I just watched a wonderful TEDx talk by Terrell Strayhorn, Professor of Higher Education at (the) Ohio State University, called “Inalienable Rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Belonging.” With enviable ease, Dr. Strayhorn walks his audience through the various factors that impede college persistence and demonstrates why a sense of belonging is so important for student success. He concludes his talk with his remarkably smooth singing voice, crooning, “We all want to belong, yeah . . .”
If you’ve been following my blog over the last year you’ve seen me return to our student data that reveals troubling differences in sense of belonging on campus across various racial and ethnic groups. The growing body of research on belongingness and social identity theory continues to demonstrate that the factors that shape a sense of belonging are extensive. While these complicated findings might gratify the social scientist in me, the optimistic activist part of me has continued to beg for more concrete solutions; things that individuals within a community can do right away to strengthen a sense of membership for anyone in the group who might not be so sure that they belong.
So here are a couple of ideas that poured some of the best kind of fuel onto my fire over the weekend: Micro-Kindness and Micro-Affirmations. Both terms refer to a wonderfully simple yet powerful idea. In essence, both concepts recognize that we live in an imperfect world rife with imperfect interactions and, if we want the community in which we exist to be better than it is (no matter how good or bad it is at present), then individual members of that community have to take action to change it. Applied to the ongoing discussion of microaggressions and their potential impact on individuals within a community (particularly those from traditionally marginalized groups), both ideas assert that there are things that we can do to emphasize to others that we welcome them into our community and reduce the existence of microaggressions. These actions can be as simple as opening a door for someone and smiling at them, making eye contact and saying hello, or engaging in brief but inclusive conversation. Instructors can have a powerful micro-affirmative impact by taking the time to tell a student who might be hesitant or struggling that you know that he or she can succeed in your class.
Researchers at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA have found that validating experiences, much like the micro-kindnesses and micro-affirmations described above, appear to have a significant impact in reducing perceptions of discrimination and bias. In fact, after accounting for the negative impact of discrimination and bias on a sense of belonging, interpersonal validations generated by far the largest positive effect on a sense of belonging.
Research on the biggest mistakes that people can make in trying to change behavior has found that trying to eliminate bad behaviors is much less effective than instituting new behaviors. Since individuals often perceive microaggressions to come in situations where a slight was not intended, eradicating everything that might be perceived as a slight or snub seems almost impossible. But if each of us were to make the effort to enact a micro-kindness or a micro-affirmation several times each day, we might set in motion a change in which we
- substantially improve upon the community norms within which microaggressions might occur, and
- significantly increase a sense a belonging among those most likely to feel like outsiders.
Make it a good day,
Mark