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Destroy the Hate

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade: A Visual of How One PA High School is Destroying the Hate An open forum was held at a large suburban Pennsylvania high school to address issues surrounding a racially insensitive Instagram post and develop solutions to move toward unity. During the dynamic dialogue, students and staff discussed the lack of education on racism, the difficulty discussing issues on race relations, and how to handle situations when people making racist and/or microaggressive comments. According to Microaggressions: Power, Privilege, and Everyday Life, a Tumblr blog that posts visual representations of microaggressions, “microaggresions” are never meant to hurt–acts done with little conscious awareness of their meanings and effects. Instead, their slow accumulation during a childhood and over a lifetime is in part what defines a marginalized experience, making explanation and communication with someone who does not share this identity particularly difficult. Social others are microaggressed hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. In an attempt to gain visual representations of the microaggressions these students face, they were asked the following questions: Can you think of a recent experience when you benefitted or suffered from people having a stereotype about you? What was said? Write it down. If you have not had an experience, what makes such experiences rare? These questions were used to uncover the students’ privilege and socially constructed identities in an effort to make visible the ways in which everyday microaggressions reinforce difference. Ultimately, the students’ experiences were recorded and photographed to create the school-wide campaign, “Destroy the Hate.”

2016-11-01T23:52:15+00:00
Duration: 02:25