Episode 19

Microaggressions: Language Matters with Colin Harrison

>> Steven Robinow: This is Teaching for Student Success. I'm Steven Robinow. In daily life, we seem surrounded by lots of negative talk and negative messaging. Open the newspaper, listen to talk radio, don't even start me on social media. But our classrooms, our classrooms should be a sanctuary, a safe place to have civil open discourse on both contentious and non contentious issues. That sounds like a slice of heaven right now. Even in these ideally safe places, we need to be aware of inappropriate aggressive language that can creep in, that can negatively impact the safety of this safe zone that can negatively impact the performance of our students. This aggressive language can be so subtle that they have been termed microaggressions. These microaggressions that we will talk about may come from anyone in our classrooms, students, the jokester in the back, or faculty. But these microaggressions, these words can influence the experiences, persistence, and performance of students in our courses, particularly our underrepresented, marginalized, and historically excluded students. So, if we are concerned about ensuring that all students feel that they belong in our classrooms, if we are concerned about the success of each and every student, then we need to think about this issue of small aggressions. And as we will discuss, we must confront them. I'm excited to welcome Dr. Colin Harrison to talk about his 2018 CBE Life Sciences publication Language Matters, or Language Matters: Considering Microaggressions in Science, co authored with Kimberly Tanner. Colin Harrison is a senior academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, known as Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome, Colin. Thank you for joining us on Teaching for Student Success.

>> Colin Harrison: Awesome. Thanks, Steve, for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk a little bit about some stuff that I spent a lot of time thinking about and ways in which we can approach that and make our situation better for all of our students.

>> Steven Robinow: Cool. We're excited to have you. I'm excited to have you here. So, let's, you sort of just started down this road. Let's talk about your motivation to write this paper. Let's start with that.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, so I wrote this paper when I was a post doc working with Kimberly Tanner at San Francisco State University in the [inaudible] Laboratory. We had some discussions and stuff about being in the classroom and what that looks like, and language and stuff in the classroom, and language in academia, and how that plays a role in, you know, student success, student learning, all of that type of thing. That's really where this came from. I had, you know, some experience in talking about and learning about microaggressions and the way in which, you know, they can impact stuff. And it just felt like a really good fit for something to talk about. And I think in that process of writing it, having conversations with Kimberly and things like that, getting that idea of where people were struggling with this and struggling and talking about this, because it's something that's well studied at this point in psychology in particular. Our colleagues in psychology have done a really good job of categorizing a lot of this stuff, talking about the consequences of it, and where it happens, why it happens, how to confront it, all that sort of thing. But it's not something that's really been studied at a level of I'm a biologist, right, and so thinking about how it manifests in biology, and some of the ways in which it can affect our students, is not something that's really been studied or focused on. Since I've wrote the paper, there's some really cool stuff that's started to come out, and there's some unpublished stuff out there that's really interesting at this point. But it's not something that's, you know, even though it is well studied in psychology, it hasn't really been talked about from a biology perspective. And so that was really the point of the paper, was to translate some of that stuff that's happened in psychology to a biology context, and lay it out in a way in which hopefully somebody who's not really familiar with microaggressions, you know, can come in and read this paper and feel much more strongly about, okay, I can be able to identify what some of these things are when they happen in my classroom. We go through and give a few examples and things like that that I think can be really useful for contextualizing some of those things for people that may not be familiar with it to really get in and start to dive into some of those things and start to think about ways in which they could potentially approach some of those things when they happen, and a situation they may be in.

>> Steven Robinow: Great. Thank you. This paper really lays out the framework that sets you up for doing research in this area and bringing it into the life sciences. But as you stated, it's well known in psychology, and undoubtedly pervades all classrooms likely to pervade all classrooms, so while you're going to focus specifically on what the biological science is, I want our listeners to realize that these issues are not limited to sciences, they're likely to be everywhere, and, again, they've been well studied, as you stated, in psychology. But let's start with a definition, maybe, and possibly some examples. What are microaggressions?

>> Colin Harrison: Derald Wing Sue is a psychologist who came up with this term. From him, it's defined as a brief sometimes subtle everyday exchange that either consciously or unconsciously denigrates an individual based on their group membership. And so really importantly too is I think a lot of times when people hear this, they think about the spoken word and things like that, but there's other ways in which those can be, can manifest too. So, it can be spoken. It can be written. It can even be an environmental. So, just going into an environment where there's the common one people talk about is if you might see it in your, in like a biology thing. You go in there and you see all of these pictures of these old scientists up on the wall, and they're all old white men. And so that can actually communicate something to somebody in that space that that's the type of people that are successful type here. And have some negative impacts on student well being or anybody else's well being who might be in there.

>> Steven Robinow: Great. So, that's an interesting example. The first one you really pull out is a visual example. And I've seen, for example, there's a project, find what it's called, it's about women in science, and it's a gallery of photos of women in science. And you can get these, I've seen them displayed at Sonoma State, for example, where they have a wall full of posters of not white men in science, it's, in fact, all women in science, and women of diverse colors themselves. So, very interesting. Do you want to give us some examples of verbal microaggressions?

>> Colin Harrison: Yes. I'll kind of dive a little bit deeper into some of the definitional thing, and then maybe give a couple of examples that highlight those areas. So, the microaggressions, as an overarching term, is even broken down further into three different types. Each have kind of a different connotation to them in the way in which they might impact people might look a little bit different. So, microassault, which Dr. Sue defines as a conscious deliberate, or either subtle or explicit bias attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors that are communicated to marginalized groups, their environment accused verbalizations or behaviors. So, this is more like what we would consider like the more obvious type of ones that happen that are really just putting down another group type of thing. So, it's closer to, you know, just the kind of normal racism, sexism type of thing that you might see out there. Microinsults, on the other hand, are interpersonal or environmental communications that convey stereotype rudeness or insensitivity that demean a person's identity. And then microinvalidations are communications or environmental cues that exclude, negate, or nullify the thoughts and feelings or experiential realities of certain groups. So, a couple of examples to highlight what those things are, and highlight some of the things that might be, you know, microassaults, or microinsults, or microinvalidations, so just one example of a microassault is something that I talk about when I do, I do some presentations on this, and so one of the ones that I highlight for that. And, again, I'm going to forewarn this. There's going to be some language in the way I discuss some of these things isn't going to be great. So, I just want people to be aware of that, that that might be coming here in a second. And it might, you know, trigger something in you if it's something that you've experienced before. So, for a microassault, an example of this is, so there's this scenario where a co instructor is hearing another instructor talk to his student, asking about medical school. And so the instructor responds to the student that I'm not sure you're going to be able to cut it in medical school here. Have you thought about going back to your own country for med school instead? Obviously that's problematic. And I think we can all recognize that, one, there's a lot of assumptions being made about this instructor and responding to this student. And then there's this idea that this student isn't somehow good enough for this area. And it's tied into their culture. There's this cultural component to it that they're not able to make up for whatever this deficit that this instructor thinks that exists there.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. So, that microassault displays some prejudice or discrimination, which is characteristic of a microassault. It's prejudice or discrimination against it, an individual or a group.

>> Colin Harrison: Exactly. And so that, that discrimination obviously here is against, you know, whatever that country of origin.

>> Steven Robinow: Right.

>> Colin Harrison: For, for this student. And that student may not even be from that country. That's an assumption, right, that this instructor is making. They're showing prejudice. But it's assumed prejudice too, right?

>> Steven Robinow: Of course.

>> Colin Harrison: That, you know, may not actually be accurate in reality. A lot of times, that's the way prejudice works.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, so that's, that's an example there. Another example. So, microinsult, so in this scenario, there's instructor is, you know, looking over these lap groups as the students are working together. And then they overhear a student discussing group roles. And they hear a student say the following. Well, Nick, you must be good at math, so why don't you handle the stat stuff? So, the students didn't know anything really about themselves before. Nick is the only Asian American student in the group. So, there is some assumptions being made there. It's not necessarily prejudice. It kind of skirts that line, right, between prejudice and assumptions about a group. But, right, it's looking at this idea, right, so microinsult, right, interpersonal or environmental communication that conveys rudeness, stereotypes, or insensitivity. So, it's not necessarily saying that there's something negative about this. But it is a stereotype, and it's an assumption that this person is making that puts Nick in a really terrible position. He's trying to be a good group member, I'm sure, at this point, and work along with the group, but there's this person making this assumption about them. And they may be good at math. They may not be good at math. But it puts them in a really tough position to be able to rationalization how they respond to that, and how they deal with that moving forward.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. That raises stereotypes. And is, in fact, very personal.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah.

>> Steven Robinow: It seems like these microinsults are demeaning or insulting or aggressive towards a person.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, I think that's a good thing to clarify, because I think that's a really important point, that all of these, when you're talking about microaggressions, really they are about targeting someone's identity. And the way that they identify themselves. And how these statements influence and interlace in with that identity in the way they influence that.

>> Steven Robinow: But both examples you've given was a conversation between people and a single person, whether it was a faculty to the student, or a group to the student. But it could be, and I think maybe this distinguishes an insult from this also, it could be to a class. A student or a faculty member could make a comment to the class that generalizes, that makes it general negative comment or general negative connotation against a group, that is an aggression against the entire group, even though the class may or may not contain anyone in that group. Nonetheless, it's still an aggressive act that isn't personal, that isn't directed towards a single person.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And the thing that I'll say too is like even if it is directed towards a specific person, right, there's other people that overhear, and maybe are affected by that too, in that scenario. And so there's one in which that I talk about in the actual paper a scenario where it is somebody mentioning something to the whole class. I think it's the one, it's about religion, and this instructor saying to the whole class, like you can't be a scientist if you believe in religion, which is, you know, that's getting at a lot of people's identity, you know, I'm sure a lot of people in that class may identify as being religious, so that's a very problematic thing to say. Yeah, it can be, to a class, it can be to an individual. And, again, like a comment to an individual could affect more people than just that individual as well.

>> Steven Robinow: Absolutely. With social media, or just talking, it spreads, right? Oh, this so and so said this, and it spreads, and it destroys the culture, and the trust. Okay, last one, microinvalidations.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, and so the last one, microinvalidations, this is the one that's probably, at least in my impression, and kind of my own experiences, and some of what I talk about is a little bit from my own experiences and things that I've seen, is probably the one that's maybe the hardest to identify, especially for people that perpetrate them, that say them, they may think it's coming from a place of, oh, this isn't a problem type of thing, and you'll see in a second once I give this example of what that looks like. But oftentimes that's the one that I think is the easiest for people to kind of slide by at times. So, the example that I like to give is, so at a faculty meeting, there's the topic gets brought up that black students aren't feeling comfortable in the biology classrooms. That gets brought up. But then the chair of the department says, oh, that really isn't an issue in our department. Students, they have plenty of opportunities and advantages and resources on campus. That's really just not an issue in our department. It's not something we have to worry about. Since it's a chair, it seems to shut down any discussion about this issue. And so that's a microinvalidation, because it's that idea of excluding or negating the thoughts or feelings or experiential realities of certain groups. And so it's saying that, oh, whatever you're experiencing isn't a problem. That's not something that we have to worry about. That's not something you should be concerned about, because that's not really an issue.

>> Steven Robinow: And in that example, you go on to talk about the scenario where, oh, maybe there's a black faculty member in that room as part of the member of the faculty. And the impacts that that has on that. Or any faculty of color at that moment.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, because it signals a bunch of things, right? Not only they don't believe the students' issues, but if there are issues that may come up in another area related to, you know, the faculty issues, they're not going to have support from the chair. And that's pretty obvious from that communication. And that could be true in the classroom too, right, like if an instructor says something and doesn't believe a student's issues that they're experiencing or whatever, then that student, or, and probably other students are less likely to confide in that instructor, or feel like that they're going to be supported in that environment. Right?

>> Steven Robinow: That particular example seems a little less micro. As the power of the person goes up the ladder, so to speak, when they make a comment, somehow it's a little less, it's a little more major and a little less micro.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, there's a lot of people out there who talk about why do we term it microaggressions and things like that, and what that does to, you know, people, and how we discuss that, there's some really good topics. The consequences of them may not be micro, even though the action is this micro thing. And then there's like the whole power dynamics, like you said, that comes into play, like how that affects the response to it, and who is able to respond to it, and how they're able to respond to it, that can cause some friction, and ways in which to approach some of those things.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay, so we'll get to that discussion about what we can do to address these issues. So, we'll definitely get there. But I think maybe the next place to go now that you've done a great job of outlining what they are and some examples of them, why should we be concerned about them? How might they impact inclusivity, inclusion, and diversity in the classroom, or in the academy? Because these are issues that, as we've just talked about, aren't just issues about microaggressions against students, whether it's student to student, it could be faculty to student administrator, staff, it's also issues that can impact staff and faculty, right, microaggressions aren't just issues of student concern, it's also staff and faculty concern as well. So, but why should we be concerned?

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'll talk about kind of the like kind of big picture thing, and then talk a little bit more about some of the more individualized things that can happen. So, we know that people leave biology and science and STEM fields more than other majors. We know that for a fact. And we know that it is even more pronounced for peer groups, the underrepresented groups in those communities, that leaving is higher for those groups.

>> Steven Robinow: I just want to clarify the use of the term peer there, because not everyone may be familiar with that acronym.

>> Colin Harrison: Yes, correct. Sorry. I said it, and I was like, in the back of my mind, I was like, I probably should define that. So, peer, when we say, say peer, persons excluded because of ethnicity or race. You'll see that coming up more and more often people are trying to use that rather than, you know, talking about underrepresenting, just to be, it's more inclusive.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. But even that term, I mean, it's hard to find a term that is really all encompassing, because that doesn't include, for example, let's take white first gen students, right, who might feel like imposters in the academy. They're included. But they wouldn't be included in that term peers. But that's fine.

>> Colin Harrison: For sure. And it's one of those things too, and I talk about this in the paper as well, is that microaggressions, they definitely affect those from underrepresented groups at a higher rate. But there's things that happen that affect white students as well that, you know, maybe first generation college student, like you mentioned, or lower socioeconomic things, or religious. So, I want to just throw that in as a side. But, anyways, so we know that these students are not staying in the field. And we can see that if you go up every level from who earns bachelor's degrees in biology, and, you know, other STEM courses, to who earns masters, who earns Ph.D.s, who goes on to be faculty members at the academic level, is that it decreases at every single level that you go up. And so there's obviously things that are occurring that make people feel uncomfortable. People have done really good studies looking at the comfort in science. And it's been well studied and well shown that people from those peer groups, or, you know, first generation college students, all of those type of things, feel less welcome in science than they should. And so we have to identify those areas in which are causing some of that friction. And microaggressions, it has been well documented that they happen, they occur. Can be one of those areas in which that particularly manifests itself in making people feel excluded and not included. Because I think a lot of scientists in particular like to think of themselves as objective and not having some perspective or biases on things, and that the way that we talk about science, right, is this objective egalitarian type of thing where everybody is included, and it's just about your abilities, and the work that you put in, when that's not really the case. Right? Like, and it's, I think that a lot of that language that we use around science is coded Western white, and it comes across in the way. And even though that seems, may seem, because that's how, you know, you came up in science, and you experienced it, that it seems like it's this really fair way of talking about stuff, it doesn't actually end up being that way, because it's grounded in that cultural component to it. And so we have to be aware of those things. And so when we look specifically at why microaggressions can be really difficult and harmful, there are some really good studies that look at the ways in which they can influence negative emotion, and negative emotional responses. So, there's this idea that when you hear a microaggression, if you are in that group that is targeted by that particular microaggression, there's things that happen in your head. And there's things that happen physiologically to you because of those things that happen. When you hear it, you have to determine whether or not that was a microaggression or there's something, you know, you know sometimes when you hear something, you're like that didn't sound right for some reason. Like why is that bothering me? And so there's that process that goes on. You have to figure out what was said, why it's affecting you. And then there's that part, do I respond to it? Do I bring up that that was something that was uncomfortable to say? That's a whole process. That's stressful to think about. Especially, you know, talking about those power dynamics that we discussed earlier. If it's somebody that's at a position above you, like do you respond to that? Can you respond to that? How should you respond to that? You may have some coping mechanisms to deal with that and to move past that so you can continue functioning. But all of that stuff is happening in your head at the time. And if you're in class, or like in somewhere where you're trying to learn, and all of these cognitive powers, and so that's, it's just one of the things in psychology they've shown really well is that this takes cognitive energy, to be able to do this, and go through this process. Maybe it's 10 minutes later, and you're like, you've just missed some really important stuff in class, and you're thinking about that, instead of thinking about biology in the science that you're talking about and discussing. So, it can have really impacts in the way in which we learn in the classroom. And then on top of that, as these things build up, if it happens over time and more and more, it can really start to have some negative psychological effects. So, it can lead to depression and added stress and anxiety and worry about being in certain situations and being in certain environments. It can have really bad negative health consequences. So, in the paper, I talk about it as an analogy to like being poked. Being poked isn't, it's really not that bad. If somebody pokes you once, okay, fine, maybe don't like people touching you, so, it's, you know, it's not great to happen. But really it doesn't seem like a big deal. And it might not seem like a big deal to the person doing it. But when you're going about your daily life and you're getting poked five, six times a day on regular, you're not sure when it's going to happen, but you know that at some point it's going to happen, so you're always kind of thinking about it, like is this going to happen, is this going to occur. If the spot you're being poked in is really tender, if it's something that you have some past trauma over, it can really cause some like serious physical pain and harm. And it's the same thing, same thing that's happening in your brain. Our brain is an organ that can be harmed in the same way as, you know, other parts of our body. And so hearing those things over and over again can have that same impact. You maybe have some coping mechanisms that are able to deal with it and move past it. I know I have coping mechanisms to deal with some of these things to get past it. That can help mitigate some of those effects. But it can be hard. It can be hard to cope with some of those things that you deal with, you know, maybe on a daily basis or weekly basis or whatever it may look like that happens over and over again.

>> Steven Robinow: As you were talking about the poking, and I hadn't thought about this as I read the paper, but the poking turns into a button. And suddenly you poke and you push a button, and you get this same reaction over and over again, right, internally, right?

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah. And too, like a lot of times, you hear with that is like people like, oh, they just flew off the handle there. They just flew off the handle. Like they flew off the handle there in that response. And it may be because they got poked in that same spot 30 times before that today. And this is just the last straw.

>> Steven Robinow: Right.

>> Colin Harrison: They just don't want to deal with it anymore, when it's totally reasonable to respond in that manner.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah. So, you alluded to it. So, let's go down this. Let's talk about some of the data about the range of impacts that microaggressions can have, psychological impacts, and how they can impede learning, engagement, and belonging in the classroom. And I think you're going to talk about maybe one or two papers, Torres and Driscoll, 2010. And Awang et al paper of 2011. We'll put those references on the website.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, so the Torres, Driscoll paper, maybe I'll start with that one, so the title of the paper is Racial Microaggressions and Psychological Functioning Among the Highly Achieving African Americans and Mixed Method Approach. So, this was looking at mental health amongst African American doctoral students and graduates of doctoral programs. They were looking at some qualitative findings regarding when they're exposed to microaggressions, if they're exposed to microaggressions. Basically, they modeled looking at psychological stressors, and ways in which these African American graduate students were influenced by these things. And then how they were actually able to cope with these things. So, I mentioned coping a little bit before. And so really what they ended up finding is that there was these negative feelings of depression that could be associated with experiencing these different types of microaggressions. Those feelings could be mitigated to a degree by coping mechanisms. What you look at is that you experience, you know, these racial microaggressions. It's a stimulus from the environment. You perceive that that happens. You perceive that either that's racism or some other kind of stressor. And then there's a coping response that happens in your brain, that either enables you to move past that, or if that coping mechanism fails, you're exposed to that psychological stress responses that will lead to these negative health outcomes. And then she showed that those things, you know, had some correlation together, that those experiencing microaggressions and those negative kind of depressive outcomes.

>> Steven Robinow: Do they, and do they tie some of these two student persistence in courses? Do they tie them directly to student success issues?

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah. Part of what they're looking at is estimation of the student abilities. Are they highly underestimating their own abilities or lower or more lowly, lower, underestimating their personal abilities, and how that influences coping? So, they're really looking at their own self reported kind of ideas of what that looks like. What they see is that those coping mechanisms interact slightly differently depending on how they underestimate themselves. So, like what they perceive as their own abilities, you know, in science. And so they were looking specifically at graduate students. And part of, part of the graduate students they were looking at was recent graduates as well. So, these are people that had completed that graduate program. So, they've had, you know, some level of success in the program, and were able to go through and move through and, you know, actually go and graduate. But there are still these psychological things that happen.

>> Steven Robinow: All right, good. All right, so that's the Torres and Driscoll paper. What about the Wang? What does Wang bring to the table?

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, so in that paper, and it's titled When the Seemingly Innocuous Stings: Racial, Microaggressions, and the Emotional Consequences. So, in this study, they're looking at Asian American students. And looking at how they reported their negative emotional intensity when they encountered a situation that was around race. And they found that there is these increased negative emotions, even when accounting for ability, and then other social identity explanations. And so it was just around the racial component of this. What they actually modeled in looking at associations between emotional intensity and what they titled race relevance appraise, so that's just like basically being, experiencing these racial things that happen to them. And then they found externalizing and internalizing emotions that correlated when controlling for all of these factors. And so they found that being exposed in these racial situations, they found externalizing factors like anger, frustration, scorn, and attempt, all associated with being exposed to those, those events. And then internalized ones as well. So, anxiety, sadness, and shame. All of these things associated with being exposed to these race relevant appraisals. This kind of goes a little bit beyond that, but a lot of those negative emotions, if you look at them in and of themselves, once they kind of build up and increase on themselves can lead to depressive events, feelings of not belonging, and all of those types of things, that can cause, you know, those really bad, long term health issues, as well as those feelings of potentially not feeling like you belong, and so maybe, maybe leaving those areas.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. So, while there may be impacts on health, and we shouldn't, I'm not dismissing those, but I want to focus a little on the classroom. So, certainly issues that might cause students to feel that they don't belong, feel that they aren't welcome, that they're not included, and might then either result in a poor performance, because they start to dissociate from the course itself emotionally, or leave altogether, which we see very commonly. Interesting, okay. So, these microaggressions are impacting students' psyche. That's taken up space. Of which then, of course, always negatively impacts performance. What are the strategies for addressing these microaggressions? Both sort of more generally, like when they happen in the classroom, how can they be addressed by students or faculty? What can we do to help address these issues? And then we'll talk about personal coping issues separately.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah. So, the research that's been done on this, and there's some good papers [inaudible] 2012, and another [inaudible] paper in 2009, they were looking at microaggressions in the classroom, and how to respond to those actually. And so they interviewed students that have experienced these, and like what their thoughts were on the way in which they would want them addressed, in the way they could help address them. The big take away, I think, from all of this stuff, is addressing them is important. No matter the area or context, addressing them is important. And addressing that they happened is important. Whether that happens within the moment or later on, obviously within the moment it would be ideal. But that's not always the case. We don't always know necessarily how to respond to that right away. And we may not even be aware that it happened right away up in front of the class and talking to the group of students, and it happens with another group of students in the back of the class, and you may not be aware that it happened at the time. But to address it is the most important thing. And this makes sense with the psychological thing that's happening when you experience microaggressions, that first big step there is deciding whether or not something happened, whether or not a microaggression happened, if you should respond to that. By having someone who addresses it, it takes away that first part completely. So, you remove that cognitive burden from the students, or, you know, whoever is in that situation that you're dealing with, you remove that cognitive burden by saying that it happened. I mean, that can help in future situations as well, that maybe you don't directly address, is that your students know that you would respond to it, and that you would address it, can help them to not necessarily have to like, oh, do I respond to this or address it, they can just move past that and say, oh, if I brought this up to my instructor, they would address it, but maybe my coping mechanisms or whatever like I don't need to do that right now type of thing. But removes that initial burden.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. So, imagine something is said in a classroom out loud by someone, and someone is impacted by that, they start thinking about it, processing it. But if the instructor, or if a student says, hey, wait a second, something just happened here, and I think we need to acknowledge it, then the impacted student can say, phew, okay, at least we're talking about it, or we're going to talk about it, right, because the fact that he might say, you're right, this happened, this can't happen, you know what, let me finish this up, we're going to come back and talk about this issue, or I'm going to send out there's going to be some communication about this.

>> Colin Harrison: Yep, exactly, exactly. Because it removes, and this is something that came up in like some of the student interviews, it removes that burden off the students. They no longer have to be thinking about it or stressed about how they should approach it or deal with it. They know that someone has their back, that someone is going to support them when they deal with difficult issues or difficult topics that may come up. They have that support available for them is really important.

>> Steven Robinow: So, let me take a different position on this. I might have a listener, I might be a listener out there right now thinking you're just talking about political correctness. Why do I have to be politically correct? Why can't I say what I think? How are microaggressions different from political correctness?

>> Colin Harrison: Well, this is an interesting topic, because I have, I have such strong feelings about the whole political correctness thing. I would say that, I mean, we should all be conscious of like what we're saying to people and how it affects other people, regardless if we agree with it or not. There are things that I've stopped saying in the past because someone, I didn't think there was anything wrong with it, but like somebody had issues with it. It's important to be, it's the least you could do to moderate the language that you use to make someone else feel better. Like if I have to stop saying one thing, it's not going to ruin my day. A lot of people a lot of times conflate this with not being able to talk about difficult issues in the classroom or talk about things that are, that are tough. Like that's not what this is about. That's not what this is saying at all. You can still have those difficult conversations and difficult talks. And the other thing too is we're going to mess up. Like we're going to, we're going to say things that aren't appropriate. Or I know I have. We all do it. It's part of human nature that we're going to not be perfect all the time and that we're going to say these things that may not be great for our students. Having that self awareness that these things come up and that they can have these negative effects, that we can address it, that, oh, hey, I know I said this last time, I didn't say that in the way that I really wanted to, let me just clarify a little bit of what I meant about that. That's not really a burdensome thing. You still are able to say what you want to say. You're just being more aware that these things happen, and that they can have negative impacts, because that goes a long way too. Our students know we're not perfect. They know we're flawed human beings that sometimes say things incorrectly or say things wrong. And I think having that ownership that we do that goes a long way for them, because we're not going to be perfect. I can't think of a specific example, but like I remember the beginning of this semester, I said something, I was like, oh, why did I say it in that way? That was just, didn't need to be said in that way. And so like I just said something a little bit later in class without clarifying what I meant. I think that goes a long way. It's not about policing every single thing that we say and comes out of our mouth. It's just being aware that what we can, what we say has an impact, and that we should strive to address that. If you're an instructor in a class, you work on your slides. You work on the content that you're going to talk about. Why shouldn't we practice the language that you use in the classroom as well? That's a really important part of it. That's how I would respond.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay, thanks. I got [inaudible]. That was good.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah. It's one of those things that I hear, and I just, I think people like to use that as a crutch for not wanting to go in and really analyze the way in which they interact with people. Being a little conscious of ways in which we can improve and get better. Like we should all be striving to improve and get better all the time. And this is one area in which I think everyone could stand to, me included, could stand to improve, improve on. So

>> Steven Robinow: Right. I agree. And it's, it's being respectful of others so that you can have those conversations, difficult conversations, right?

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah.

>> Steven Robinow: Right? Because you need, in order to have those, whatever difficult conversation you want to have, you need to have a little bit of trust, and some respect to start with. If you immediately go to opposite polls and start name calling, which essentially is sort of an extreme version of microaggressions, if you just go to aggressive stances, there's going to be no conversation. Right? And you're not going to make any progress.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah. Or that conversation isn't as open and effusive in dealing with all of the different angles and variables on that, because the students that may have a different perspective than the dominant voices in the classroom are going to bring a really valuable perspective that your students are missing out on because that environment isn't welcoming enough for them to voice their opinions or talk about those subjects. So, you're doing the rest of your students a disservice as well by not building an environment that's open for those marginalized students.

>> Steven Robinow: Right. And a microaggression against Group X. Group Z, even though it may not affect them, they know that they're not safe.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah.

>> Steven Robinow: Right? They know that they're next. So, so, any microaggression against any student is really a microaggression in the end against all of your students.

>> Colin Harrison: Yep, absolutely.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah, yeah, interesting. So, I think that lays a pretty good foundation for microaggressions and understanding them and their importance. All right, so let's get a little more personal. I don't know if you want to share some of your experiences, if you want to.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, so the one that I always bring up, because it's the one that happens to me all the time, all the time, it's happened so much that I just roll my eyes at it at this point, so I'm black, I hear a lot, you know, after I've had a speaking engagement, oh, you speak so well. Well, yeah, I, yeah, I know. Like you're not really telling me anything. It's said in a way, and especially when I was younger, more so than it is now, it hasn't really happened in a while. But it happened a lot when I was younger. Is that tone of surprise too. Like, oh, you speak so well. There's some surprise that happens there. So, that's a microinvalidation that happens. Or sorry, microinsult, I should say, that happens to me.

>> Steven Robinow: That's interesting.

>> Colin Harrison: The other one, the other big one too is, I mean, it influences too the way that you, I dress in a very specific way when I go on campus, because if I don't, I'm decently young looking, so I'll either get confused for a student, or facility staff. So, I dress in a very specific way to avoid that specific microaggression from happening. It has happened more often than I would like it to.

>> Steven Robinow: Interesting.

>> Colin Harrison: It's like a pre coping mechanism, I guess you could say. I went on campus, because I just had to run on really quick, I was wearing shorts, got mistaken for a student immediately when I stepped on campus. And I was like, oh, okay, I really don't look that, I really don't look that young. So

>> Steven Robinow: Well, but students are a beside range of ages now.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, that is true.

>> Steven Robinow: And you do look young. Sorry. So, the only language thing that I thought about when we met today, you said something earlier that led me to assume that you might have grown up in Louisville, Kentucky.

>> Colin Harrison: I did, yes.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay, so you did. So, I know some people from Louisville have an accent.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah.

>> Steven Robinow: I don't hear that accent from you. So, I noticed that. It's like, huh, you don't sound like you're from Louisville.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, my mom's from Wisconsin, and my dad's from, grew up in Connecticut. And Louisville, if you go to Louisville, there's, there are people that have like the southern, the Kentucky kind of southern accent, which is very regional, if living in the South enough, you know there's very regional specific accents for the South, and so that Kentucky accent I know people who have had that accent. But more people that I know just don't really have a strong accent anywhere. Louisville is an interesting city. There's a lot of transplants from different places, which is part of it. So

>> Steven Robinow: I have a friend who will listen to this podcast, and she would like this part on Louisville. And when she wants to, she sounds like she's from the South or somewhere. I mean, I can't identify the area. Right? But she'll have an accent, a Louisville accent of some sort.

>> Colin Harrison: I mean, I could do, I could do the Kentucky accent if necessary. But it's not my normal speaking cadence. But I grew up around enough people that have it that I can do it.

>> Steven Robinow: That was funny. I hope that's not an aggression.

>> Colin Harrison: No, no, not at all. Again, I want to point this out, because this is actually, this is actually important. It didn't affect my identity at all. It doesn't have anything to do with my own personal identity. And so the other thing about thinking about microaggressions, it can affect different people differently.

>> Steven Robinow: Sure.

>> Colin Harrison: There are things that may not seem like a microaggression to somebody that may seem like a microaggression to somebody else too. So, it's like, and for that, specifically for me, I don't. Yeah, I don't have an accent, so

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah. So, you've told me your favorite stories. The two that you tell when people talk about microaggressions.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah.

>> Steven Robinow: Do you want to share a story that you don't share?

>> Colin Harrison: There's not really because I'm pretty open with stuff, just in general. Like you experience racism pretty regularly in this country. Like it just, just kind of happens. And it's one of those things that I think those coping things that's just, that a lot of this stuff doesn't really stick with me that much anymore, just because it's something that I've learned how to cope with, and so it's, instead of like it being formed in my memory, it just kind of like slides off. Both the amount of times you hear the N word around people that shouldn't be saying it is a lot in school. People don't really realize that. I went to the University of Wisconsin for my undergrad, and would shock people to hear how often that happens. And I'm sure that happens to our undergraduate students at whatever university you're at, that people who shouldn't be saying certain words say it, and have to experience those. So, not really microaggressions, though. That's really just kind of aggression.

>> Steven Robinow: Okay.

>> Colin Harrison: Just racial aggression.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah.

>> Colin Harrison: Slurs cross the line past microaggressions oftentimes.

>> Steven Robinow: Sure. We're pretty long on time here. I want to, I guess my final question is, just to think about, you, I mean you did your undergraduate in genetics, and you went and got a Ph.D. in molecular cell biology. You were at Wisconsin. Maybe you know Barry Ganetzky. I don't know. He was

>> Colin Harrison: I do actually know Barry Ganetzky. Not like, well, I mean, he was like one of my instructors, so

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, he was, he was a colleague long ago. But I want to ask, somewhere along the way, you made a choice, a decision to really not go down the research track, and to take a very different path in your professional career. And I'd like to know if there's a, sort of thinking back in your life, is there something transformational? What really happened that made you make that choice that you valued this, this choice to go into education research really, teaching and education research versus really down a research path?

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, so there's a moment that I made the decision to switch. And I know what that moment is. But then I look back at my path before even that moment and realize I kind of moved in this way. When I was in undergrad, I taught, I did some teaching in undergrad. There's this research program that I was involved in that juniors and seniors led these teaching sessions about research with freshmen and sophomore students. And that's something that I did to pedagogy classes when I was in undergrad. I don't know that I really thought about that at the time, that that was like something that was going to be important to me. Obviously it was, because, you know, subconsciously, because there's things that I was involved in, I was working on. But then in grad school, I was doing bench research, and getting really frustrated with doing a lot of work for not a lot of reward. People that do science, right, know that 90% of the things you do is failure. You're going to fail in what you're working on. I was partially okay with that, but I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. I knew I still wanted to be involved in research. I do love it. I love research. I love collecting and analyzing data. One of the good things I think about DBER research is that

>> Steven Robinow: Just a quick reminder that DBER stands for discipline based education research.

>> Colin Harrison: One of the good things I think about DBER research is that day to day failure isn't quite there in the same way. You may not end up, you know, you may get to the end of your study and find no significant relationship between things. But if you're designing your study and doing things well, you're going to benefit your students somehow. It maybe doesn't feel like as wasted effort as some of this stuff in bench science did. But when I was in grad school, I took some classes with Pat Marcellar [phonetic], who's pretty famous in the DBER field, who works at Emory. She honestly became kind of like a second mentor to me, introducing me to biology education research. There's a biology education journal club that runs at Emory that I was involved in. I got the chance to develop a course along with the other grad student in my lab, Tara Robertson, and we were able to develop and teach a course in developmental biology when we were there. And I just, I love that, I love the interaction with the students, I love getting to see students grow and prosper in courses over, you know, your time working with them. Being in the classroom and being around students is like the most rewarding thing for me. It's so fulfilling for me as a job that I just love it. I absolutely love it. It gives me, it gives me energy and hope. When I get disillusioned by stuff and like get to work with all of these really bright, intelligent, amazing students who are, who are coming through our programs, it's inspiring. And it makes me hopeful for, you know, when I get disillusioned and disenchanted, when I, as I get older here, those, they really do, like I'm just, like I'm writing med school app letters this week. It's been so fun talking about all of my students' achievement, and how amazing they are. And so it's, the students is it for me, and getting to be a small part in their growth and hopefully helping them to, you know, achieve all their goals, that's what does it for me.

>> Steven Robinow: That's great. So, it was that moment in grad school, at some point when you were teaching that course, that it's like, oh, this is what I want to do.

>> Colin Harrison: Yep. I think too talking to people, I think everyone goes through that moment of crisis in grad school. What am I doing? What am I going to do for the future? And I had that crisis moment. And then it just happened that I was involved in that teaching at that time, and like realized like, oh, now this is what I want to do, this is worth it to get to this point, that I can do this for a living.

>> Steven Robinow: That's cool. Very cool. Another personal question, I guess. Are your parents teachers?

>> Colin Harrison: So, my mom, she's a psychologist with the school system, so she works with the Jefferson County School System, or was, she's retired now, so she worked with students, you know, with intellectual disabilities and stuff, and helping them to make sure, you know, they could, they could succeed in school as well. My dad has done a bunch of different things. But now he, his most recent job, he's big into bourbon, so he, he works for Evan Williams, and he does bourbon tours and stuff like that. So, that is, that is education too, right?

>> Steven Robinow: That's education.

>> Colin Harrison: Different kind of education, but it is education as well. And I guess my grandparents did some teaching as well. There's a strong, strong thread of it through my family, I would say, to some degree. I didn't quite realize growing up until like I ended up in it myself, that I ended up teaching as well. And then my wife now does, she does special education stuff for deaf and hard of hearing students, so it's just, it's part of, it's my life, education is my life.

>> Steven Robinow: So, that family thread. At some point you sort of realized, oh, wait a second.

>> Colin Harrison: I remember having that conversation with my mom about it. And she was like, oh, yeah, you know your grandparents were teachers at a certain point. I was like there's actually she's like there's actually a lot of teachers in our family. And I was like, and then I kind of analyzed it and thought about it. I have cousins and stuff who are teachers as well too. We have a pretty big family. So

>> Steven Robinow: That's nice. That's very cool. That's very cool. That's really neat. Colin, I want to thank you so much for the time you took to spend with us today to talk about microaggressions, their impact on student performance, and how we might address microaggressions when they occur. To make sure that our classrooms remain safe places for all, and also to ensure that our students know that they belong, we believe they belong, and know that we support their efforts to succeed in the academy, so I just want to say thank you so much for your time. It's been great. It's been a great conversation.

>> Colin Harrison: Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for having me.

>> Steven Robinow: Yeah, it's been oh, and I, I want to thank your wife for supporting you here, because as the, as no one knows yet, or a few know, you're a recent new parent, first time parent. And your wife is on duty taking care of your

>> Colin Harrison: Three week, 3 week old daughter. We're very excited. Everybody's happy and healthy. So, and we're good, yeah. And I get done with this, and then go write some exam questions while my daughter sleeps next to me.

>> Steven Robinow: For more information about Dr. Harrison, his research in favorite books and papers, please go to our website, teachingforstudentsuccess.org. Thank you for spending time with us today. Please share our podcast and website with your friends, colleagues, and administrators. We love hearing from our listeners. Please contact us through the website. If an episode has impacted your teaching, please send us a note and let us know what impacted you, what you have done in your classroom, and how it has impacted your students. Teaching for Student Success is a production of Teaching for Student Success Media. Let's end this podcast, as we always do, with some music of JuliusH. Some of Julius's music can be found on Pixabay.

[ Music ]