My studies in librarianship this week led me to the Tumblr thread Microaggressions in Librarianship. One microaggression that stood out for me, which I found particularly relatable, was grouped with assorted transgressions under “Microaggression Bingo.”
The poster identified a co-worker “Telling an autistic student that she (the student) was very high-functioning and she (the librarian) would never have known” (withbroombefore-deactivated2018, n.d., para. 3). I’ve been on the receiving end of such statements more times than I can count and can relate to that feeling, as Alabi puts it, of being both “invisible and hypervisible” (2015, p. 5). I always feel pressured socially to offer a polite response: to excuse the speaker’s ignorance and not call out their ableism, because they “think” they are paying me a “compliment.”
References:
Alabi, J. (2015). “This actually happened”: An analysis of librarians’ responses to a survey about racial microaggressions. Journal of Library Administration, 55(3), 179-191.
withbroombefore-deactivated2018. (n.d.) Early in my first librarian job after grad school, a coworker (older cishet white woman) came into my office and [web post]. Microaggressions in librarianship. Tumblr. https://lismicroaggressions.com/post/180814952968/early-in-my-first-librarian-job-after-grad-school
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