Courses on the NHS Leadership Academy’s website include a lecture from an actress who has said that people born in Britain cannot avoid being prejudiced as Britain is a country that legalised oppression.
The actress Nova Reid delivered a Ted-X talk where she declared that; “regular exposure to racial microaggressions can cause more harm than overt acts of hate.”
According to The Times:
In the 2019 Ted-X talk, Nova Reid warned that people subjected to repeated microaggressions can develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
She cited examples such as racially insensitive questions including “where are you from?”, “your hair’s like a sponge, can I touch it?” and “are your family cleaners?”
Reid, an author and former actress from Hertfordshire, describes herself as on a “mission to improve racial injustice”. She runs an online course with a £1,074 enrolment fee, including VAT.
The term microaggression is thought to have been coined by the American psychiatrist Chester Pierce in the 1970s.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a microaggression as a “statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalised group”.
Reid said in the talk: “They are a form of everyday discrimination that we have learnt. [It is] an inevitable and unavoidable byproduct of being born into and living in a country that legalised oppression [and] that financially benefited from oppression for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
Reading out a 2015 piece of research, she added: “Regular exposure to racial microaggressions can cause more harm than overt acts of hate.”
Last year civil servants were told not to use the expression “black mark” as part of the Cabinet Office’s online lessons on allyship, privilege and microaggressions for Black History Month.
The NHS Leadership Academy offers training and resources to develop leaders. among individual staff, organisations and local academies.
Sources at NHS England stressed that the NHS Leadership Academy courses were not mandatory. A spokesman said: “This is not an NHS video and these online courses are not part of any required training.”
Microaggressions. Manna from heaven for a minority with a chip on his shoulder. All that matters is the perception of the complainant. The accused has no chance. It matters not that you haven’t done or said anything to offend anyone.
He feels your unconscious bias, therefore it must be real. To deny it is to gaslight him.
Madness.
