Microaggressions: Death by a Thousand Cuts

Microaggressions are the everyday slights, indignities, put downs, and insults that Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), women, LGBTQIA+, and other marginalized communities experience in their day-to-day interactions with people. They happen casually, frequently, and often without any harm intended. They reveal people’s conscious or unconscious bias against marginalized groups and leave the targets of their comments and actions feeling uncomfortable, offended, and hurt. Microaggressions can be incessant, occurring on an almost daily basis, and cumulative. While microaggressions may seem harmless, a lifetime of microaggressions can impact a person’s mental health and well-being in significant ways. In this workshop, we will learn how to recognize microaggressions and the messages that they send so that we can become more conscious and intentional in keeping ourselves from committing them. Preventing microaggressions from happening will help create more welcoming, kind, inclusive, and honoring spaces and is a way to support and care for our BIPOC and other marginalized siblings.

Trainer:

Amihan Jennifer Matias is a passionate racial equity, cultural humility, and organization and leadership development trainer, coach, and consultant. She is a social justice activist, community builder, and leader who is deeply committed to creating a more just, compassionate, and equitable world. Amihan is the founder of several nationally recognized leadership development programs, including a nonprofit executive coaching program supporting Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) leaders and a six-month leadership forum for women of color leaders called And Still We Rise. She has a long history of community activism in Asian and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and is a founding member of Massachusetts Asian and Pacific Islanders (MAP) for Health and the newly formed AAPI Alliance of Western MA. She is also a founding board member of the Truth School.