ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: MICROAGGRESSIONS AS A WOC IN CONGRESS

An article published by CBS on November 15th, 2018 followed an online thread of microaggressions committed against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the soon-to-be Congresswoman for New York’s 14th district. Ocasio-Cortez, who recently visited the House of Representatives, tweeted that in a period of 48 hours she was mistaken for the spouse of a member of Congress and an intern. Such assumptions are testaments to how symbolic annihilation is perpetuated in our everyday lives. These people who redirected Ocasio-Cortez or mistook her for an intern or a spouse are simply abiding by social rules which have been ingrained in them through white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, and further ingrained in them through a lack of representation of racial or gender-based diversity in media and in government. What you see matters; who you hear matters. Marginalized populations are the only populations who are forced to learn this lesson through personal experiences, ones that often are traumatic, violent, or denigrating.