Dr. Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo discusses her article, “How Microaggressions Reinforce and Perpetuate Systemic Racism in the United States.” She defines what microaggressions are and how they support White superiority. Through subtle and slight processes microaggressions protect and reinforce the “othering” of people of color with environmental exclusions, treating people of color as second class, and promoting ideas of inequalities. Dr. Skinner-Dorkenoo discusses how “color blindness’ and other denials feed into the Myth of Meritocracy which denies systems of inequality and supports narratives of exclusion and blame.
Dr. Skinner-Dorkenoo has been an assistant professor at the University of Georgia since the fall of 2019. Her research examines how biases are established, maintained, and facilitated through subtle messages present in everyday life. She is particularly interested in how situational cues in our social environments shape our perceptions, attitudes, and biases against other individuals and groups. She is the Director of the Georgia Attitude, Bias, and Behavior Acquisition (GABBA) Lab (https://allisonlskinner.wixsite.com/socialcognition) that examines how systemic forms of oppression are maintained and reinforced through subtle patterns of thought and behavior, and how those systems can be challenged.