In April 2019, the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) University Libraries Section Professional Development Committee hosted a webinar called “I Didn’t Mean Anything by It: How Racial Microaggressions are Perceived”. I registered, even though I couldn’t attend live, hoping they would share the recording. I finally watched it at the end of the summer and thought I would share with my GCC colleagues.

I have to commend speaker Audrey Robinson-Nkongola of Western Kentucky University for presenting information on how racial microaggressions can be experienced by people of color. It’s a brave topic to take on these days, and she did a wonderful job of encouraging the participants to think through and examine their words and behaviors in the context of implicit bias, understanding that no one considers themselves explicitly racist. I especially like how the presenter contextualized her “what you can do” information for academia. I will be reading all the materials on her reference list to educate myself further.

If you’d like to check out the webinar, it was recorded and is available on YouTube. The first 22 minutes are the presentation, with research references, and the remaining time is spent on Q&A. I recommend the whole recording, but if you’re low on time, the first 22 minutes present the bulk of the information. In addition, the presentation slides and a supplemental document have been made available on Dropbox. Here are the links:

• Recorded webinar on YouTube
• Presentation slides and supplemental document