Usually when I say ‘micro-aggression’ I’m about to talk about race or gender. Today, though, I have a perfect example of how the concepts behind the problem with micro-aggressions don’t have to be confined to big-ticket divisions in people. I saw one with my students, first hand, just the other day.
As some of you know, I work with the Miami Varsity Esports Program as one of the founding directors (along with the esteemed Glenn Platt– my partner in the double vowel, our athletics coach with the most Chad Reynolds, and student director Stelanie Tsirlis and her team of esports rockstars). What you might not know because it’s a new development is that I’m also serving as the faculty advisor to the Esports Club and our Esports Living Learning Community (coming fall of this year– incoming first years at Miami holla!). I’m sort of the esports guy, I guess. Makes sense– my book is about a competitive online game and everyone chuckled at me playing competitive WoW as I researched my dissertation. Turns out that skillset is useful. 🙂
This brings me to a position where I see a bit of a tension that I think others aren’t quite seeing. The Varsity program emerged from the club. The impetus behind it developing was the then-officer group (the “exec”) of the esports club, led by Stel. Esports at Miami is a family. I described it to them last night as a “family of choice.”
What I meant by that is what we all know you can’t choose your actual family. You get it, warts and all. And if you do it right, you love them in spite of that. Family is there for family, and family endures even when the chips are down and it looks like there’s no one to save you. But the Esports family chose to come together. Still– they love each other. They shouldn’t let little things get in the way.
It’s impossible to avoid, though. The players in the Varsity program are club members (some say “were”– part of the problem). To be a varsity team they have to devote a great deal of time to their play and practice. This means they can do less with the club. It also means that our club teams aren’t as good as they once were because the varsity players aren’t there; it’s not as if we “stole” the best players– it makes sense that the best players in the club would be the ones to try out for and make the varsity team (and none of them left the club to do that). At the same time, it means more people can play, and it means that our club gets to enjoy the esports scene it helped to create, to celebrate its members who are doing awesome things, like beating an all-scholarship RMU League of Legends team last week in the semifinals of the first ever NACE invitational. Our Hearthstone team competed on an international Twitch stream from TESPA sitting in front of the Miami code of love and honor emblazoned on the wall of the Shade Stage in the Armstrong Center. It was absolutely beautiful. We’ve done amazing things here as a community.
Someone in the club, but not an officer, said something this past week that really irked me. We are staging a LAN this coming weekend (Oxford Arena, Saturday at 10 am to whenever and then when people wake up Sunday at Farmer School of Business on the Miami campus). This event was once going to have buy-in tournaments with a prize pool, but due to time constraints, the sad timing right next to finals, etc. the club chose wisely to convert to a casual tourney format with some sweet prizes. It’s going to be a good time.
But a member of the club opposed the pay-to-play prize pool, saying they “weren’t interested in paying to donate to varsity.”
That is a micro-aggression. And I shared my displeasure with it.
But the club members– and some varsity players– didn’t see it. They thought and probably still think I’m overreacting. But here’s the thing: they aren’t all built to see it.
The number of people in our club that would have regularly seen micro-aggressions is small, and one of those folks is so protective of the club (almost always a positive trait, but a blinder here). They come from a position of privilege, which I certainly don’t begrudge them, and as gamers, they are pre-conditioned by the scene to think that sarcasm and cruel barbs are no big deal.
So for them, I want to unpack what that statement means from the prospective of a scholar who studies language and as the person who is trying to help them to improve their communication and smooth over issues.
Let’s look at it again.
“weren’t interested in paying to donate to varsity”
First, I know the non-encoded message. The member meant he knew his team would lose to the varsity team so he couldn’t win top prize. And that’s sort of a compliment to our varsity team, so thanks.
But let’s look at the choice of words.
“donate” indicates the sense of charity, but also the sense that this person’s contribution is different than a contribution to a prize pool. No one thinks of “donating” at a poker table, for example, when it’s time to ante up. That’s part and parcel of the game. As the old saying goes, you pay your dollar and you take your chance.
But donate becomes a more powerful jab when linked with “to varsity.” It reveals the underlying attitude that I have heard from a small but vocal number of members of the club: they feel put out, like they are expected to “give” to the varsity program.
There’s also the rhetoric behind the word “paying” used to describe a fee going into a mutual pool. I guess that’s an appropriate word for buying in, but it carries the American negative view of paying for something.
This is problematic to me as their advisor and the person who helps direct the varsity program because it creates a built-in sense of anxiety and, as I said (and the students thought was too strong) animosity. That person wasn’t afraid to lose. That person was not happy losing to the varsity team.
The person who said that could have said “I don’t want to pay into a prize pool because I don’t think the teams will be even and I don’t like my odds.” That’s not what the person said, though. The person specifically suggested that the whole idea of the event was to generate a prize pool for the varsity players.
And so it wasn’t a flat out attack, though like any micro-aggression, that’s what the person really meant (knowingly or not-this is why some people don’t “get” the problems of Gamergate, for example, because of the toxicity of some game circles). It was an attack to sow the seeds of discord between the two groups. That’s exactly how a micro-aggression works. Within the dominant culture of the larger esports club the varsity teams have become a minority (albeit one with higher esteem in some cases, and due to that one that some in the club resent for being viewed as special), and speaking in subtle ways down to them/about them to create a dichotomy is exactly how you micro-aggress. The President of the United States does this regularly to reporters and women and people of color and foreign leaders and other hosts of the Apprentice. It’s not an uncommon occurrence. I am not surprised to see it. It is far more American to micro-aggress than to be tolerant, sadly.
And the response from some of the students of “I wouldn’t say it’s animosity” or “I don’t see a problem” illustrates the power of the micro-aggression. I may well end up “losing” the argument to explain that a statement like that was uncalled for, even though I am the adult faculty member advisor who studies race and class.
And that’s okay. I don’t expect the students I work with to walk in lockstep with me. I do, however, expect them to listen to me when I try to teach them things and to make their own decisions. If they do that and decide that I’m wrong, that’s their choice. And I respect that. My only desire is that they listen to me and think about it.
But it was totally a micro-aggression, and the way some of them try to sweep it under the rug serves as an illustration of how other micro-aggressions work. It’s easy to just say “oh, you’re taking it too hard!” and dismiss a concern. After it’s done three or four times it becomes a motif, and the concerned parties are considered overbearing or annoying or whatever word you might want to choose. When that’s done to someone in a workplace, it’s called mobbing, and if you’ve never been subjected to it, be thankful. It’s awful. I speak from experience. Twice.
That’s how we create real problems. When we let the micro-aggressions build into flat out double standards and oppression.
I hope that my esports family can mend itself in the coming months. They all need each other, and they’re all such great people. I really hate to see them in this sort of tense stand-off that they pretend isn’t happening. They all want the same things, but some of them are very, very territorial. This isn’t a place for that. Esports isn’t a war for land. It has to be us vs. the world because academia isn’t ready for esports. Not entirely. We need to band together to thrive. As the LOST episode title and mantra rang out “Live together. Die alone.”
I do want to thank them all for the great example, though. Being able to talk about a micro-aggression without it being gender or race based gave me a nice tool for a blog post.
No wonder I love these people.