say nothing and pretend you didn't hear.|Alex says nothing]] [[Join the conversation to explain why that comment is homophobic.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Break Room'); >>Your coworker irritatedly asks you if you want to go to the game or not. [[Go.|...right.]] [[Decline.|Alex no go]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Yeah my people only go shopping and decorate.'); >>//Ugh I should have known!// Later, you get invited to a house party, and end up really enjoying yourself, but the comment irritates you all day and puts a damper on what would have been a great night. [[Next.|Alex Break Room]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex no go'); >>Laughing they grab their food from the fridge and leave. You get your own food and go back to your desk, but find it hard to focus and the comment stays with you all day. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 4>> [[Next.|Alex Halloween 1]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex says nothing'); >>You interrupt the conversation to say that is not an offensive thing to say. The back and forth continues on for a while. //I mean yeah you're totally cool and all, but it's still gross. Like that is just not how sex works...it's unnatural...can't help what I feel...// Realizing that the conversation is going nowhere you "agree to disagree" and the colleagues leave the room with their food. You head to the bathroom, splashing water on your face feeling angry and alone. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 8>> [[Next.|Alex Halloween 1]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Join the conversation to explain why that comment is homophobic.'); >>Tyler calls you one Tuesday in October and asks you to help him decorate his apartment for Halloween. You head over and see spiders, cobwebs, skeletons, and candy in a pile on the table. You smile and start to help. By the end of the evening, you're tired but content. You head back to your apartment, belly full of candy and start getting ready for bed. The sugar crash hits, but thinking about going to work tomorrow starts to fill you with anxiety. You love the work that you're doing, and your coworkers are all fun people, but it seems like everyone either ignores your sexuality or assumes that you are this one dimensional stereotype. You lay in bed, each minute ticking closer and closer to "wake up time" and passing on a swelling wave of ever-encroaching dread. Recurrent intrusive thoughts about things people have said at work, and what might happen in the future keep you up. Finally, you pass into a fitful sleep. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 3>> [[Next.|Alex Halloween 2]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Halloween 1'); >>Halloween falls on a Friday this year. Your friends have already organized a huge multi-house bash. Last time Halloween fell on a Friday the parties lasted all weekend. Because of this, you're more excited for the work day to be over so the fun can begin. As you leave for work you check yourself in the mirror one last time. Hat...brown leather jacket...khakis...bullwhip...alright all set. You head into work. Most of your colleagues have dressed up in some capacity. You breathe a little sigh of relief when you don't see any terrible costumes. A couple of hours pass, and you head to the Halloween work luncheon. You head over to Sam to say hi. He's been friendly, but distant since the pool party. He's dressed like a police officer. He glances at your costume and says, //It's ironic that your costume is Indiana Jones.// <<if $happiness gte 55>> [[Is it? Why?]] [[Would you rather I have been dressed as a fairy?]] ==Well screw you too.== <<else>> [[Is it? Why?]] [[Would you rather I have been dressed as a fairy?]] [[Well screw you too.]] <</if>> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Halloween 2'); >>//Oh you know....cause he was such a ladies man, and you're....you know...// ==Force yourself to say something.== ==Talk to at least your supervisor. It shouldn't be that hard.== ==Talk to HR. But that's so official...== ==Just open your mouth and let it happen. Why can't you say anything?== [[Say nothing. You haven't been saying anything for months why start now?]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Is it? Why?'); >>//Wow there's no need to be so rude. I'm not homophobic, I'm just saying that his character is known for being a ladies man, and you're obviously not.// [[Talk to at least your supervisor. It shouldn't be that hard.]] [[Talk to HR. But that's so official...]] [[Just open your mouth and let it happen. Why can't you say anything?]] [[Say nothing. You haven't been saying anything for months why start now?]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Would you rather I have been dressed as a fairy?'); >>//Wow there's no need to be so rude. I'm not homophobic, I'm just saying that his character is known for being a ladies man, and you're obviously not.// ==Force yourself to say something.== ==Talk to HR. But that's so official...== [[Just open your mouth and let it happen. Why can't you say anything?]] [[Talk to at least your supervisor. It shouldn't be that hard.]] [[Say nothing.|Say nothing. You haven't been saying anything for months why start now?]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Well screw you too.'); >>You grab food and hurry back to your cubicle still distraught. You've been doing your best to talk to people when the microaggressions happen, but the stress of trying to fit into this workplace has exhausted you. The thought of saying something again seems too daunting. The rest of the day passes in a daze. [[Next.|Alex Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Say nothing. You haven't been saying anything for months why start now?'); >>You find your supervisor by the food and try to explain why you feel uncomfortable, but your supervisor just laughs it off and tells you to stop being so sensitive. You grab food and hurry back to your cubicle. The rest of the day passes in a daze. [[Next.|Alex Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Talk to at least your supervisor. It shouldn't be that hard.'); >>You find your HR representative, and ask to speak to them about the incident. You go into their office and begin to explain how it hurt you. Suddenly, you're unloading some of the microaggressions you have been experiencing throughout the job. They hear you out, and state next steps. You leave feeling drained, but relieved. <<set $hasHR to true>> <<set $happiness to $happiness + 5>> [[Next.|Alex Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Talk to HR. But that's so official...'); >>You desperately want to say something. You look down and notice that your hands are shaking. All of the previous incidents at work come rushing back. You haven't really tried to speak up before. Can you really start now? You grab food and hurry back to your cubicle still distraught. The rest of the day passes in a daze. <<set $happiness to $happiness - 5>> [[Next.|Alex Halloween Aftermath]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Just open your mouth and let it happen. Why can't you say anything?'); >>The alarm rings for work. You groan and hurriedly turn it off. The thought of going to work seems impossible. Not only are you exhausted from partying all weekend, but you know you're still angry at Sam for saying what he said; You're also angry at yourself for not saying anything. You- ==Force yourself to go to work.== ==Decide to go in late.== [[Call in sick. It's just not happening.|Alex calls in sick]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Halloween Aftermath'); >>You send a quick email to your boss. As you throw the covers over your head you realize just how relieved you are. Work has really been wearing you down lately. [[Next.|Alex Christmas]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex calls in sick'); >>As you walk into work, your heart sinks as you realize that the office has been decorated to the nines for Christmas. You walk to your desk and hunker down for some work. Noticing that you're not that enthused a coworker calls you a Grinch. You roll your eyes and continue working. Part of the reason you chose the job was because it was a secular institution. There's no need for religious holidays in the workplace. Then another colleague says, //Don't tease him! He's probably a Grinch cause his family rejected him!// [[Gasp and gape at her.]] [[Cringe and state that actually your family is really close.]] [[Explain that not all gay people have troubled family relationships.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Christmas'); >>You and Tyler are having your usual brunch date. After a while the conversation turns to work. Tyler excitedly talks about all the amazing things that has been happening at work. As you watch his face light up as he talk about it, you can't help but feel resentful that your own workplace isn't as supportive. As you listen, you resolve to try and make things better at your own workplace. While you have no idea how you're going to do that, the act of making a plan makes you feel better. <<set $happiness to $happiness + 10>> [[Next.|Alex plays hooky]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Tyler Brunch Date A'); >>You reply, "Actually my family is really accepting, and I'm very close with them." //Oh! Well that's great that they're so liberal!// [[Next.|Tyler Brunch Date A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Cringe and state that actually your family is really close.'); >> //No I totally get that. I mean I have a gay cousin and no one treats her any differently. It's like she's not even gay.// [[Next.|Tyler Brunch Date A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Explain that not all gay people have troubled family relationships.'); >> You and Tyler are having your usual brunch date. After a while the conversation turns to work. Tyler excitedly talks about all the amazing things that has been happening at work. As you watch his face light up as they talk about it, you can't help but feel resentful that your own workplace isn't as supportive. As you listen, despair at having to go back into the job day after day. Later that night, you find it impossible to fall asleep. Every time you close your eyes, you're overcome with anxious thoughts that wrap themselves around each other. Worries about your job lead overwhelm you and you're unable to shake them off long enough to doze off. Your eyes won't even stay shut as your mind races through the various things that have happened at work. ==Force yourself to sleep.== ==Do some relaxing breathing exercises to help you fall asleep.== ==Walk around to shake off some of the anxiety jitters.== [[Turn on the tv. It is just not happening any time soon.|Alex tv]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Tyler Brunch Date B'); >><div class="park"> <img src= "images/park.jpg" alt="park bench with a fountain in the background"/> It's a beautiful April day and you have decided to take a personal day. You put on a pair of sweats and a tank and head to the gym. Afterward, you get a milkshake and sit in the park enjoying the weather. With your eyes closed and face up to the sky you think that the life can't get any better than this moment. You hear your name being called out and open your eyes and there is a colleague from work! //Playing hooky too?// He asks as he joins you on the bench. You smile and agree. As you both recount your day you bond over your gym experiences. He says to you: //It's so cool that you're like still a normal dude!// ==Let it slide.== [[What do you mean?|Alex what do you mean]] [[I know you probably meant well, but that's not ok.|Alex says not ok]] </div> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex plays hooky'); >>Too shocked to actually say anything the conversation moves on to other things and the moment passes. You intensely regret not saying anything but are unsure of whether it is appropriate to bring it up once conversation has shifted and how you would do so. [[Next.|Tyler Brunch Date B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Gasp and gape at her.'); >>Nothing else seems to be working so you turn on the tv. Flipping through channels, you finally settle on some nature documentary. After what feels like lifetimes you finally fall asleep. [[Next.|Alex plays hooky]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex tv'); >>//I like gay guys who aren't, like, too gay, you know what I mean? Like you work out and go to football games and stuff. So it's like you're not even gay.// ==Let it slide.== [[Joke about how there's no gay card.]] [[I know you probably meant well, but that's not ok.|Alex says not ok]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex what do you mean'); >> //Sorry I didn't intend to hurt your feelings or whatever. I was just saying that to me it's like you're not even gay.// [[That doesn't make it ok though...]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex says not ok'); >> As you joke about how there isn't an actual gay card but thanks, you feel good about saying something. Even if it might not be taken seriously, you stood up for yourself. But you still feel sad that you couldn't be more explicit about it. The rest of the conversation passes without incident and you head home. [[Next.|Fencing]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Joke about how there's no gay card.'); >> As you try and explain the reasons that is offensive, they shrug. //Jeez. I don't know why you're being so sensitive about this. It was a compliment!// Frustrated, you change the subject, and head home soon after. [[Next.|Fencing]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'That doesnt make it ok though...'); >> 11:00pm.... 1:30am.... 3:15am.... At this point the clock seems to be taunting you. It has been a while since you've had a bout of insomnia this bad. The continued jokes and comments at your expense had been keeping you up later than usual in the past month, but this is the worst night so far. When your alarm goes off 4 hours later, you groggily turn it off and decide to do a half-day. You wake up later tired, but feeling slightly better and go into work. At lunch people discuss the upcoming Olympics. When one of the guys mention how much they're looking forward to fencing, another jokes, //Fencing, bro? That's so gay.// ==Ignore him.== [[Call him out in front of everyone.]] [[Say something sarcastic.|Alex snark]] [[Call him out in private.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Fencing'); >>Unamused, you try to explain how offensive that comment is, but the group just laughs it off and tells you to stop being so sensitive. [[Next.|Alex Promotion B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Call him out in front of everyone.'); >> Later you attempt to explain to him why the comment was offensive, but he just laughs it off and tells you to stop being so sensitive. [[Next.|Alex Promotion A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Call him out in private.'); >> "Ahh yes fighting with swords...the most feminine of activities." The group laughs and the guy who made the comment looks embarrassed and annoyed. <<if $hasHR is true>>[[Next.|Alex Promotion B]] <<elseif $hasHR is false>>[[Next.|Alex Promotion C]] <</if>> <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex snark'); >>It's a hot day in May. Summer is definitely here you think as you walk into work and put your stuff down. As you get started on the work for the day, your supervisor comes up to you and asks to see you in her office. Heart sinking you follow her into her office and see some other people from administration there. As you sit down you wrack your brain thinking about what you could have possibly done badly to warrant this. They talk about your time here and how well you've fit the culture. The words "surprisingly well" stick in your head as they talk about your well your accomplishments fit their institution's values. They decide to offer you a promotion! As they tell you about what the new job will entail and what the benefits will be, you are flooded with mixed emotions. The job will give you more power to start making some very needed changes to the workplace culture, but the thought of staying for another year to begin those changes seem daunting. Is this job worth it? The stress? Sleeplessness? Anxiety? You think on all the things that have happened in this past year and: [[Accept right away.|Alex accepts]] [[Ask for a few days to think about it.|Alex thinks]] [[Decline.|Alex declines]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Promotion A'); >>It's a hot day in May. Summer is definitely here you think as you walk into work and put your stuff down. You're excited but nervous because there is talk about a promotion and you and your colleague have both been gunning for it. And according to the rumor mill, it will be awarded today. Hours pass and you don't hear anything. Finally, you hear a bunch of colleagues planning a congratulatory happy hour for the promotion. It takes everything in you not to leave the room. You have worked really hard for the promotion. And you wonder if the fact that your supervisor has some people at work have called you confrontational has anything to do with not being chosen. As you think about all the times you have tried to stay true to your morals and hit walls you decide then and there that the job isn't worth all of the stress. While you have no idea how you're going to do next, the act of making a plan makes you feel better. [[Next.|Alex Disney B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Promotion B'); >>You accept and shake hands with everyone in the room. Now the real work begins. [[Next.|Alex Disney A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex accepts'); >>You take the few days to talk with Tyler and your friends about all of your experiences at this job. Talking through the whole experience really helps you. You go back into the office and [[make your decision|Alex Promotion A]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex thinks'); >>You decide to decline the position. A few days later you put in your notice. The job is not worth the stress, insomnia, and anxiety. [[Next.|Alex Disney B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex declines'); >>It's a hot day in May. //Summer is definitely here,// you think as you walk into work and put your stuff down. You're excited but nervous because there is talk about a promotion and you and your colleague have both been gunning for it. And according to the rumor mill, it will be awarded today. Hours pass and you don't hear anything. Finally, you hear a bunch of colleagues planning a congratulatory happy hour for the promotion. It takes everything in you not to leave the room. You have worked really hard for the promotion. And you wonder if the fact that going to HR about all of the microaggressions and stress you've been feeling has anything to do with not being chosen. As you think about all the times you have tried to stay true to your morals and hit walls you decide then and there that the job isn't worth all of the stress. While you have no idea how you're going to do next, the act of making a plan makes you feel better. [[Next.|Alex Disney B]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Promotion C'); >>Cheese! You and your friends smile as you get your picture taken with Minnie Mouse. It's been a long time since you've all been able to get together and do something, and while it's exhausting, you are feeling better than you have in a long time. You and your friend have dressed up as Disney's Princesses and you are rocking what is an amazing Belle costume. You still aren't fond of your job and the coworkers still make a lot of loaded comments, but you've started to speak up about the instances that upset you. Now that you have more power at work, it doesn't feel like so daunting a task. As you and your friends walk into a candy store, a girl turns to her mom and says, //Why are those guys dressed like princesses? Guys can only be princes!// ... <strong>End</strong> [[Epilogue]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Disney A'); >>Cheese! You and your friends smile as you get your picture taken with Minnie Mouse. It's been a long time since you've all been able to get together and do something, and while it's exhausting, you are feeling better than you have in a long time. You and your friends have dressed up as Disney's Princesses and you are rocking what is an amazing Belle costume. You have found a new job and so far it seems to be going well. These coworkers make some loaded comments, but seem genuinely open to conversation when you speak up. It is still exhausting, but the support network, your friends and Tyler, make it manageable. As you and your friends walk into a candy store, a girl turns to her mom and says, //Why are those guys dressed like princesses? Guys can only be princes!// ... <strong>End</strong> [[Epilogue]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Alex Disney B'); >>This game uses the "Choose your own adventure" format. These stories are not linear, instead your character's choices guide the direction of the story. All of the choices you make will impact your physical and mental state, as they would in real life. These choices consequently impact the decisions you are able to make in the future. Choices that you are unable to make due to physical and mental fatigue are demonstrated with a ==strikethrough.== [[Begin.]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'how to play'); >>by Fobazi M. Ettarh Thank you for taking the time out of your day to play //Killing Me Softly.// The game doesn't really engender a happy feeling in people, and I recognize that. For those who may be wondering about the lack of a happy ending, microaggressions do not end in real life, and therefore they do not end in //Killing Me Softly.// There are steps you can take to minimize the harm to yourself, such as surrounding yourself with good people, practicing self-care routines, and if possible moving or changing your situation, but unfortunately there is no end. If you would like to learn more about microaggressions, acculturative stress, and its effects on the physical and mental state click [[here.|Bibliography]] <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Epilogue'); >><strong>Popular Sources</strong> <a href="http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/">The Spoon Theory-Christine Miserandino</a> <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/racial-microagressions-you-hear-on-a-daily-basis?utm_term=.ot4rqwM6#.it397qKn">21 Racial Microaggressions You Hear On A Daily Basis</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression_theory">Microaggression Theory</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acculturation#Individual_health">Acculturative stress</a> <strong>Academic Sources</strong> Ausubel, David P. (1960). Acculturative Stress in Modern Maori Adolescence. //Child Development 31//(4), 617-631. Berry, J.W. (2006). "Stress perspectives on acculturation". In Sam, D.L.; Berry, J.W. The Cambridge Handbook of Acculturation Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 43-57. Lee, D. S., & Padilla, A. M. (2014). Acculturative Stress and Coping: Gender Differences Among Korean and Korean American University Students. //Journal of College Student Development, 55//(3), 243-262. Menon, C. V., & Harter, S. L. (2012) Examining the impact of acculturative stress on body image disturbance among Hispanic college students. //Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 18//(3), 239-246. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0028638"></a> Hwang, Wei-Chin, & Ting, J. Y. (2008). Disaggregating the effects of acculturation and acculturative stress on the mental health of Asian Americans. C//ultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 14//(2), 147-154. McClain, S., Beasley, S. T., Jones, B., Awosogba, O., Jackson, S. & Cokley, K. (2016). An Examination of the Impact of Racial and Ethnic Identity, Impostor Feelings, and Minority Status Stress on the Mental Health of Black College Students. //Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 44//(2), 101-117. Park-Taylor, J. & Ventura, A. (2008). Acculturative stress. In F. T. Leong (Ed.), Encyclopedia of counseling (Vol. 4, pp. 947-952). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd. <strong>Microaggressions</strong> Whiteness. (2008). In W. A. Darity, Jr. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 9, pp. 87-89). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Nadal, K. L. (2013). //That's so gay!: Microaggressions and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.// Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Sue, Derald Wing. (2010). //Microaggressions in Everyday Life.// Wiley. Sweet, E.L. (2015). Visceral Geographies of Whiteness and Invisible Microaggressions.//ACME:An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies. 14//(1), 298-323 J. M., & J. L. (2015). //Diversity and the Ivory Ceiling//. Inside Higher Ed. <<set ga('send', 'event', 'passage', 'loaded', 'Bibliography'); >> (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-81886948-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');

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The goal of this game is to illustrate as clearly as possible the accumulation of [[microaggressions]] and [[acculturative stress]] upon the physical and mental body, so that it may be better understood by people who may not understand how these incidents play out.

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The Personal Identity Wheel is a worksheet activity that encourages students to reflect on how they identify outside of social identifiers. The worksheet prompts students to list adjectives they would use to describe themselves, skills they have, favorite books, hobbies, etc. Unlike the Social Identity Wheel, this worksheet doesn't emphasize perception or context. It is best used as an icebreaker activity or in conjunction with the Social Identity Wheel in order to encourage students to reflect on the relationships and dissonances between their personal and social identities. The wheels can be used as a prompt for small or large group discussion or reflective writing on identity by using the Spectrum Activity Questions on Identity.

When used as an icebreaker, this activity can be used to help students find common ground with their peers and learn more about one another, helping students build community.

When used in conjunction with the Social Identity Wheel, the Personal Identity Wheel can be further interrogated to consider how students' personal identities are or aren't informed by their social identities.

The students may not perceive the activity as relevant to the course and thus may exhibit resistance.

Other Associated Material

This video uses both the Personal Identity [5:00] and Social Identity [6:46] Wheel activities to prepare for the Spectrum activity [9:50].

Personal Identity Wheel (adapted from "Voices of Discovery")

Image description: The chart below features a circle that is separated into ten sections. Each section is labeled (starting at the top and moving clockwise around the circle): favorite music, one skill you are proud of, favorite movie, favorite book, favorite food, favorite hobby, favorite color, personal motto, number of siblings, birth order. In the center of the circle is written "Three adjectives to describe yourself" followed by three numbered lines for students to fill out, and a space labeled "name." (Access a pdf version of the Personal Identity Wheel.)

Adapted for use by the Program on Intergroup Relations and the Spectrum Center, University of Michigan.

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The Personal Identity Wheel is a worksheet activity that encourages students to reflect on how they identify outside of social identifiers. The worksheet prompts students to list adjectives they would use to describe themselves, skills they have, favorite books, hobbies, etc. Unlike the Social Identity Wheel, this worksheet doesn't emphasize perception or context.

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Home < Sample Activities & Templates <

The Spectrum Activity Questions of Identity are questions for discussion or reflective writing that prompt students to critically consider their identities and the relationship between identity and context. These questions can be used in conjunction with the Social Identity Wheel and Personal Identity Wheel to prompt students in a discussion or reflective writing exercise about identity.

To encourage students to consider their identities critically and how identities are more or less keenly felt in different social contexts. The classroom and the university can be highlighted as a context as a way to approach questions on barriers to inclusion.

To illuminate how privilege operates to normalize some identities over others. For example, a student who speaks English as their first language can reflect on why they rarely need to think about their language as an aspect of their identity while some of their peers may identify language as the aspect of their identity they feel most keenly in the classroom.

To sensitize students to their shared identities with their classmates as well as the diversity of identities in the classroom, building community and encouraging empathy.

The students may not perceive the activity as relevant to the course and thus may exhibit resistance.

If students are unfamiliar with thinking about their identity, they may struggle to answer these questions in critical or dynamic ways. Using the wheel worksheets and discussing anything that might be unfamiliar to students about identities prior to the discussion will help prepare students for the discussion questions.

Some of these questions may feel especially vulnerable to students with invisible identities that they may not want to disclose to the class. Disclosure in verbal or written form should be voluntary and discussion questions should be addressed broadly enough that students can opt to not talk about more vulnerable aspects of their identities while still leaving space for them to share if they wish.

Other Associated Materials

This video uses both the Personal Identity [5:00] and Social Identity [6:46] Wheel activities to prepare for the Spectrum activity [9:50].

Spectrum Activity Questions

Ask students to consider their multiple identities. You might have them fill out a social identity wheel to begin. Place newsprint around the room each listing a social identity category such as race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation, religion, social class, ability status, nationality, first language, etc. Then read off 5-6 of the following questions. Have participants move to the newsprint that most clearly helps them answer the question. Participants should discuss with others who went to the same category about why they moved to that space. Then read the next question. Large group share out at the end.

1. What part of your identity do you think people first notice about you?

2. What part of your identity are you most comfortable sharing with other people?

3. What part of your identity are you least comfortable sharing with other people?

4. What part of your identity are you most proud of?

5. What part of your identity did you struggle the most with growing up?

6. What part of your identity is the most important to you?

7. What part of your identity is least important to you?

8. What part of other people's identities do you notice first?

9. For what part of your identity do you feel you face oppression for most often?

10. For what part of your identity do you feel you receive privilege for most often?

11. For what part of your identity do you feel least comfortable with at U of M?

12. Your own identities you would like to learn more about.

13. Identities that have the strongest effect on how you see yourself as a person.

14. What part of your identity do you see having the most effect on your interactions with students?

15. What part of students' identities do you most often see effecting their interactions with you?

16. What part of your identity do you see having the most effect on your interactions with co-workers/peers?

Adapted for use by the Spectrum Center and the Program on Intergroup Relations, University of Michigan.

Resource hosted by LSA Inclusive Teaching Initiative, University of Michigan ( http://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/).

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The Spectrum Activity, Questions of Identity

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Home < Sample Activities & Templates < The Spectrum Activity Questions of Identity are questions for discussion or reflective writing that prompt students to critically consider their identities and the relationship between identity and context. These questions can be used in conjunction with the Social Identity Wheel and Personal Identity Wheel to prompt students in a discussion or reflective writing exercise about identity.

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I once saw a high school teacher lead a simple, powerful exercise to teach his class about privilege and social mobility. He started by giving each student a scrap piece of paper and asked them to crumple it up.

Then he moved the recycling bin to the front of the room.

He said, "The game is simple - you all represent the country's population. And everyone in the country has a chance to become wealthy and move into the upper class."

"Your job - as students who are receiving an education - is to be aware of your privilege. And use this particular privilege called "education" to do your best to achieve great things, all the while advocating for those in the rows behind you."

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This Teacher Taught His Class A Powerful Lesson About Privilege

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I once saw a high school teacher lead a simple, powerful exercise to teach his class about privilege and social mobility. He started by giving each student a scrap piece of paper and asked them to crumple it up. Then he moved the recycling bin to the front of the room.

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Contents
Introduction What is Social Justice? Communal Agreements Icebreaker: Respect Activity
Activities:
Introducing Identity: "My Fullest Name"Systems of Power and Privilege: "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"Gender and Sexuality Workshop: Creating Gender-Free Nouns Race and Ethnicity: Diversity Profile Class and Historical Disadvantage: Crossing the Line Recap and Closing Activity Closing and Recommended Resources
Introduction

This toolkit is meant for anyone who feels there is a lack of productive discourse around issues of diversity and the role of identity in social relationships, both on a micro (individual) and macro (communal) level. Perhaps you are a teacher, youth group facilitator, student affairs personnel or manage a team that works with an underserved population. Training of this kind can provide historical context about the politics of identity and the dynamics of power and privilege or help build greater self-awareness.

The following activities are intended for groups of 10 to 60 people. For larger groups, you can break into multiple sessions with additional facilitators to ensure the conversations and activities remain focused. The diversity toolkit outlined here may be used as a guideline and can be modified to better fit your group's unique needs.

A note on facilitators: Facilitators should be well versed in the topics and themes we will be discussing, but they do not need to be experts. This workshop is organized as a popular education activity where the majority of the outcomes are learned from the experiences and knowledge of the individuals participating rather than a teacher/student relationship.

Facilitator Sensitivity

Facilitators will be experiencing and addressing the feelings that come with confronting participants' notions of identity, privilege, race and sexuality. Some participants may be required to attend this workshop (through work or school, etc.), so facilitators should be clear that participants are there because these are issues that affect everyone and that there will not be personal judgment of anyone's feelings about a particular issue. Facilitators should remind participants that:

They will not be lectured or told what to believe.

This is not an indoctrination.

This is a participatory workshop that is intended to help guide all participants to better understanding and to address difficult issues.

Privacy

Facilitators should emphasize that what is shared during the workshop is private and confidential. Participants can talk about how the workshop affected them personally and what they learned generally, but they should respect the privacy of the personal information of the other participants.

What is Social Justice? Setting a Stage for Discussion

Before beginning, it's important that everyone have a basic understanding of two core concepts related to privilege and identity. This will allow everyone to start the conversations on the same page and ensure that the participants have a foundation upon which to build future knowledge.

The first core concept is culture, which is:

The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.

A set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes a group of individuals or an institution or organization.

The second core concept is identity, which is:

Distinguishing characteristics.

The condition of being the same with something described or asserted.

Everyone Has Many Identities

Age, gender, religious or spiritual affiliation, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status are all identities. Some identities are things people can see easily (like race or assumed gender), while other identities are internalized and are not always easy to see (like a disability, socioeconomic status or education level). There are two types of identities that need to be defined in order to spark a discussion on social justice. The first type deals with identities that are part of a majority status - or "agent" - while the second includes identities that are part of the minority status - or "target."

Agent: Members of dominant social groups privileged by birth or acquisition who knowingly or unknowingly exploit and reap unfair advantage over members of the target groups.

Target: Members of social identity groups who are discriminated against, marginalized, disenfranchised, oppressed, exploited by an oppressor and oppressor's system of institutions without identity apart from the target group, and compartmentalized in defined roles.

After participants understand the difference between agent and target groups, the facilitator can begin a discussion on oppression. The key features of oppression are:

An agent group has the power to define and name reality, and determine what is normal, real and correct.

Differential and unequal treatment is institutionalized and systematic.

Psychological colonization of the target group occurs through socializing the oppressed to internalize their oppressed condition.

The target group's culture, language and history is misrepresented, discounted or eradicated, and the dominant group culture is imposed.

Oppression (the "ism's") happens at all levels, reinforced by societal norms, institutional biases, interpersonal interactions and individual beliefs.

Individual - feelings, beliefs, values.

Interpersonal - actions, behaviors and language.

Institutional - legal system, education system, public policy, hiring practices, media images.

Societal/Cultural - collective ideas about what is "right."

But remember:

Most individuals are both a target and an agent of oppression, due to:

Internalized subordination.

Internalized domination.

Because of these internalized factors, individuals have "unearned privilege."

When the facilitator talks about these concepts with the group, it is helpful to start with an understanding that everyone experienced being a target or agent at some point in their lives. This helps create a dialogue of understanding. This is not to say that some target statuses are more salient (for example, people can see I am a woman, or a black woman, before they even speak with me) and others may be easier to conceal (for example, if I am lesbian). But each creates a burden on the individual and each has its own set of challenges to overcome.

Communal Agreements

Before initiating any activity, it is critical that the group builds communal agreements. Rather than naming these "rules" that are then placed upon the group, we will call these "agreements" because these are the guidelines built by the group that all members agree to follow during the course of the workshop. Once an agreement has been put forward, the facilitator should then ask for a definition of what that agreement means to ensure that there is a communal language. Below are several suggested agreements.

Respect. Though this term is used widely, "respect" means different things to different people. Facilitators should ask their team what respect means to them.

"I" Statements. It is critical to draw a line between individual experience and communal experience to prevent alienating someone whose experience may be different. When a member of the community speaks of personal experience or feelings, it is of utmost importance that he/she uses the "I" statement. Facilitators should encourage the participant to take responsibility for his/her own experience rather than projecting it onto fellow participants.

One voice, all ears. When one person speaks, everyone else listens.

Confidentiality. Each participant within the community needs to feel that he/she can trust that what is shared with peers will not be shared outside of the group. Though participants are encouraged to discuss what they have learned and share reflections on conversations, it is important to keep names and individual experiences private.

Icebreaker: Respect Activity

Source: Critical Multicultural Pavilion

Ask participants to find someone in the room they don't know and make an introduction. Talk for five to 10 minutes about respect. What does it mean to you to "show respect?" How do you show respect to others? After the allotted time, ask all participants to sit and open the discussion. How did people define respect? What were some of the core concepts discussed?

Common responses will likely include:

The "Golden Rule."

Looking people in the eyes.

Honesty.

Accepting/appreciating someone's ideas, even when you don't agree with them.

All responses are worthy of reflection in terms of their cultural and hegemonic influences. Ask participants where their ideas of respect come from and whom they are meant to protect. If the group raises any of the common responses above, challenge them to answer the following questions:

Does everyone really want to be treated the same way you want to be treated?

Is eye contact during conversation respectful in every culture?

If someone's ideas are oppressive, should we still respect them?

The point of the discussion is to reflect critically on assumptions and socializations regarding respect. The point is not to agree and to learn from each other's differences.

This activity helps to establish a basis of respect within the group, helping the participants take the first steps toward creating and maintaining a constructive discussion of social justice and equity. At the very least, participants meet someone new and exchange ideas with that person. The group also gets its first look at the similarities and differences between participants, potentially in ways that reflect privilege and power.

Activity One: Introduction Identity

Definition
Everyone has a personal and social identity. Personal identities include an individual's name, unique characteristics, history, personality and other traits that make one different from others. Social identity includes affinities one has with other people, values and norms that one accepts, and the ways one has learned to behave in social settings.

Objective
The following activity is particularly useful when working with participants who don't know one another very well. The goal of this activity is to warm up participants to sharing about themselves and start revealing a bit about each participant's background.

Materials
Markers and 8-by-10-inch sheets of paper folded horizontally.

Instructions
Write out your fullest name and tell your story. On the back of the piece of paper write the top three identities you feel closest to. The facilitator encourages participants to go around the circle to share any meanings, significance, culture, significant ancestors and the top three identities they hold dearest. Everyone will have a chance to share and be heard by the group.

Suggested questions if participants need help getting started:

Who gave you your name? Why that name?

Do you know the ethnic origin of your name?

Do you have any nicknames? If so, how did you get them?

What is your preferred name?

Facilitators should encourage students to be creative. Make it clear that it is acceptable to write poetry, list adjectives that describe them, include humor, etc.

If your group is large, break into diverse small groups of five or six to make sure everyone has an opportunity to share her or his story. Ask for volunteers to get the group started and tell participants they can share their stories from memory, or read them.
Facilitator Notes

Some individuals will include personal information in their stories and may be reticent to read them. Sometimes it is most effective for facilitators to share their stories first - making yourself vulnerable will make others more comfortable doing the same.

Allow time for every participant to share (whether it be with the whole group or with their small group).

Discussion
When everyone has shared, ask participants how it felt to share their stories. Why is this activity important? What did you learn?

Activity Two: Systems of Power and Privilege

Activity
"Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

Objective
The objective of this activity is to confront entrenched systems of power and privilege, and identify common situations when privilege is not acknowledged, to the detriment of the disadvantaged and oppressed.

Check off all of the statements that apply to you. Consider whether or not this would apply should your race be different.

Discussion
What is privilege? We all have privileges. What are yours? Were you surprised by any of the privileges you found in your invisible knapsack?

Activity Three: Gender and Sexuality

Group Definition
Have the group describe what they believe to be the definition of the terms "gender" and "sexuality."

Objective
The objective of this activity is to reconsider male-gendered nouns that we consider "generic." Generating gender-free nouns and pronouns will help participants incorporate more inclusive language in their daily speech and writing.

Instructions
Break participants into small groups and give them a printout of the chart below. Instruct participants to convert the suffixes of the nouns into gender-free, inclusive terms by changing the noun root word or substituting a non-gender-specific root word from another language. Tell participants that since male endings are so pervasive, it is OK to invent new words by replacing the endings of existing words with something non-gendered.

Discussion Questions

How do the changes in the words' structures change the connotation?

How does familiarity affect our perception of a word's correctness? For example, do we think the words "teachman" or "runman" are more correct than "teacher" or "runner"?

The facilitator should ask the following questions of the group while also encouraging them to share personal experiences that speak to their point. What are characteristics of what society believes a [woman/man/girl/boy] should be? What are the norms for appearance/behavior? What happens when someone falls outside of this norm? How do the words we use influence the way we think about certain professions?

Activity Four: Race and Ethnicity

Definition
Race is a social construction that has real consequences and effects. Race is colloquially used to refer to a person's skin color, religion or area of origin (e.g., black, Jewish or African). Technically, however, race is based on national origin, sociocultural groups and self-identification. The U.S. government, including the Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, does not attempt to identify race according to biology, anthropology or genetics. Religious belief is not considered a race, but can be a factor in identifying one's sociocultural group. (For a full explanation of how each racial category is defined, refer to the U.S. Census About Race page). In a historical context, race has played a large part in how our society has evolved, and it shapes the way we see others and how we experience our lives. (For more on race from a historical perspective, read " A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America," by Ronald Takaki.)

Objective
The objective of this activity is to help participants take stock of the multicultural diversity in their lives. It should help participants get a clear image of how diverse or homogenous their surroundings are and identify ways to improve their exposure to multiculturalism on a daily basis.

Instructions
Fill in the appropriate boxes:

Activity Five: Class and Historical Disadvantage

Activity
Crossing The Line

Objective
The purpose of this activity is to explore the diversity among the members of our community. How a person identifies can affect many facets of his or her life. We will use this activity to get to know one another on a deeper level. What are our values, backgrounds, and visible and invisible labels? This activity requires everyone to step outside of his or her comfort zone. Participants being vulnerable can help the group learn more about the identities they do not share.

Instructions
Have all participants line up in a straight line facing the facilitator. If the room is too small to have each participant standing shoulder to shoulder, an alternative is to have the group stand in a circle and step into the circle. The facilitator should explain that he or she will read a statement. If the statement describes you, then silently step across the line. Everyone should quietly notice who stepped across the line and who did not. After a moment, the facilitator will thank those who stepped forward and will then have everyone step back in line.

1. I am a woman.

2. I am a man.

3. I identify as transgender.

4. I am close with most of my family.

5. I identify myself as Jewish.

6. I identify myself as Buddhist.

7. I identify myself as Christian.

8. I identify myself as Muslim.

9. I identify myself as Hindu, Sikh.

10. I identify myself as Mormon.

11. I identify myself as Baha'i'.

12. I identify myself as agnostic or atheist.

13. I identify myself as spiritual, but not religious.

14. I have attended a religious or spiritual service that is not of my own religious and spiritual identity.

15. I identify as a citizen.

16. I identify as an immigrant.

17. I identify as undocumented or have a close family member who is.

18. I had "enough" growing up as a child (however you define "enough").

19. I had "more than enough" growing up as a child (however you define "enough").

20. I had "less than enough" growing up as a child (however you define "enough").

21. I have felt guilty by the amount of money my family has or by the size of my house or by what resources or belongings my family has (either too much or too little).

22. I have experienced the death of a close family member or close friend.

23. I have or someone in my family has a physical disability.

24. I have a hidden disability (physical or learning).

25. I am comfortable with my body.

26. I have felt ashamed of myself because of my body, my intellect or education, or my family.

27. I identify myself as black or African-American.

28. I identify myself as Asian or Asian-American.

29. I identify myself as white or European.

30. I identify myself as Pacific Islander.

31. I identify myself as biracial, triracial, mixed-race or of combined heritage.

32. I have had to check "other" on forms that ask my race or ethnicity.

33. I have a close friend who is a person of color.

34. I feel comfortable talking about race and ethnicity with people who are not of my race.

35. Someone in my extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) lives in my house with my family.

36. I or someone in my family is LGBTQ.

37. I know someone who is LGBTQ.

38. I am an ally to LGBTQ people.

39. I or someone in my family has had a problem with alcoholism or drug abuse.

40. I have felt discriminated against on the basis of my gender; race or ethnicity; religion; ability or disability; sexual orientation; or socio-economic status.

41. I have felt guilt because of my gender; race or ethnicity; religion; ability or disability; sexual orientation; or socioeconomic status.

Discussion

What was your reaction to this exercise? How did you feel afterward?

What did it feel like to step into the circle? What was it like not to be in the circle?

What did you discover about those around you?

Were you surprised about anything? Did anyone break a stereotype for you?

Were there questions you were hoping would not be asked? Any you wish had been asked?

How might such issues/factors affect your relationships?

What did you learn about yourself or what did you think about that you've never thought about before?

What role does privilege play in this? What role do pride and shame play?

Activity Six: Recap and Closing Activity

This toolkit was designed to address human issues that everyone faces and help participants recognize how they can better understand and work toward solving, or at least improving, these issues. Participants were often forced to confront socialized and entrenched notions of privilege, identity and social justice. Anything that was difficult to confront during the training will be even more difficult to confront in practice, but if these were easily solvable issues, they wouldn't be issues for long. Participants should feel better equipped with newfound knowledge and empathy, and prepared to apply the lessons they learned in their own lives and communities.

Objective
To practice giving positive feedback and to have participants leave the workshop feeling energized.

Instructions
Have participants mingle randomly in a large group and then instruct them to stop and share with the person in front of them one way in which that person "shined" during the workshop. Repeat several times so that each person gets feedback and support from different people in the group. If there are an odd number of participants, the facilitator should address the odd person out each time.

Closing

Completing this training is not the end, but merely the beginning. Hopefully, this toolkit has helped to create new understanding among your participants. Individuals should have learned about their own identity and of those around them, as well as the implications of socially constructed labels and stereotypes of an individual's experience. Those interested in this type of work may be interested in a career in social work, facilitation, advocacy or sociology. At the end of the training, facilitators should be prepared to provide additional resources for participants who want to learn more about issues of identity, power and privilege. Below we cite several resources to help you get started.

Recommended Resources

Resources for Additional Activities

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Citation for this content: The MSW@USC, theonline Master of Social Work programat the University of Southern California.

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Diversity Workshop: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power and Privilege

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Introduction What is Social Justice? Communal Agreements Icebreaker: Respect Activity Activities: Introducing Identity: "My Fullest Name" Systems of Power and Privilege: "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" Gender and Sexuality Workshop: Creating Gender-Free Nouns Race and Ethnicity: Diversity Profile Class and Historical Disadvantage: Crossing the Line Recap and Closing Activity Closing and Recommended Resources This toolkit is meant for anyone who feels there is a lack of productive discourse around issues of diversity and the role of identity in social relationships, both on a micro (individual) and macro (communal) level.

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A billboard that drew the ire of some Saskatoon residents online is being heralded as a much-needed conversation starter about racism.

The sign on Circle Drive is one of four put up by the City of Saskatoon as part of its $21,000 campaign called " I am the Bridge" - a multimedia effort designed to share people's stories and insights on their experiences with racism.

One particular billboard shows a photo of a man who appears to be white and a quote that reads "I have to acknowledge my own privilege and racist attitudes."

Sheelah Mclean, a co-founder of Idle No More and an anti-opression educator, says she understands why billboards about white privilege and racism make some people uncomfortable.

There are going to be people who feel guilt - Sheelah McLean

"There are going to be people who feel guilt, there are going to be people who are going to feel sadness that they didn't know this information, they had never been taught it. There are going to be people who feel anger. It's all called backlashing," McLean said.

FSIN says billboards are generating discussion

Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron agrees. He says the billboard is part of ongoing and important conversations concerning race and prejudice around the province.

"It's a good thing if it's generating discussion. There will always be some negative comments and everything else. But we can pray for them and we certainly do," Cameron said.

Cameron pointed to commitments and agreements the FSIN has made in recent months with several Saskatchewan municipalities as evidence that things are moving in the right direction.

"We cannot change the attitudes or opinions of the 50-year-olds or the 60-year-olds who have always hated people for their skin colour. We cannot change them. But we can start focusing and educating those children to understand that we are in the province, this world together," Cameron said.

The City of Saskatoon spearheaded the anti-racism campaign, which ran on a smaller scale in 2015 and 2016. This year, the city spent $14,000 on the campaign, up from $2,260 in 2015 and $5,521 in 2016. The 2017 campaign includes advertisements in eight transit shelters as well as bars and restaurants across the city.

During the launch, Mayor Charlie Clark said the campaign was about "building relationships and a shared understanding."

Backlash part of the 'myth of meritocracy'

McLean says decades of research and experiences of aboriginal and other visible minority Canadians has shown that white privilege is real.

"The idea that white privilege doesn't exist or that not everybody benefits from it who is light skinned is actually false, it's a fallacy," McLean said.

She says as a white person she understands how being confronted with that knowledge can be upsetting for some. McLean herself participated in the campaign by offering her own thoughts on racism.

She says the "myth of meritocracy" - the idea that light skinned people get to where they are solely because of things like hard work - is simply not true.

While she says many light skinned or white people may have felt oppression in one form or another, they have not felt racial oppression. Educating people about privilege and racism, she says, is what the campaign is all about. .

City defends billboards

The project asked citizens to submit videos sharing their experiences, and the most powerful quotes were used to create the campaign.

"It's real people who live in Saskatoon. It's not staged actors, nor did the city make up those quotes," said Lynne Lacroix, the city's director of community development.

"These billboards were not intended to suggest that all people have to do the same thing or that all people are racist."

The city's website points out the fact that racism exists in Saskatoon. One cited example is the fact a large majority of Aboriginal people in Saskatoon agree with the statement "I think others behave in an unfair/negative way towards Aboriginal people." That came from a research project called 'Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study: Saskatoon Report' done back in 2011.

Lacroix said she is pleased the campaign is creating discussion around racism in Saskatoon.

"Also encouraging the rest of the community to gain a broader understanding of the nature of racism because that is what is really critical for us all to recognize, to know what racism is, in order to address it," she said.

Newcomers group welcomes discussion

Saskatoon Open Door Society executive director Ali Abukar sees the discussion as an opportunity to talk about not only racism but other connected issues, such as poverty and homelessness.

He said issues of racism and privilege relate to the events of the past.

"Some people are in a disadvantaged position where others are opposite and it is not because of what they did or because of who they are, it is more what happened in the past and that is something that is ongoing," said Abukar.

"So people will feel uncomfortable, obviously some people will have some questions, but I see it as a big opportunity for our community because it starts that conversation where people have to talk about these issues."

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City of Saskatoon, advocates defend anti-racism billboards | CBC News

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A billboard that drew the ire of some Saskatoon residents online is being heralded as a much-needed conversation starter about racism. The sign on Circle Drive is one of four put up by the City of Saskatoon as part of its $21,000 campaign called " I am the Bridge" - a multimedia effort designed to share people's stories and insights on their experiences with racism.

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Log in or register to find out your implicit associations about race, gender, sexual orientation, and other topics!

Or, continue as a guest by selecting from our available language/nation demonstration sites:

GO!

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Log in or register to find out your implicit associations about race, gender, sexual orientation, and other topics! Or, continue as a guest by selecting from our available language/nation demonstration sites: GO!

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I, Too, Am Harvard | Ahsante Bean | Ahsante the Artist

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Doll test - The effects of racism on children (ENG)

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When someone tells you to "check your privilege" it can sound like they're personally attacking you. Being defensive is a natural reaction. This video is about checking your privilege and why it's so important to do when you're invested in fighting against systems of oppression. If you like this video REBLOG IT!

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Racism Is Real • Systematic Racism Explained • Black Lives Matter • BRAVE NEW FILMS (BNF)

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"Because I’m Latino, I can’t have money?" Kids on Race

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The Culture Issue

A few weeks ago, I sat in a movie theater and grinned. Anne Hathaway was in ''The Intern,'' perched on a hotel bed in a hotel robe, eating from a can of overpriced nuts, having tea and freaking out. What would happen if she divorced her sweet, selfless stay-at-home dad of a husband? Would she ever meet anybody else? And if she didn't, she would have no one to be buried next to - she'd be single for all eternity. And weren't the problems in her marriage a direct result of her being a successful businesswoman - she was there but never quite present? ''The Intern'' is a Nancy Meyers movie, and these sorts of cute career-woman meltdowns are the Eddie Van Halen guitar solos of her romantic comedies.

But what's funny about that scene - what had me grinning - is the response of the person across the bed from Hathaway. After listening to her tearful rant, this person has had enough: Don't you dare blame yourself or your career! Actually, the interruption begins, ''I hate to be the feminist, of the two of us. ... '' Hate to be because the person on the other side of the bed isn't Judy Greer or Brie Larson. It's not Meryl Streep or Susan Sarandon. It's someone not far from the last person who comes to mind when you think ''soul-baring bestie.'' It's Robert freaking De Niro, portrayer of psychos, savages and grouches no more.

On that bed with Hathaway, as her 70-year-old intern, he's not Travis Bickle or the human wall of intolerance from those Focker movies. He's Lena Dunham. The attentiveness and stern feminism coming out of his mouth are where the comedy is. And while it's perfectly obvious what Meyers is doing to De Niro - girlfriending him - that doesn't make the overhaul any less effective. The whole movie is about the subtle and obvious ways in which men have been overly sensitized and women made self-estranged through breadwinning. It's both a plaint against the present and a pining for the past, but also an acceptance that we are where we are.

And where are we? On one hand: in another of Nancy Meyers's bourgeois pornographies. On the other: in the midst of a great cultural identity migration. Gender roles are merging. Races are being shed. In the last six years or so, but especially in 2015, we've been made to see how trans and bi and poly-ambi-omni- we are. If Meyers is clued into this confusion, then you know it really has gone far, wide and middlebrow. We can see it in the instantly beloved hit ''Transparent,'' about a family whose patriarch becomes a trans woman whose kids call her Moppa, or in the time we've spent this year in televised proximity to Caitlyn Jenner, or in the browning of America's white founding fathers in the Broadway musical ''Hamilton,'' or in the proliferating clones that Tatiana Maslany plays on ''Orphan Black,'' which mock the idea of a true or even original self, or in Amy Schumer's comedic feminism, which reconsiders gender confusion: Do uncouthness, detachment and promiscuity make her a slut, or a man?

We can see it in the recently departed half-hour sketch comedy ''Key & Peele,'' which took race as a construct that could be reshuffled and remixed until it seemed to lose its meaning. The sitcom ''Black-ish'' likewise makes weekly farcical discourse out of how much black identity has warped - and how much it hasn't - over 50 years and across three generations. ''Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt'' turns selfhood into a circus, introducing us to a lower-middle-class Native American teenager who eventually succeeds at becoming a rich white lady, and to other characters who try out new selves every 10 minutes, as if they're auditioning for ''Snapchat: The Musical.'' Last month, Ryan Adams released a remake of Taylor Swift's album ''1989,'' song for song, as a rock record that combines a male voice with a perspective that still sounds like a woman's, like Lindsey Buckingham trying on Stevie Nicks's clothes. Dancing on the fringes of mainstream pop are androgynous black men like Le1f, Stromae and Shamir.

What started this flux? For more than a decade, we've lived with personal technologies - video games and social-media platforms - that have helped us create alternate or auxiliary personae. We've also spent a dozen years in the daily grip of makeover shows, in which a team of experts transforms your personal style, your home, your body, your spouse. There are TV competitions for the best fashion design, body painting, drag queen. Some forms of cosmetic alteration have become perfectly normal, and there are shows for that, too. Our reinventions feel gleeful and liberating - and tied to an essentially American optimism. After centuries of women living alongside men, and of the races living adjacent to one another, even if only notionally, our rigidly enforced gender and racial lines are finally breaking down. There's a sense of fluidity and permissiveness and a smashing of binaries. We're all becoming one another. Well, we are. And we're not.

In June, the story of a woman named Rachel Dolezal began its viral spread through the news. She had recently been appointed president of the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. in Spokane, Wash. She had been married to a black man, had two black sons and was, by most accounts, a black woman. Her white biological parents begged to differ. The ensuing scandal resurrected questions about the nature of identity - what compelled Dolezal to darken her skin, perm her hair and pass in reverse? She might not have been biologically black, but she seemed well past feeling spiritually white.

Some people called her ''transracial.'' Others found insult in her masquerade, particularly when the country's attention was being drawn, day after day, to how dangerous it can be to have black skin. The identities of the black men and women killed by white police officers and civilians, under an assortment of violent circumstances, remain fixed.

But there was something oddly compelling about Dolezal, too. She represented - dementedly but also earnestly - a longing to transcend our historical past and racialized present. This is a country founded on independence and yet comfortable with racial domination, a country that has forever been trying to legislate the lines between whiteness and nonwhiteness, between borrowing and genocidal theft. We've wanted to think we're better than a history we can't seem to stop repeating. Dolezal's unwavering certainty that she was black was a measure of how seriously she believed in integration: It was as if she had arrived in a future that hadn't yet caught up to her.

It wasn't so long ago that many Americans felt they were living in that future. Barack Obama's election was the dynamite that broke open the country. It was a moment. It was the moment. Obama was biological proof of some kind of progress - the product of an interracial relationship, the kind that was outlawed in some states as recently as 1967 but was normalized. He seemed to absolve us of original sin and take us past this stupid, dangerous race stuff. What if suddenly anything was possible? What if we could be and do whatever and whoever we wanted? In that moment, the country was changing. We were changing.

Before Obama ran for president, when we tended to talk about racial identity, we did so as the defense of a settlement. Black was understood to be black, nontransferably. Negro intellectuals - Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray and James Baldwin, for starters - debated strategies for equality and tolerance. Some of them asserted that to be black was also to be American, even if America begged to differ. For most of those many decades, blackness stood in opposition to whiteness, which folded its arms and said that was black people's problem. But Obama became everybody's problem. He was black. He was white. He was hope. He was apocalypse. And he brought a lot of anxiety into weird relief. We had never really had a white president until we had a black one.

This radical hope, triggered by Obama, ushered in a period of bi- and transracial art - art that probed the possibility that we really had transcended race, but also ridiculed this hope with an acid humor. During Obama's past year in office, those works of art have taken on an even darker, more troubled tone as we keep looking around and seeing how little has really changed.

When the Dolezal story broke, I was partway through Nell Zink's ''Mislaid,'' one of the four new satirical novels of race I read this year - Jess Row's ''Your Face in Mine,'' Paul Beatty's ''The Sellout'' and Mat Johnson's ''Loving Day'' were the others. (I also read Fran Ross's long-lost, recently reissued ''Oreo.'') But Zink's was the only one that felt like an energy reading of Dolezal. Zink's white heroine, Peggy, has run off with her daughter, Mireille, and decided to take the birth certificate of a dead black girl named Karen Brown and use it for Mireille, while changing her own name to Meg.

The next year, Karen was 4 years old going on 5 and still blond. Nonetheless registering her for first grade as a black 6-year-old was easy as pie.

Maybe you have to be from the South to get your head around blond black people. Virginia was settled before slavery began, and it was diverse. There were tawny black people with hazel eyes. Black people with auburn hair, skin like butter and eyes of deep blue-green. Blond, blue-eyed black people resembling a recent chairman of the N.A.A.C.P.

Zink's marveling description of what blackness looks like implies that it could welcome anyone. She draws a phenotypic loophole through which a sympathetic impostor or a straight-up cynic can pass.

Each of these books wrestles with the fact of race while trying to present it as mutable, constructed, obscuring. In Beatty's novel, a young black farmer in modern Los Angeles reluctantly takes on a vulgar former TV minstrel star as his slave. Blackness, according to this book, is as much a scam as it is a cultural identity; the undercurrents of tragedy keep lapping at the harbor of farce. Row's novel is also a satire, but an eerily calm one in which a white man has ''racial reassignment'' surgery and becomes black. Row, who like Zink is white, takes guilt to an astounding allegorical extreme: The surest cure for white oppression is to eliminate whiteness. Whatever else is going on with Dolezal psychologically, you can read into her proud reassignment a sense of shame.

But racial transgression works the other way too. ''Hamilton'' is a musical biography about the very white, very dead Alexander Hamilton, in which most of the cast is ''other,'' including Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show's Nuyorican creator and star. Some of its audacity stems from the baldness of its political project: In changing the races of the founding fathers from white to brown, it pushes back against the currents of racial appropriation. It also infuses the traditional melodies of the American musical with so many genres of hip-hop and R & B, sometimes in a single number, that the songs themselves become something new. Political debates are staged as rap battles. Daveed Diggs's Thomas Jefferson becomes the best good thing that never happened at the Source Awards. Artistically, Miranda has created a great night out. Racially, the show tags the entertainment industry status quo with color. It's obviously musical theater. But damn if it's not graffiti too.

Naturally, this new era has also agitated a segment of the populace that is determined to scrub the walls. That, presumably, is where Donald Trump comes in: as the presidential candidate for anyone freaked out by the idea of a show like ''Hamilton.'' Trump is the pathogenic version of Obama, filling his supporters with hope based on a promise to rid the country of change. This incarnation of Trump appeared not long after Obama's election, determined to disprove the new president's American citizenship. On Trump's behalf, an entire wing of conservatism - the so-called birthers - devoted itself to the removal of a mask that Obama was never wearing. Part of Trump's appeal is his illusion of authenticity. His blustering candor has currency in a landscape of android candidates. Yet his magnetism resides in paranoia, the fear that since Obama's election ushered in this shifting, unstable climate of identity, the country has been falling apart.

It's a paranoia that pop culture captured first: In the last six years, Hollywood has provided a glut of disaster spectacles, armageddon scenarios and White House sackings. But the USA Network's ''Mr. Robot,'' which ended its first season last month, might have gotten at that sense of social collapse best. Created by Sam Esmail, an Egyptian-American, the show pits technology against the economy and its unstable protagonist against himself. The plot concerns a group of anarchist hackers conspiring to topple a corporation; with it go the stability of world markets and everybody's financial debt. But it's also a mystery about the identity of its protagonist, a mentally ill, morphine-addicted hacker named Elliot. We think he's obeying the commands of the show's title character, the head of a hacktivist outfit, but it turns out that he has been commanding himself all along. Significant parts of this world are figments of his delusion. Elliot is at least two people. Some of the dark excitement of this show is that he might be even more.

''Mr. Robot'' is worst-of-times TV, reflecting a mood of menacing instability. Over the course of its 10 episodes, almost no one was who they appeared to be. A straight married man seemed to think nothing of his sleeping with a gay work underling (and neither did his wife). A character who seemed, to my eyes at least, to be a transgender woman at some point appeared as a conventional man. Was that a coming out? A going in? Both? This isn't a show I watched for what was going to happen but for who people were going to turn into, or who they wanted to turn out to be. It's a show about the way your online profile can diverge from your real-life identity, yes, but also the way you can choose a self or a self can choose you.

There's also the choice to ignore the matter of identity - until, of course, it starts to aggravate your complacency. Not far into the flap over Dolezal, another alarming story took over the news, a story that challenged the myths white America tells itself about progress. This story was about Atticus Finch, the protagonist of Harper Lee's 1960 classic, ''To Kill a Mockingbird.'' Atticus single-handedly fought racism in the fictitious Alabama town of Maycomb, and he became a window through which we could see a version of tolerance, someone holy enough to put on stained glass or money. But in ''Go Set a Watchman,'' the sequel to ''To Kill a Mockingbird,'' published in July, Atticus was given a scandalous status update: He had been aged into a racist.

I can't recall the last time the attitudes of a single fictional character led the national news. But there was bigoted old Atticus, on the front pages, being discussed on cable. One of the most iconic white antiracists had grown fond of white supremacy. It raised an uncomfortable question: If you had identified with the original Atticus Finch, did his Archie Bunkerization make a racist out of you too? The public hand-wringing was a perverse refreshment because, even if only for a few days, it left white people dwelling on race as intensely as nonwhite people. This new Atticus was a betrayal of white liberal idealism, feeding a suspicion that that idealism was less than absolute - that it could suddenly, randomly turn against the people it purported to help.

It was almost as if Lee knew, in 1957, about the mood of the country in 2015 - about the way a series of dead black men and women would further cleave apart the country; about the massacre of nine black churchgoers by a young white supremacist in a South Carolina church, and the ensuing debate over the Confederate flag; about the fear of inevitable, inexorable racial, gender and sexual evolution; about the perceived threats to straight-white-male primacy by Latino immigrants, proliferating Spanish, same-sex marriage, female bosses and a black president.

The yearning to transcend race keeps coming up against the bedrock cultural matter of separateness. But the tectonic plates of the culture keep pushing against one another with greater, earthquaking force. The best show in our era about that quake - about the instability of identity and the choosing of a self - has been ''Key & Peele.'' For five seasons, in scores of sketches, two biracial men, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, became different women and different men of different ethnicities, personalities and body types. They were two of the best actors on television, hailing from somewhere between the lawlessness of improv comedy and the high-impact emotionalism of Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman, zillion-character plays. ''Key & Peele'' granted nearly every caricature a soul.

The show started as a commentary on the hilarious absurdity of race, but it never fully escaped the pernicious reality of racism. The longer it ran, the more melancholy it became, the more it seethed. In the final episode, its anger caught up with its fancifulness and cheek, exploding in an old-timey musical number called ''Negrotown,'' which opens with a black man (Key) being arrested by a white cop one night while walking down a dark alleyway. He says he's innocent of any wrongdoing and asks why he's being arrested, intensifying the cop's anger. Entering the police cruiser, he hits his head on the car door. Suddenly, a homeless man (Peele) arrives on the scene and offers to take the black guy off the cop's hands. The cop gratefully acquiesces.

Taking the disoriented man by the hand, the homeless guy leads him through an alley door. They find themselves on the threshold of a sunny neighborhood. The homeless guy is now dressed in a three-piece suit the color of pink grapefruit meat, and he begins to sing in a camped-up, zero-calorie Paul Robeson baritone about this new place, ''where there ain't no pain, ain't no sorrow.'' Black people in bright clothes are dancing in the streets, singing in giddy verse about the special virtues of their town: You can get a cab to pick you up, have a loan application approved, even wear a hoodie without getting shot. Plus: ''There's no stupid-ass white folks touching your hair or stealing your culture, claiming it's theirs.''

But it's clear from the start that the ''neighborhood'' is a studio backlot, and the dancers are costumed in the colors of Skittles, and their dancing involves a lot of grinning and spinning and stretching out their arms - shuffling. Black freedom looks like a white 1940s Hollywood director's idea of it. At the end of the number, the dancers stand frozen with their arms raised in a black-power salute, as if waiting for someone to yell ''cut.'' No one does.

The dream melts away, and we're back with the guy being arrested, passed out on the ground. The cop starts shoving him into the cruiser. ''I thought I was going to Negrotown,'' he says.

''Oh, you are,'' the cop replies, as the piano riff from the song starts to play and the car drives off.

The show left us with a dream of Edenic self-containment as the key to black contentment - a stunning contradiction of all its previous sketches. It was a rebuke to both racial integration and ghettoization. It split me open. I cried with laughter at the joke of this obviously fake place as a kind of heaven. I cried with sadness, because if you're in Negrotown, you're also in a special ring of hell.

The bitterness of the sketch made me wonder if being black in America is the one identity that won't ever mutate. I'm someone who believes himself to have complete individual autonomy, someone who feels free. But I also know some of that autonomy is limited, illusory, conditional. I live knowing that whatever my blackness means to me can be at odds with what it means to certain white observers, at any moment. So I live with two identities: mine and others' perceptions of it. So much of blackness evolving has been limited to whiteness allowing it to evolve, without white people accepting that they are in the position of granting permission. Allowing. If that symbiotic dynamic is going to change, white people will need to become more conscious that they, too, can be perceived.

It could be that living with recycled conflict is part of the national DNA. Yet it's also in our natures to keep trying to change, to discover ourselves. In ''Far From the Tree,'' Andrew Solomon's landmark 2012 book about parenting and how children differentiate themselves, he makes a distinction between vertical and horizontal identity. The former is defined by traits you share with your parents, through genes and norms; the latter is defined by traits and values you don't share with them, sometimes because of genetic mutation, sometimes through the choice of a different social world. The emotional tension in the book's scores of stories arises from the absence of love for or empathy toward someone with a pronounced or extreme horizontal identity - homosexuality or autism or severe disability. Solomon is writing about the struggle to overcome intolerance and estrangement, and to better understand disgust; about our comfort with fixed, established identity and our distress over its unfixed or unstable counterpart.

His insights about families apply to us as a country. We're a vertical nation moving horizontally. We're daring to erase the segregating boundaries, to obliterate oppressive institutions, to get over ourselves. Nancy Meyers knows it. Sam Esmail knows it. So, in his way, does Donald Trump. The transition should make us stronger - if it doesn't kill us first.

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The Culture Issue A few weeks ago, I sat in a movie theater and grinned. Anne Hathaway was in ''The Intern,'' perched on a hotel bed in a hotel robe, eating from a can of overpriced nuts, having tea and freaking out. What would happen if she divorced her sweet, selfless stay-at-home dad of a husband?

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This year, the annual Stand Against Racism campaign will be virtual and take place the week of April 20, 2020. Please join YWCA, schools, faith-based groups, community and civic organizations throughout our communities to share the ways you - or your organization - stand against racism. Here are five ways you can Stand Against Racism this year:

Today, being aware of the continuing affliction of institutional and structural racism as well as the daily realities of all forms of bias, prejudice and bigotry in my own life, I take this pledge, I pledge to look deeply and continuously in my heart and in my mind to identify all signs and vestiges of racism; and to expand my consciousness to be more aware and sensitive to my use of overt and subtle expressions of racism and racial stereotypes; I pledge to educate myself on racial justice issues and share what I learn in my own communities even if it means challenging my family, my partner, my children, my friends, my co-workers and those I encounter on a daily basis I pledge to actively support public policy solutions that openly and enthusiastically promote racial equity in all aspects of human affairs; And in this extraordinary time of a worldwide pandemic, as we see the disparities in how this crisis impacts those who have been marginalized, I pledge to continue focusing attention on inequities which have systematically limited the lives of many, until transformation takes place. I am fully aware that the struggle to eliminate racism will not end with a mere pledge, but I join with YWCA in calls for an ongoing transformation within myself and the institutions and structures of our society, by taking a stand against racism today and every day.

2) Read the pledge together

Read our Stand Against Racism pledge below with your family, friends or colleagues. Take a video of you and your group reciting the pledge out loud and post it on Facebook with the hashtags #StandAgainstRacism #YWCAens and tag YWCA Evanston/North Shore, or send it to equityinstitute@ywca-ens.org.
Today, being aware of the continuing affliction of institutional and structural racism as well as the daily realities of all forms of bias, prejudice and bigotry in my own life, I take this pledge, I pledge to look deeply and continuously in my heart and in my mind to identify all signs and vestiges of racism; and to expand my consciousness to be more aware and sensitive to my use of overt and subtle expressions of racism and racial stereotypes; I pledge to educate myself on racial justice issues and share what I learn in my own communities even if it means challenging my family, my partner, my children, my friends, my co-workers and those I encounter on a daily basis I pledge to actively support public policy solutions that openly and enthusiastically promote racial equity in all aspects of human affairs; And in this extraordinary time of a worldwide pandemic, as we see the disparities in how this crisis impacts those who have been marginalized, I pledge to continue focusing attention on inequities which have systematically limited the lives of many, until transformation takes place. I am fully aware that the struggle to eliminate racism will not end with a mere pledge, but I join with YWCA in calls for an ongoing transformation within myself and the institutions and structures of our society, by taking a stand against racism today and every day.

We want to know: how will YOU or your organization advance racial equity today? Share your story or project with our Equity Institute team at equityinstitute@ywca-ens.org.

Stand Against Racism is a signature campaign of YWCA USA to build community among those who work for racial justice and to raise awareness about the negative impact of institutional and structural racism in our communities.

Founded by YWCA Trenton and YWCA Princeton in 2007, Stand Against Racism quickly grew to a national presence by 2010, when an additional 80 YWCAs across the nation, including YWCA Evanston/North Shore, took a Stand. Over 2,000 organizations across 39 states joined YWCAs in the Stand Against Racism. This phenomenal success has attracted well over 250,000 participants and earned the endorsement of five U.S. Governors. The event has been widely featured by local ABC, NBC, CBS, and other networks.

The Stand Against Racism takes place each year on the last Friday in April. Thanks to the thousands of people who joined us for the 2019 Stand in Evanston and Skokie!

Does standing together for 15 minutes eliminate racism? Of course not. But it does allow us to see the broad range of people in this community who are committed to working toward that goal. We need each other's support to stay in the struggle, to have the hard conversations, to do the self-assessment necessary to transform ourselves and our community.

Eileen Hogan Heineman, Mgr., Equity Inst. Community Outreach

Who participates in the Stand Against Racism? People like you.

Take the pledge with Skokie residents who took a Stand Against Racism

Thousands joined us for the 2019 Stand Against Racism in Evanston

2019 Stand Against Racism participants included:

In Evanston:

Baker Demonstration School

Benedictines for Peace

Beth Emet, The Free Synagogue

Chiaravalle Montessori School

City of Evanston

Curt's Cafe

Evanston Chamber of Commerce

Evanston Community Foundation

Evanston Fire Department

Evanston Police Department

Evanston/Skokie School District 65

Dawes School

Dewey Parents

Lincoln School

Oakton School

Orrington School

Washington School

First Congregational Church of Evanston

McGaw YMCA

Moran Center for Youth Advocacy

Northwestern University

Alumni Relations & Development Dept.

Associated Student Government

Chicago Field Studies Program

Medill School of Journalism

Neighborhood and Community Relations Dept.

Office of Institutional Diversity & Inclusion

Women's Center

Ridgeville Park District

Rotary International

Roycemore School

St. Andrew's Pentecost Episcopal Church

St. Mark's Episcopal Church

St. Matthew Episcopal Church

St. Nicholas Catholic Church

Unitarian Church of Evanston

In Skokie:

Downtown Skokie

7900 Tripp Block Club

Skokie Fire Department

Skokie Human Relations Commission

Skokie Park District

Skokie Police Department

Skokie Public Library

Skokie School District 68

Skokie School District 69

Edison School

Lincoln Junior High

Skokie School District 73.5

McCracken School

Middleton School

Turning Point Behavioral Health Care Center

Village of Skokie

Read local press coverage from the 2018 Stand Against Racism.

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This year, the annual Stand Against Racism campaign will be virtual and take place the week of April 20, 2020. Please join YWCA, schools, faith-based groups, community and civic organizations throughout our communities to share the ways you - or your organization - stand against racism.

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If race is a "social invention," a "biological fiction" as Shirlee Haizlip believes, what is racism? When asked to explain the term, Lisa Delpit-a scholar, a teacher, and the author of an influential book about race and education entitled Other People's Children -expressed her ideas in the form of a letter to her nine-year-old daughter. It says in part:

My Dearest Maya,

You are amazing. Your golden brown skin, your deep black "ackee" eyes, your wiry, gold-flecked hair that seems persistently unwilling to stay contained in any manner of braid or twist I devise. I listen in amazement at your interpretations of the world and laugh at corny nine-year-old's jokes. I can't fathom how you've managed to turn those little baby digits I loved to kiss into the long, graceful fingers-adorned at the tips in blue and purple designer colors-that now dance so expertly across your violin strings. Yes, you are amazing.

As much as I think of you as my gift to the world, I am constantly made aware that there are those who see you otherwise.

Although you don't realize it yet, it is solely because of your color that the police officers in our predominantly white neighborhood stop you to "talk" when you walk our dog. You think they're being friendly, but when you tell me that one of their first questions is always, "Do you live around here?" I know that they question your right to be here, that somehow your being here threatens their sense of security.

I didn't tell you exactly what was going on when we took that trip to the Georgia mountains. You and your friend played outside the restaurant while his mom and I visited the ladies room. Later, the two of you told us that a white man and his wife-he with a minister's collar-stared at you "with mean looks" and made monkey sounds and gestures. You asked why they did that, and I told you that some people were just not nice. I made you promise to come to me immediately whenever an adult was giving you trouble.

I did not have to be told much when I was your age. When I was growing up in Louisiana in the 1950s and 1960s, the color lines were very clearly drawn. I followed my mother to the back entrance of the doctor's office, marked "colored." I knew which water fountain I was supposed to drink from. On the bus ride to my all-black school, I watched white children walk to schools just two or three blocks from my house.

In large part, my childhood years were wrapped in the warm cocoon of family and community who all knew each other and looked out for one another. However, I remember clearly my racing heart, my sweaty-palmed fear of the white policemen who entered my father's small restaurant one night and hit him with nightsticks, the helpless terror when there were rumors in our school yard that the Ku Klux Klan would be riding, the anxiety of knowing my college-aged foster sister had joined the civil-rights marchers in a face-off against the white policemen and their dogs. And, I remember, my Maya, the death of your grandfather when I was seven, who died of kidney failure because the "colored" ward wasn't yet allowed the use of the brand-new dialysis machine.

Your world is very different, at least on its surface. In many ways now is a more confusing time to live. In Seeing a Colorblind Future, Patricia Williams says we are saturated with insistent emblems of brotherhood-multicolored children singing "We Are the World;" television shows with the obligatory child of color; teachers' adamant statements that "we are all the same" and "color doesn't matter." Yet, attacks on rectifying past discrimination are made unabashedly under the flag of "color-blindness," white hate crimes are on the upswing, many communities and schools are more segregated than they were 20 years ago. I receive at least a call a week from frantic African-American parents living all over the country who are terrified at the hostility shown regularly by the schools to their brown children.

As any mother would, I have a great need to protect you, but it is hard to know how. My childhood experience was different from yours. As was the case in many African-American Louisiana families, our family was a rainbow of colors from chocolate-brown brunettes to peach-colored blondes. (The history of that reality is a story we'll need to talk about later.) I was the light-skinned, freckled, red-headed child, who always got the sunburn whenever we went to the beach. Because of my coloring, I had another role, too. When traveling by car, African Americans were not allowed to use the restrooms or other facilities white travelers took for granted. Black families had to develop all sorts of strategies to make a road trip workable. When it was time for a rest stop, one of our ruses was to pull around to the side of the service station and send in the one who looked most like white to get the key. Then, outside of the attendant's view, everyone would use the facility.

Decades later, when you were an infant, your aunt and I drove to Mississippi. I had not made that trip for many years, and although segregation was officially over, I still felt uneasy at the rest stops. Any African American would. There were Confederate flags printed on every possible souvenir in the gift shops, and restaurants and gas stations were filled with burly, white, cigarette-smoking men with gun racks mounted in their rear windows. Heart racing, cradling my beautiful brown baby, I suddenly realized I did not know how to protect you from the vicious hatred in some of the eyes that stared at us. Or, for that matter, from a society whose very structure privileges some and marginalizes you.

I have tried to protect you from the disease of internalized racism-of seeing yourself through the eyes of those who disdain you-that infects the souls of so many of our young people. When I was in my segregated, all-black elementary school, we were told by teachers and parents that we had to excel, that we had to "do better than" any white kids because the world was already on their side. When your cousin Joey was in high school, I remember berating him for getting a "D" in chemistry. His response was, "What do you expect of me, the white kids get "C's." Recently a colleague tried to help an African-American middle-schooler to learn multiplication. The student looked up at the teacher and said, "Why are you trying to teach me this? Black people don't multiply. Multiplication is for white people." You know, Maya, I think that may be the biggest challenge you and other brown children will face-not believing the limits that others place upon you.

It is not easy to know how to keep you believing in yourself, even believing in your abundant radiance and beauty. I know there was a time when you couldn't understand why I wouldn't allow you to wear a white character mask at Halloween, or why I told your grandmother to stop sending you white dolls.

It's hard for a mother to know just how far to go with principles, though. And I think you helped me develop a somewhat less strident attitude in your own brilliant, unpredictable way. I remember refusing to buy a white Barbie-even though the store didn't have the black one with equivalent turn-colors-in-the-sun hair. You were not happy with me, even though I explained at length the reasons regarding not bringing dolls into our family who looked like they would not possibly be a part of our family. "You don't see any of your white friends begging for a black Barbie doll, do you?" I asked, adding what I thought would be the final word. But several days later in another conversation, you asked, "Mom, do you have any white friends?" "Of course, I do, Maya, you know that," I answered. "Do you like your white friends, Mom?" "What a question, Maya, if they're my friends, then I like them." "Well, Mom," you delivered your knock-out punch, "my black Barbies want some white friends, too." Well, my dear, from that moment on your doll collection became interracial.

It is so hard to know how both to engender the possibility of color not mattering-where people will truly be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character-and to give you understanding that will create a protective armor for the real world of racial bias that exists around you. I don't want to limit you, to have you always on edge (as I sometimes feel) questioning the intentions of white playmates or teachers. Decisions based on color are so pervasive, and people of color so demonized in this country- though racist comments are often thinly camouflaged by such terms as "teen-aged mother," "the criminal element," "welfare cheaters," "drug dealers," "school drop-outs," "at-risk students"-that understanding societal realities does not come as easily as it did in my childhood.

Yes, Maya, I really do want to believe that a color-blind future is possible. I never express my doubts when one of the parents at your school calls at the last minute to invite you to a birthday party, adding that "Suzie [whom you hardly know and seldom play with, but who is the only other black girl in your class] is coming."

I am proud yet torn when I hear you come to some understanding on your own. Like when you were seven and playing with a little friend who had brought his cowboy and Indian figures, and you said, "OK, I'll be the Indians and you be the bad guys." Or when you went bike-riding with a friend and came back upset that "a white boy"-as opposed to just "a boy"-said he was going to hurt you. Or when you asked me why there weren't any black teachers in your school and added that you hoped that the school "didn't think black people weren't as smart as white people." When I told you that you needed to talk to the principal about that, you went right up to her the next day and asked your question. She, to her credit, took your question seriously and explained that they would like to find more black teachers, but that the salaries the school paid made it hard to attract them. Not one to let anyone off easy, you immediately came back with, "Well have you tried Morehouse?"

I am pleased that you have realized that brown skin is good. Yet I am saddened that you cannot be innocent to the unfortunate realities surrounding you. You have understood that the color line lives."A Letter to My Daughter on the Occasion of Considering Racism in the United States," by Lisa Delpit, 1999. Reproduced with permission of the author.

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If race is a "social invention," a "biological fiction" as Shirlee Haizlip believes, what is racism? When asked to explain the term, Lisa Delpit-a scholar, a teacher, and the author of an influential book about race and education entitled Other People's Children -expressed her ideas in the form of a letter to her nine-­year-old daughter.

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