“I have to scream and yell”: A Black man’s, a Black woman’s and a White man’s reflections on gendered racial ‘micro’-aggressions in a workplace

Abstract

Sustainability is essentially the pursuit of intra- and intergenerational justice. Following from this, we contend that any form of discrimination in any context, including those arising out of gender, race, and the intersection between them, constitutes a sustainability problem. Here, we relate a journey of ‘discovery’ and/or ‘confirmation’ which we undertook based on the daily lived experiences of gendered racial ‘micro’-aggressions of Black women working in the telecoms sector in South Africa. Our act of telling this story in the space of appearance opened up by this special issue is an inherently political act, making this article an example of Freirean conscientisation. Our hope is that we contribute towards rendering the forms of aggression related to us slightly more visible to anyone who reads this article, on the assumption that visible oppression is less easy to stomach.