The language of everyday racism and microaggression in the workplace: Palestinian professionals in Israel

ABSTRACT

Based on interviews with Palestinian professionals in Jewish organizations in Israel, this article discloses a distinctive practice of ‘everyday racism’ and microaggression – a language of everyday racism. This ‘language of everyday racism’ refers to Hebrew words and expressions that are routinely used by Jews in their mundane conversations and that include the word ‘Arab’ when describing a deficiency or defect, some sort of unsightliness, filth, or general negativity (as in the expression ‘You're dressed like an Arab woman’). This article not only describes the language of everyday racism as a specific form of everyday racism and microaggression (national microaggression), it also illustrates how this language activates the Palestinian professionals in a reflexive manner. The discussion section describes how the internal dialectic between structure and agency is critical to understanding the language of everyday racism, which in turn acts as a mechanism of the inequality that underlies face-to-face interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Everyday racism
• microaggression
• language
• ethnicity
• reflexivity
• professionals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The interviewees in this study alternately defined themselves by the words ‘Arab’ and ‘Palestinian’. In addition, as has also been revealed in other studies (Rabinowitz 2001), the term ‘Palestinian’ is considered more political and subversive. The term ‘Arab’ is considered ‘cultural’ and less subversive. The vast majority of the interviewees emphasized that, with this background in mind, they do not define themselves in their workplaces as ‘Palestinians’ but rather as ‘Arabs’.

2. The expression ‘Jewish organizations’ was proffered by the Palestinian interviewees. Thus, from here on I use this expression.

3. This article does not address the accounts of majority group members because their stances were similar to those already reported in the literature (Sue 2010). Nine Jewish employees were interviewed in total. All of them ‘were surprised’ to hear about the research attention that I paid to racial language. Furthermore, all of the employees noted that these are slips of the tongue, or that these expressions are automatic, not conscious, and ‘small’.

4. It was possible to analyse this choice as a hidden transcript of resistance, to use the words of Scott (1990). At the same time, this article seeks to emphasize that this individual choice reproduces the racial, national orders in Israel. In addition, there is no doubt that it is fitting that future research should frame the findings of this study with Scott's cogitations.