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Mar 20th, 2019
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  1. if you want to understand microaggressions, think about gravel.
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  3. one microaggression is like having someone throw a piece of gravel at you.
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  5. on its own, it’s nothing. it might annoy you a little, but you can shrug it off easily.
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  7. but let’s say every once in a while, someone shows up and chucks a piece of gravel at you. you can never tell when or where it’s coming. it’s totally random. you could get hit by one one day, then the next day none at all. the day after that though you get fifty, or a hundred, or maybe even a thousand.
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  9. oh, and you can never tell who the thrower will be next. sometimes it’s total strangers who’ve never met you. sometimes it’s people you barely interact with. sometimes it’s coworkers and family and friends. it doesn’t matter, you’re getting hit by gravel. and a lot of them aren’t even doing it on purpose, they’re just tossing them, sometimes behind their back, not caring where they land or who they hit. occasionally, someone will add in a bigger rock.
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  11. pretty soon you’re spending every waking hour flinching and looking around, waiting for the next piece of gravel to hit you. it’s always on your mind, distracting you from the really important shit going on in your life. you can’t think. you can’t relax. you can barely sleep anymore.
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  13. you start wondering what you did to deserve this. you can’t think of anything you’ve done to warrant having even one piece of gravel thrown at you, let alone the barrage that happens almost every day.
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  15. you have bruises where you’ve been hit, all over your body. you’re much more sensitive to touch, and every piece of gravel that hits you hurts more than they did before. you never have the time to heal before it happens again.
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  17. when other people see your bruises, they tell you to cover them up because it disgusts them.
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  19. when you try to tell them about the gravel, they tell you you’re imagining things, or lying, or you must have done something to deserve it.
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  21. if you dare to pick up a rock and throw it back, the person you throw it at will make a scene as if you had thrown a much bigger rock, even if you miss.
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  23. you’re told it happens to everyone, but you look around and you notice it’s happening way more to people like you. you point this out, and the people who get way fewer rocks thrown at them ask why you don’t just buy some body armor.
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  25. but the body armor doesn’t fit you. it’s heavy and stiff and it keeps you from moving fast enough to do much of anything. and that’s if you can even afford the body armor. even if you could, it wouldn’t change the fact that people are still throwing fucking rocks.
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  27. sometimes the rocks are bigger than gravel. sometimes people come along with huge stones, and they’ve also got really good aim. sometimes they break bones.
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  29. but people still keep throwing rocks.
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