Skip to main content
Contribution to Book
"Rhetorical and Pedagogical Interventions for Countering Microaggressions" Reprint and Supplementary Material
Best of Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2021 (2023)
  • Beth Godbee
  • Rasha Diab, University of Texas at Austin
Abstract
Because microaggressions manifest in moments of interaction, we continue to believe that they demand particular attention from those of us in writing, rhetoric, and literacy studies. Whether personal (e.g., among two or more clearly identified people) or impersonal (e.g., a writer/group of writers writing to and about distant others), these interactions are communicative acts that do harm. When we study microaggressions, therefore, we’re asking not only when, where, how, why, and by/to/for whom they happen, but also and significantly when, where, how, why, and by/to/for whom we must intervene. In other words: How do we respond to microaggressions, or those everyday and commonplace communicative actions that enact bias, invalidate people, and reinforce structural oppression?

This chapter includes both a reprint of my previous article “Rhetorical and Pedagogical Interventions for Countering Microaggressions” co-authored with Rasha Diab and with contributions by Cedric Burrows and Thomas Ferrel and four pages of new supplementary material.
Keywords
  • microaggressions,
  • social justice,
  • racial justice,
  • language,
  • interaction,
  • oppression,
  • intervention,
  • rhetoric,
  • pedagogy,
  • service,
  • research,
  • everyday,
  • social interaction
Publication Date
2023
Editor
Kristi Girdharry, Charles Lesh, Jessica Pauszek, David Blakesley, and Steve Parks
Publisher
Parlor Press
Series
Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition
ISBN
978-1-64317-329-0
Citation Information
Beth Godbee and Rasha Diab. ""Rhetorical and Pedagogical Interventions for Countering Microaggressions" Reprint and Supplementary Material" Best of Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2021 (2023)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/beth_godbee/70/