A high school student's presentation on racial microaggressions has gone viral after catching the eye of thousands of people on Twitter. 17-year-old Aretha Bernard recently shared a photo from her class presentation, showing a projector that displayed the words "You're all racist" on the screen behind her. At the time of writing, her picture has been retweeted 24,000 times and has received 74,000 likes, with people leaving supportive comments in her mentions.
Aretha's actual paper was titled "Microaggression or Overthinking?" The 22-page essay begins with an overview of what microaggressions are, explaining the term as "subtle racism [or] casual degradation of any minority group that neither the victim nor perpetrator may entirely understand." The 17-year-old also included a survey of her classmates to find out how many of them have experienced microaggressions while in school; her findings show that nearly half of her peers answered affirmatively to many of the questions.
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While speaking with Teen Vogue, Aretha explained that she decided to write this particular paper after receiving an "overwhelming amount of microaggressions" from students that she thought of as friends. She added: "I knew they were unaware of their actions, but nevertheless, I wanted to bring awareness to the issue at hand in an informative way."
And bring awareness to the issue is exactly what she did. In addition to including her classmates' experiences, Aretha compiled data from psychologists who have concluded that microaggressions can be harmful because of their invisibility to others. "People of color, when encountered with microaggression, experience an internal dilemma," the 17-year-old writes in her essay. "They begin questioning themselves asking, 'Did I interpret that right? Should I say something? Am I overreacting? What did [they] mean by that?' Often times, the victim may not address the issue at hand which is detrimental to their health and they may not even know it."
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From Aretha's perspective, the presentation certainly made an impact on her classmates. "Throughout my presentation, they grew more interested in my topic and were pretty much speechless," she tells Teen Vogue. "I didn't hold back, but I didn't attack anyone either."
Thanks to social media, her paper has now resonated with thousands of other people – something that Aretha did not expect. "The amount of recognition I'm getting on Twitter makes my heart flutter and phone freeze," she says. "I'm getting different responses, but the majority of the responses are positive. I was surprised that this many people wanted to see the essay. Though, that was my goal. For people to become aware." It's safe to say that her goal was certainly achieved.
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