I wanted to write a blog entry about microaggressions.
They’re hateful and hurtful. I don’t consider them to be “micro” anything; I consider them to be actual racist comments.
The last I checked my calendar at home it was 2017. What is the year on your calendar where you live? 2017?
That’s right: it’s 2017, and it’s time to stop hate in its tracks.
I suggest critically attacking the person who has told you something that is hurtful or hateful. They need to be told why what they’ve said is wrong. This is because unfortunately they’re clueless–they have no idea of the hateful magnitude of their comment.
I stand in solidarity with anyone who’s been oppressed.
In 2014 when my First Person Account was published in Schizophrenia Bulletin I linked to this column on the NAMI LinkedIn Group.
A woman who uses a fake name on social media responded thus: “Why do you identify as a person diagnosed with schizophrenia. You obviously had a once-in-a-lifetime never-to-be-repeated episode.”
So, this armchair psychiatrist diagnosed me from her poltrona (the Italian word for armchair).
That is how low the bar is that other people set for a person diagnosed with schizophrenia.
In the late 1980s when I was shunted into “the system” I was told there was not much I could do precisely because I had this diagnosis.
Thus, I’m no stranger to the guilt-by-association tactic that linked everyone with SZ into the category of “capable of not very much” except warming a chair in a day program for years and years.
That’s why when I hear a guest speaker on an unrelated topic reveal that they were the victim of a microaggression I can’t help getting upset.
The guilt-by-association tactic is alive and well in Mr. Toupee’s America, as evidenced by his Muslim-country ban that ascertains you’re guilty of possibly being a terrorist simply because other people from that country are terrorists.
Is this really the climate we want to live in? Stereotyping everyone who’s different and continuing to set the bar low for what you expect from everyone who shares a similar background is still going on.
Check your calendar again–it’s 2017 not 1864.
My stance now is this: we need to confront the haters. I’ve changed my mind about this. Yes, I think we need to tell the haters in no uncertain terms that their low opinions of other human beings aren’t going to be accepted anymore.
I identify as a person diagnosed with SZ for this number-one reason:
I hold accountable for their beliefs and actions the mental health staff that dared tell me I wasn’t capable of holding a job.
I was judged; I was stereotyped.
My intent in identifying as a person with this diagnosis is to be in their face, to tell them: “See? You told me there wasn’t much I was capable of. Who’s sorry now? I’m having the last laugh.”
We must each of us hold others accountable for their behavior towards us.
It’s 2017–that’s the year on my calendar and it’s the year on your calendar too.
We can’t hold it all in and let the hate eat us up or tear us apart any longer.
Won’t you join me in speaking out?
My real name is Christina Bruni, and I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 22.
Take this, or leave.
Hate is off the table in my house.
Left of the Dial 