It has been more than 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in America, outlawing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; nonetheless, ethnic and racial disparities in mental-health care stubbornly persist. These dis- parities have several causes, including the experience of stigma itself, which is often embodied in a covert form of racism known as a microaggression (Pierce, 1970; Sue et al., 2007).

Almost 50 years ago, Chester Pierce described “subtle and stunning” daily racial offenses, known as microaggressions, and suggested therapeutic processes to address the deleterious effects that these acts had on the health and well-being of targeted groups (Pierce, 1970). Pierce’s seminal description of the construct of microaggressions laid the groundwork for Sue, Capodilupo, and colleagues (2007), who defined racial microaggressions as subtle, daily, and unintentional racial slights committed against members of racialized groups. As described by Pierce and Sue et al., this phenomenon is similar to what has been termed everyday racism (Essed, 1991) and is characterized by small instances (...)

Pierce, who invented the term, intended microaggressions to be an umbrella for all types of covert racism. Microaggressions are transactional; as such, both sides of the transaction are important and should be fully appreciated. The language should not be changed simply because offenders object to being considered aggressors without considering the perspectives of the targets as well. Freeman and Stewart (2019) argue that the term microaggression is fair and balanced because the term “micro” reflects the perspective of the offender (small offense) and “aggression” reflects the perspective of the victim (aggressive act). On the other side of the coin, some (...)

Microaggressions persist because the underlying cause of these behaviors (racism) reinforces social inequalities and hierarchies that are desirable to the in-group at the expense of the out-group. According to social-dominance theory (Pratto, 1999), group-based inequalities are reinforced through inter-group behaviors, including behavioral asymmetry (which applies to microaggressions) and individual discrimination (Sidanius & Pratto, 2012). These behaviors are justified, both morally and intellectually, by widely shared legitimizing cultural myths (Sidanius, Pratto, & Devereux, 1992), giving rise to false stereotypes that ultimately serve to reinforce and propagate inequality. Substantial evidence from social psychology supports the application of social-dominance theory to many forms (...)

Like microaggressions, everyday racism and everyday discrimination include covert prejudice, are commonplace, and are rooted in power differentials between groups. Therefore, many if not most microaggressions can be conceptualized as manifestations of everyday racism and discrimination. A robust body of literature using national samples has linked everyday discrimination to negative mental and physical health outcomes across racial and ethnic groups

As noted, microaggressions are not simply cultural missteps or racial faux pas, but function as a form of oppression designed to reinforce the traditional power differential between groups whether or not this was the conscious intention of the offender.

Lilienfeld argued that because such actions are not always intentional, and intention is required for aggression, the term microaggression is inaccurate and should be changed. Microaggressions are part of an ideological social system that confers benefits to the dominant group at the expense of the subordinate group (Bonilla-Silva, 2004; Essed, 1991; Phillips & Lowery, 2018). As such, they are in fact intentional, although the intentionality may represent individual bias in the offender (conscious or unconscious) or may be the manifestation of the aggressive goals of the dominant group, taught to unwitting actors through observational learning or other social mechanisms.

While overt denigrations are not microaggressions, they represent the systemic effects of unacknowledged injustice, maintaining an institution of cis-sexism and a cis-normative culture that privileges and normalizes cisgender experiences. Thus the invisibility of microaggressions and other cis-sexist actions plays a significant role in maintaining the power of the dominant gender system.

Avoidance, exclusion, and ostracization are all recognized in psychology as forms of aggression (Ren, Wesselmann, & Williams, 2018), and many microaggressions fall into this category.

Microaggressions: The everyday slights and insults that minoritized people endure and dominant people don’t notice or concern themselves with.

Microaggressions are commonplace, interpersonally communicated, ‘‘othering’’ messages related to a person’s perceived marginalized status (Pierce et al. 1977; Sue 2010). These denigrations are often active manifestations of derogatory stereo- types. Invisible to many deliverers and recipients, they reproduce oppression on the interpersonal level. Examining microaggressions lays bare distinct ways in which gender as a dynamic system of power takes shape in trans and gender- nonconforming people’s everyday lives.

Racial microaggressions are described as “subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward racial minorities, often automatically or unconsciously” (Solorzano et al. 2000). They are hidden in everyday interactions and the undetectable tendency helps to widen the gap of racial realities. Most White Americans experience themselves as decent human beings who believe in equality, and thus find it difficult to believe they harbor biased racial attitudes and express discriminatory behaviors. The cumulative nature of these innocuous expressions is detrimental to racial minorities because they sap the energy of recipients which impairs performance in multitude of settings (Omi and Winant 1994; (...)

Sue et al. (2007a, b) also identified nine common themes of racial microaggressions that fall in one of the three major categories - alien one’s own land, ascription of intelligence, color blindness, assumption of criminality, denial of racism, myth of meritocracy, pathologizing cultural norms, second-class citizenship, and environmental invalidation.

Sue (in press) has made a strong case that racial microaggressions are different from “everyday rudeness” in the following ways. They are (a) constant and continual in the lives of people of color, (b) cumulative in nature and represent a lifelong burden of stress, (c) continuous reminders of the target group’s second-class status in society, and (d) symbolic of past governmental injustices directed toward people of color (enslavement of Black people, incarceration of Japanese Americans, and appropriating land from Native Americans). In one revealing study on Asian Americans, for example, Wang, Leu, and Shoda (2011) found that race-based microaggressions were (...)

Besides manifesting stereotypes, many microaggressions targeting trans and gender-nonconforming people are active manifestations of conventional ways of thinking about gender. Due to the dearth of accurate information on transgender phenomena in public circulation, microaggressors misunderstand or misinterpret trans and gender-nonconforming people’s gender identities, invalidating their experiences of reality and at times conflating sexual nonnormativity with gender nonnormativity. Microaggressors address trans people with incorrect gender pronouns, call them by former names, inquire about their ‘‘real’’ identity, ask them to explain their gender identity, and deny or fail to acknowledge their pronouns, name, or identity

[Microagression type no.] 4. False color blindness/invalidating racial or ethnic identity
Color blindness includes statements that indicate a person does not want to acknowledge race and instead focus on shared humanity (Sue et al., 2007). People of color may welcome the idea that they could be treated equally by others rather than being racialized. However, they do not actually believe that their race is unseen or unnoticed by those individuals professing color blindness. For this reason, the category is renamed here as “false color blindness” to highlight the various examples in the data and the literature in which color blindness (...)

6. Denial of individual racism
In contrast to false color blindness, this type of microaggression occurs when a person asserts a lack of racial bias, generally in response to perceived scrutiny of their behavior. This assertion may be expressed through one’s friendship or social connections with other people of color or elaborating on past antiracist things that the person has done. Although described at length by Sue et al. (2007), no validated measures focus on this facet of microaggressions. Minikel-Lacocque (2013) described this as “the contested microaggression.” When used as a response to criticism, it can be invalidating to people (...)

7. Myth of meritocracy/race is irrelevant for success
This microaggression occurs when people deny the ongoing existence of systemic racism or harmful discriminatory behavior, specifically in regard to personal achievement or barriers to achievement. They embrace the myth of meritocracy and the notion that the determinants of success are unequivocally rooted in personal efforts, refuting that White privilege is an unearned benefit resulting in tangible differences in outcomes at a personal or societal level.

16. Environmental attacks
This category [of Microaggressions] is intended to describe situations in which decorations or depictions pose a known affront or insult to a person’s cultural group, history, or heritage (e.g., buildings named after slave owners, Confederate monuments, Columbus Day). We split this category from the larger category of environmental microaggressions to capture these particularly hurtful and often frightening depictions (e.g., Desai & Abeita, 2017; Murty & Vyas, 2017), which have been an ongoing source of consternation, public attention, and institutional resistance (Crowe, 2018).

“Misgendering” involves referring to a trans person using an incorrect pronoun or name, and represents one of the most common microaggressions experienced by trans people in clinical and research settings.

Cultural racism has been identified as the individual and institutional expression of the superiority of one group’s cultural heritage (arts, crafts, language, traditions, religion, physical appearance, etc.) over another group with the power to impose those standards (Jones, 1997). Its ultimate manifestation is ethnocentric monoculturalism (Sue & Sue, 2016), or in the case of the United States, an ideology of White supremacy that justifies policies, practices and structures which result in social arrangements of subordination for groups of color through power and White privilege. Huber and Solorzano (2014) used the term macroaggression to refer to the power of institutional and (...)

Microaggressors address trans people with incorrect gender pronouns, call them by former names, inquire about their ‘‘real’’ identity, ask them to explain their gender identity, and deny or fail to acknowledge their pronouns, name, or identity (Nadal, Skolnik, and Wong 2012; Nordmarken 2012; Nordmarken and Kelly, forthcoming). This ‘‘misgendering’’ takes place because microaggressors assume that they have the ability to know a trans person’s ‘‘true’’ identity and that their perception of a trans person is more valid than the trans person’s own self-knowledge - what Julia Serano calls ‘‘gender entitlement’’ (2007: 9). Gender entitlement and the cultural conflation of sexed (...)

Given the immense harm inflicted on individuals and groups of color via prejudice and discrimination, it becomes imperative for our nation to begin the process of disrupting, dismantling, and disarming the constant onslaught of micro- and macroaggressions. For too long, acceptance, silence, passivity, and inaction have been the predominant, albeit ineffective, strategies for coping with microaggressions. Inaction does nothing but support and proliferate biased perpetrator behaviors which occur at individual, institutional and societal levels.

The bombardment of racial micro/macroaggressions in the life experience of persons of color has been described as a chronic state of “racial battle fatigue” that taxes the resources of target groups

The strategic goals of microinterventions are to (a) make the “invisible” visible, (b) disarm the microaggression, (c) educate the offender about the metacommunications they send, and (d) seek external support when needed.

Likewise, White allies and bystanders cannot intervene when they are unable to recognize that a microaggression has occurred. The first rule of effective intervention is the quality of perspicacity or the ability to see beyond the obvious, to read between the lines, and to deconstruct conscious communications from metacommunications. Being able to decipher the double meanings of microaggressions is often a challenging task. Sternberg (2001) described perspicacity as a quality that goes beyond intellect but encompasses wisdom that allows for a person’s clarity of vision, and penetrating discernment. Racial awareness training has been found to be effective in helping individuals (...)

when Person A describes a microaggression, and Person B approaches this situation with the notion that Person A “could be wrong,” it sets the stage for more microaggressions and relationship damage (or further relationship damage if the offender is the one claiming the target may be wrong). The default response should be belief of a person’s experience, just as we would believe them if they said that we had accidentally slammed the door in their face, left something in the hall that they later tripped over, or mispronounced their last name. It is problematic that a typical response to a (...)

If a person believes a microaggression happened to them when it positively did not happen, and accuracy in this matter is of paramount importance, then the appropriate response would be to have a careful and sensitive discussion about the situation. The response should never be, “You are wrong,” or “That was not a microaggression and here’s why...” This is simply replicating the harmful and invalidating messages people of color experience all the time when trying to engage in a conversation about this problem. The putative offender might instead start the conversation with, “I can see why that felt like a (...)

Lilienfeld (2017b) argued that there is no evidence that the commission of microaggressions is related to racial prejudice. Admittedly, those of us who study microaggressions have not felt a need to prove this because the connection between racism and microaggressions appears evident through our research and lived experiences. But it does make sense that this connection might not be obvious to those who have not been the target of racism. In our initial efforts to develop our measure of microaggression likelihood, we collected data from White students about racial prejudice using several validated measures, which included color-blind, symbolic, and modern (...)

In line with the idea that microaggressions are no more than “ever-smaller specks,” (p. 176), Haidt (2017) emphasizes giving offenders the benefit of the doubt, but neither Lilienfeld nor Haidt discussed the major dangers of ignoring microaggressions. Beyond the physical chronic stress response and mental-health issues linked to these pervasive experiences, microaggressions are indicative of racial prejudice in offenders (Kanter et al., 2017; Mekawi & Todd, 2018); consequently, there could be damaging consequences for ignoring these subtle warning signs. A person of color might decide to trust someone who has microaggressed only to find that person subsequently behaves in a (...)