About the Project

This project is funded by the Molloy College Faculty Professional Center grant program, Academics in Action: Social Justice Circles, and by the Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Sociology Honor Society. It aims to help people within the college to build leadership and communication skills around issues of racial inequity. The project works to build active inclusion in our outreach and programming by countering "passive exclusions" – barriers related to people's self-confidence, time, resources, and language that can prevent them from participating (Young 1999).

As of spring 2021, the Days of Dialogue project consists of two virtual events where students, faculty, and facilitators will share stories and analytical tools to address microaggression in the classroom, on campus, and in the community. The concept of microaggressions was conceived by Harvard psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce in 1970. By developing this theory, Pierce illuminated the negative psychological and physical impacts of subtle forms of everyday racism on black Americans. Our project is indebted to his pioneering work in this field and subsequent researchers, activists, and practitioners that have further cultivated his insights. As he wrote in a 1977 article with colleagues, “An Experiment in Racism,”

"The chief vehicle for proracist behaviors are microaggressions. These are subtle, stunning, often automatic, and nonverbal exchanges which are “put downs” of blacks by offenders. The offensive mechanisms used against blacks often are innocuous. The cumulative weight of their never-ending burden is the major ingredient in black-white interactions. This accounst for a near inevitable perceptual clash between blacks and whites in regard to how a matter is described as well as the emotional charge involved (Pierce et al 1977:65).”

The project also contains an anonymous, living archive of the stories students and faculty choose to share. We call these stories counternarratives. Counternarratives help change institutions and empower marginalized groups by illuminating relevant experiences, surfacing tensions between intentions and impact, and revealing new possibilities (see Delgado 1989; Solórzano and Yosso 2002).

As members of Molloy College, our work is positioned in within a constellation of research, pedagogy, personal experience, and the four pillars of Dominican life. Community, study, spirituality/contemplation, and service form the basis of Molloy's institutional mission. This project extends these values and seeks to deepen our collective understanding of campus life in a rapidly changing world.