I have known Saundra Carr since the mid-2000s, from my work with the Southern Regional Education Board’s Academic Common Market (SREB’s ACM), which, for more than 35 years, has enabled students in the region’s states to pursue out-of-state college degrees at in-state tuition rates. I retired, but Saundra still serves as South Carolina’s ACM coordinator.
During the years we worked together, Saundra began an online doctoral degree program at Walden University. We agreed at the time that when she completed the degree work, we would do this interview. Well, in December she was awarded a PhD in Management (Specialization Leadership and Organizational Change). Time to do that interview!
The title of her dissertation is “Racial Microaggressions, Faculty Motivation, and Job Satisfaction in Southeastern Universities.” Microaggressions, as Saundra understands the term, are
subtle indignities and insults that minority-group members may experience in their daily lives. Because of the subtlety of microaggressions, victims are often uncertain about how to respond because they have difficulty determining the intentionality of the offense.This video she sent me put microaggressions in concrete terms for me:
Saundra, tell us where you were coming from, to be interested in doing this particular research for your doctorate.
I am a Southern girl, born and raised in South Carolina, and realized that racism was (and is) alive and well in most Southern states. Through knowledge, people can change; knowledge can bring about a shift in power. All of our actions impact organizations, for good or ill, and say whether or not we are socially responsible citizens. Higher education contributes much to society through the advancement of knowledge, and contributes to the talent pool from which corporations, governments, and social sectors can draw socially conscious men and women to do the work of transforming our world. As I continued my studies, I discovered that I am a change agent.
I gather from your dissertation that your research was shaped by your observation that many African American faculty members face barriers that impede their ability to engage fully in their educational setting. Can you tell us some specific instances of the sorts of barriers you observed?
The term racial microaggressions describes subtle, everyday expressions of racism. Racial microaggressions are brief verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults. Challenging microaggressions may impede the progress of potential or current AA faculty and other faculty of color. I recall having one AA instructor throughout my entire program of study. Little literature described issues that are unique to faculty women of color; few researchers measured AA faculty members’ perceptions of racial microaggressions in university settings. But interest in understanding racial microaggressions and the patterns of their use has increased.
Your dissertation states that a purpose of your study was to understand the relationship between racial microaggressions African American faculty perceive and their job motivation and satisfaction. How did you settle on job motivation and satisfaction as things to focus on?
One of the biggest obstacles encountered by faculty of color in higher education in the United States is racism. Racism aligns with adverse outcomes, including poor job satisfaction and less motivation, which may result in racial-minority faculty leaving the teaching profession altogether. The SREB itself reported in 2012 that only 12% of faculty in public southeastern colleges and universities were AA or Hispanic. Though faculty of color suffer job dissatisfaction, researchers had not discerned what relationships, if any, exist among perceived racial microaggression, job satisfaction, and employee motivation. Although evidence of the problem is ample, missing is an understanding of how microaggressions are associated with lower job satisfaction.
Critical race theory, or CRT, provides a theoretical framework to explore the professional lived experiences of AA faculty and other faculty of color and their perceptions of racial microaggressions. The theory offers the field of education a new paradigm to investigate the root causes of education and career disparities for AA faculty and other faculty of color. In education, CRT challenges a person to name racist injuries and identify their origins. A couple of researches I cite found that naming the types of racial microaggressions that Latin undergraduates confronted, outlining their effects, and highlighting ways the undergraduates responded provided a vehicle for other students suffering hostile racial climates to find their voice and name their pain.
Based on race equity and social-justice principles, CRT encourages the development of solutions to bridge gaps in education, health, housing, and employment. Members of historically under-represented groups tend to perceive the college atmosphere differently from their majority-group peers. Racial-minority faculty perceive the college culture as unwelcoming and unsupportive, which perception leads to adverse outcomes, including poor job satisfaction, less motivation, and the decision to leave the teaching profession.
Critical race theory is an iterative methodology for helping investigators remain attentive to equity while carrying out their research and to transform the hierarchies they identify. It emerged after years of struggle by law students and faculty contesting what they perceived as institutionalized racism in the hiring and curricular decisions of elite law schools. Scholars whose work relies on CRT – “critical race theorists” – have been described as “a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.”
Over the last two decades, CRT scholarship has generated a broad transdisciplinary movement toward race equity. It challenges the widely held but erroneous belief that “race consciousness” is synonymous with “racism” and that “colorblindness” is synonymous with the absence of racism. Although race consciousness has been abused (as with early eugenics research), it is essential for understanding racialized constructs and mechanisms. Colorblindness posits that nonracial factors (e.g., income) fundamentally explain ostensibly racial phenomena, but it too can be deployed in ways that contribute to inequities, for it precludes explicit examination of racism’s potential contributions to inequities.
CRT recognizes that contemporary racism is characterized by its subtlety and ordinariness, and posits that racism has become normal and integral to society. Minorities are chronically exposed to diverse forms of everyday racism (e.g., being followed while shopping). In response, they may learn to ignore everyday racism because it occurs so frequently, become adept at detecting it, or become hypervigilant about it, perceiving any unfair treatment as racism. Understanding ordinariness can inform research hypotheses about minorities’ health behaviors and attitudes.
CRT shifts the starting point of research from a majority group’s perspective (the usual approach) to that of marginalized groups – “outsiders within.” By grounding themselves in the experiences and perspectives of the minority communities from which they largely come, critical race theory provides fresh perspectives on old problems. Research based on the lived experiences of marginalized communities provides those communities with more meaningful data for their ongoing efforts toward collective self-improvement.
Wow, that’s an awful lot to think about. I can sort of see why I didn’t go further than one semester in a doctoral program I was enrolled in years ago. But let’s not get into that! Your research was a quantitative study, dealing with quantifiable, objectively measurable “concepts,” but it was non-experimental, looking only for correlations in the data. Were you satisfied that this approach yielded significant results and not just mildly interesting, essentially theoretical numerical relationships?
I had to use a non-experimental design because I could not manipulate the outcome variables of faculty’s motivation and job satisfaction. Because so many variables in the field of education management cannot be manipulated, non-experimental research is a common strategy. The goal for my study was to inform scholars and practitioners of the current state of faculty of color in academe, to explain faculty experience relative to racial microaggressions, and to try to identify ways to transform conditions and increase faculty motivation, satisfaction, retention, and productivity.
I understand that you recruited 42 African American faculty members in southeastern universities and administered a questionnaire to them, which included demographic questions and something called the Racial and Ethnic Microaggressions Scale, and the Job Diagnostic Survey. What are those two things?
The Racial and Ethnic Microaggressions Scale (REMS-14) is a measure that evaluates the types of racial microaggressions individuals experience in their everyday lives. The scale posits that people of color are able to identify instances of microaggression as racially related. Using theory and statistical methods, I identified 45 microaggression incidents and categorized them into six major sub-scales: (a) assumptions of inferiority, b) second-class citizen and assumption of criminality, (c) microinvalidations, (d) exoticization/assumptions of similarity, (e) environmental microaggressions, and (f) workplace and school microaggressions.
The Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) rests on theory of how jobs affect employee motivation. It is used to diagnose existing jobs to determine whether (and how) they might be redesigned to improve employee productivity and satisfaction, and to evaluate how job modifications – whether deliberate or “natural” – might affect employees. It was designed to measure the following three classes of variables: (1) the objective characteristics of jobs, the degree to which they were designed to enhance motivation and satisfaction in people who do them; (2) the personal affective reactions of individuals to their jobs and the broader work setting; and (3) the readiness of individuals to respond positively to “enriched” jobs – jobs that have high measured potential for generating internal work motivation.
The dissertation states that your statistical analysis of the survey data found no significant relationship between perceived level of microaggression and either job satisfaction or motivation among African American faculty. Did that result surprise you? What did you make of it?
Study findings were surprising. Therefore, it was important to explore possible reasons why racial microaggression, job satisfaction, and employee motivation were unrelated. These results most likely emerged because only 20% of AA faculty apply for positions at predominantly Caucasian institutions, which reaffirms the need for stronger active recruitment efforts to attract under-represented minority faculty members.
The dissertation states that your findings “may help educational leaders understand the detrimental effects of racial microaggressions with current African American and other faculty of color.” But how is that possible, given that you found no significant relationship between perceived level of microaggression and either job satisfaction or motivation?
This is the first study to focus on AA faculty and other faculty of color in southeastern colleges and universities as targets of microaggressions. More studies are needed to understand the issues present in higher-education settings, which may, in turn, lead to educational leaders being able to better serve faculty and students. Several areas and departments in institutions should be considered in future projects. The first recommendation is for the current study to be duplicated with a larger sample. Supervisors from all institutional programs, as well as full-time, part-time, and adjunct faculty, should be included to increase the sample size. Implications for positive change may help educational leaders face the challenges of racial conflict and begin dialogues about racial microaggressions. Linking research and practices can create a holistic approach to the eradication of disparities, particularly for people of color in the United States, and offer opportunities for everyone to succeed.
What insights did the study produce that might lead to improvements in the quality of African American faculty members’ work life or influence social change?
Positive social change essentially means the elimination of oppression and racism from colleges and universities. The knowledge gained from this study may support innovations and modernization of technologies to promote such change. Citizens of communities, regardless of gender, age, religion, education, economic status, and ethnicity, may be encouraged to use these findings to improve diversity and equity.
Can you summarize what those “findings” are? In a hundred words or less?
The results of the analysis indicated no significant relationships between perceived level of microaggressions and job satisfaction or between perceived level of microaggressions and employee motivation. To determine possible bivariate relationships, Pearson’s correlations were performed. Assumptions of inferiority and microinvalidations were negatively correlated with job satisfaction, which suggests that when examined in isolation, higher assumptions of inferiority and microinvalidations were associated with lower levels of job satisfaction.
I noted that one of the limitations of your study listed in the dissertation was “vested interest of participants.” What were these vested interests, and how did you become aware of them?
“Vested interests” might pertain, for example, to protecting your money, your power, or your reputation. I became aware of vested interests through email responses from some flagship Southern institutions, some of whose staff refused to send the survey to any faculty, or demurred “because it was difficult to find full-time professors and tenured professors.” I believe that certain African Americans and people of color refused to participate because few of them have these positions and wanted to protect their institution, departments, and friends.
The gaps between achievement and failure for African American males are often highlighted in the headlines of major metropolitan newspapers and media. History has clearly revealed that racist and discriminatory practices have affected minorities, and specifically African Americans. This inequity has produced such a significant chasm between those who have fallen behind and those who have achieved tremendous success, it’s easy to believe that something has gone awry. For African American males, the problem seems to be even more challenging. The dropout rate for African American males in South Carolina is 51 percent. We need to know about the phenomenon, and about the common experiences of African American males who are at high risk of dropping out in order to improve methods and develop better practices for helping African American males achieve educational success for life-long endeavors as productive citizens.
I plan to update my research and perhaps write an article for publication in an educational journal. In August 2011, I developed a qualitative research plan from preliminary research on racial microaggressions: “The Impact of Microaggression for Long-Term Suspension and Expulsion: A Study of the African American Male Experience in Middle School at South Carolina Richland School District X.”
That sounds like a valuable undertaking! Another recommendation stated in your dissertation was that research be done “on the intersection of hierarchical and identity-based microaggressions.” What does that mean, and what of interest might such research produce?
Hierarchical microaggressions exist in all workplaces but are of a unique type in a university because of the association of college attendance with equality and upward mobility. Microaggression in this context is more than insensitive comments; it affects people relative to their identify, their status at the university. This identity relates to the amount of higher education they attain, with privilege accruing to those with a doctoral degree, and a lack of privilege to those with lesser degrees or no degree. Given the findings, future research is needed on the intersection of hierarchical and identity-based microaggressions.
Examining the confluence of race (or gender, sexuality, and disability status) in hierarchical roles and positions in an institution would make a considerable contribution to the literature and inform the development of constructive working environments in which employees and supervisors can learn to be cultural interpreters, be open to critique, and develop self-awareness.
Social media have become a driving force for unintentional and intentional racial microaggressions. For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article titled “Campus Lawyers’ Deepest Fear: the Protest or Tweet That Spins Into a Free-Speech Crisis” (Brown, 2018). Every college – public or private, large or small, residential four-year or not – is one tweet, email, or protest away from a First Amendment tussle. That’s the message many higher-education lawyers are sharing with their colleagues through the National Association of College and University Attorneys.
Campus general counsels, especially at public universities, are still on edge after a chaotic 2017 filled with high-profile protests and tensions surrounding visits by speakers who espouse views that were hateful, offensive, or perceived in those ways. William E. Thro, general counsel at the University of Kentucky, has been attending annual conferences of the National Association of College and University Attorneys for two decades. He said, “I never, ever remember constitutional issues, broadly defined — free speech, due process, other things — being as prominent as they are now.”
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| Charles M. Blow |
President Barack Obama said, at the NAACP Centennial Anniversary:
I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009…But make no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America.In my opinion, for 2018 and some years beyond, the challenge is in race relations in the United States. We have made great progress; however, to achieve full equality, a great deal of work still needs to be done. Recent evidence of ongoing discriminatory practices by individuals, businesses, and government shows that no single event could remedy the vestiges of four centuries of unrelenting racial discrimination in the United States and render unnecessary the critical civil rights laws that have been in place for only four decades of that scarred history.
Racial scholars argue that racism produces rates of morbidity, mortality, and overall well-being that vary depending on socially assigned race. Eliminating racism is therefore central to advancing the civil rights of African Americans, other people of color, and other groups that face discrimination.
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| Emily Skop |
Professor Emily Skop, of the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, has said that “the power of microaggression lies in its invisibility to the perpetrator, who typically finds it difficult to believe that he or she possesses biased attitudes.” Did anything you came across in your research tend to support this idea that perpetrators typically aren’t aware of their aggressiveness? In your personal experience?
Not everyone agrees that microaggressions are as rampant or destructive some say they are. In rebuttal letters to a 2007 American Psychologist article, respondents accused its authors of blowing the phenomenon out of proportion and advancing an unnecessarily negative agenda. Kenneth R. Thomas, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin – Madison, who is white, said, “Implementing his theory would restrict rather than promote candid interaction between members of different racial groups.” In the therapy relationship, for example, Thomas said that having to watch every word “potentially discourages therapist genuineness and spontaneity.” Likewise, Thomas asserted, the article’s view enforced a victim mentality by creating problems where none exists: “The theory, in general, characterizes people of color as weak and vulnerable, and reinforces a culture of victimization instead of a culture of opportunity.”
Kenneth Sole, PhD, whose consulting firm, Sole & Associates Inc., trains employees on team communication, agrees with the article that microaggressions are pervasive and potentially damaging. Indeed, he said that his firm’s clients talk about them all of the time. But instead of encouraging their anger, he said that he works with them on ways to frame the incidents so they feel empowered rather than victimized. “My own view is that we don’t serve ourselves well in the hundreds of ambiguous situations we experience by latching onto the definition of the experience that gives us the greatest pain,” particularly in one-time encounters where one can’t take more systemic action. For instance, if a white person makes a potentially offensive remark to a person of color, the person could choose either to get angry and see the person as a bigot or to perceive the person as ignorant and move on.
The authors of the article believed it’s important to keep shining a light on the harm these encounters can inflict, no matter how the person of color decides to handle a given encounter. “My hope is to make the invisible visible…Microaggressions hold their power because they are invisible, and therefore they don’t allow us to see that our actions and attitudes may be discriminatory.”
In my personal experiences, I have attempted to educate my peers about microaggressions, and the responses have been positive. Occasionally I speak to individuals in private about an offensive statement that was made, such as, “My cat’s name is ‘Nigger.” I have experienced many more such remarks, but we don’t have enough interview time to get into them.”
That really saddens me, Saundra. Do you think that many perpetrators today, encouraged by Donald Trump, have shed their disguise as microaggressors and become blatant “macroaggressors,” no longer caring whether they are invisible or not?
Charles M. Blow’s June 24 column in the NY Times was titled “White Extinction Anxiety.” He seems to contend that “white extinction anxiety, white displacement anxiety, white minority anxiety…[motivates] all manner of current policy...immigration policy, voter suppression, Trump economic isolationist impulses, his contempt for people from Haiti and Africa.…Trump is president and is beloved by his base in part because he is unapologetically defending whiteness from anything that threatens it.” What do you think of that view?
I believe we have entities in the USA to address the increasing volatility of the political environment created by #45. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have a critical role in our Nation for African Americans and people of color. Their strategies may change, depending on who is in power; however, their fundamental mission remains the same: to promote strong civil rights laws and the robust enforcement of those laws. Progress in civil rights should never have to wait until the next election.
I am committed to tackling racial-equality problems that require sustained effort and resolve, and to seeking long-term support from philanthropic leaders who share the goal of working to ensure that “all people have the opportunity to reach their full potential, contribute to society, and have voice in the decisions that affect them.” (Ford Foundation, 2009–2010)
| Copyright © 2018 by Saundra Carr & Moristotle |
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