Toward A Racial Microaggressions Model Analysis of White Innocence

• In Event: White Epistemic and Affective Violence: From Gaslighting to Innocence

Abstract

Pérez Huber and Solorzano's (2015) racial microaggressions model expresses the importance of identifying ideological foundations of white supremacy that are eventually demonstrated in the form of racial microaggressions. The tri-level model includes 1) racial microaggressions themselves, 2) institutional racism that provides structure to microaggressions, and 3) macroaggressions, ideological positions that ground arrangements of social domination. In this presentation, I posit that the discourse of white innocence, discursive moves that work to avoid white racial accountability (Ross 1990), acts at both the third level, as a macroaggression in support of white supremacy, and at the first level, as a microaggressions experienced by Students of Color. I exemplify this process by analyzing the experience of a Latinx high school student.

Author

• Richard A. Orozco, University of Arizona