Topic 4 The Framework of Messages

As a key component to building deep understanding around “micro-aggression” as subtle acts of exclusion, we name the framework, or taxonomy, for identifying what we are implicitly communicating. The framework provides us with a language for describing why a particular communication is a problem. You have said one thing, but what you were implicitly communicating to another person was something quite different. Many messages (verbal, non-verbal, etc.) can be communicating multiple types of exclusion at the same time.  The following list accounts for the wide range across many different dimensions of diversity (gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability, and religion):

• You are invisible
• You (or people like you) are inadequate
• You are not an individual
• You don’t belong
• You are not normal
• You are a curiosity (strangeness)
• You are a threat
• You are a burden