199. Questions That Sting. Multicultural Communication and Belonging Series. Part 5

The questions that feel like small talk perhaps unbeknown to you tell someone they don't belong.

In this fifth episode of the Multicultural Communication and Belonging series, Alejandra Siroka examines something most people never intend to do: make someone feel like an outsider with a single question.

She opens with a story from her years in Boston, where a student assumed she was a Mexican maid based on nothing more than the sound of her voice over the phone. What came after was more revealing than the incident itself: for a period of time, she began leading every introduction with her credentials, preemptively defending herself against assumptions she hadn't even heard yet. One interaction quietly rewired how she showed up with strangers.

Alejandra traces the term "microaggression" back to Dr. Chester Pierce, who coined it in the early 1970s to describe subtle, cumulative daily interactions that function as a mix of insults and dismissals. Most people asking these questions mean no harm.

In this episode, Alejandra unpacks the gap between intention and impact. She walks through the most common questions directed at immigrants and people of color and the assumption living underneath each one.

What makes them a microaggression isn't the surface wording. It's the selectivity: these questions aren't asked of everyone, only of people perceived as being from somewhere else.

Whether you've asked these questions without realizing the weight they carry, or you've spent years on the receiving end, this episode offers tools for understanding what's really happening in these moments and ways to respond that don't create more harm.

Quotes

"Microaggressions are sometimes called death by a thousand paper cuts. Each one in isolation might seem small, but for the person who receives them on a daily basis from strangers, from colleagues, from people they consider friends, they accumulate and they take a toll." (05:27 | Alejandra Siroka)

"I was preemptively defending myself against assumptions I hadn't even heard from the new person I was just meeting. That is what microaggressions do. They don't just hurt in the moment. They change how you show up." (09:06 | Alejandra Siroka)

"These questions reduce a person to a cultural stereotype before maybe a real conversation has taken place. Because they say, I already have a story about who you are based on where you come from." (12:55 | Alejandra Siroka)

"These questions aren't asked of everyone. They are asked of specific people based on how they look or sound. And it's that selectivity what makes them a microaggression." (16:10 | Alejandra Siroka)

"You are not obligated to answer a question that assumes something harmful about you. You are the one who gets to decide how much of your story to share with whom and when." (20:06 | Alejandra Siroka)

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Podcast Music composed by Gary Lapow: open.spotify.com/artist/1HlMhcNfKIELxYil5mVqD