Microaggression

Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups. The term was coined by psychiatrist and Harvard University professor Chester M. Pierce in 1970 to describe insults and dismissals which he regularly witnessed non-black Americans inflicting on African Americans. By the early 21st century, use of the term was applied to the casual degradation of any socially marginalized group, including LGBT, people living in poverty, and disabled people. Psychologist Derald Wing Sue defines microaggressions as 'brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership'. The persons making the comments may be otherwise well-intentioned and unaware of the potential impact of their words....many of the implicit messages posited by Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups. The term was coined by psychiatrist and Harvard University professor Chester M. Pierce in 1970 to describe insults and dismissals which he regularly witnessed non-black Americans inflicting on African Americans. By the early 21st century, use of the term was applied to the casual degradation of any socially marginalized group, including LGBT, people living in poverty, and disabled people. Psychologist Derald Wing Sue defines microaggressions as 'brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership'. The persons making the comments may be otherwise well-intentioned and unaware of the potential impact of their words. A number of scholars and social commentators have critiqued the microaggression concept for its lack of scientific basis, over-reliance on subjective evidence, and promotion of psychological fragility. Critics argue that avoiding behaviours that one interprets as microaggressions restricts one's own freedom and causes emotional self-harm, and that employing authority figures to address microaggressions can lead to an atrophy of those skills needed to mediate one's own disputes. Some argue that, because the term 'microaggression' uses language connoting violence to describe verbal conduct, it can (and is) abused to exaggerate harm, resulting in retribution and the elevation of victimhood. Microaggressions have been defined as brief and common daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental communications, whether intentional or unintentional, that transmit hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to a target person because they belong to a stigmatized group. Although these communications typically appear harmless to observers, they are considered a form of covert racism or everyday discrimination. Microaggressions differ from what Pierce referred to as “macroaggressions”, which are more extreme forms of racism (such as lynchings or beatings) due to their ambiguity, size and commonality. Microaggressions are experienced by most stigmatized individuals and occur on a regular basis. These can be particularly stressful for people on the receiving end as they are easily denied by those committing them. They are also harder to detect by members of the dominant culture, as they are often unaware they are causing harm. Sue describes microaggressions as including statements that repeat or affirm stereotypes about the minority group or subtly demean its members. Such comments also position the dominant culture as normal and the minority one as aberrant or pathological, express disapproval of or discomfort with the minority group, assume that all minority group members are the same, minimize the existence of discrimination against the minority group, seek to deny the perpetrator's own bias, or minimize real conflict between the minority group and the dominant culture. In conducting two focus groups with Asian-Americans, for instance, Sue proposed eight distinct themes of racial microaggression: In a 2017 peer-reviewed review of the literature, Scott Lilienfeld critiqued microaggression research for hardly having advanced beyond taxonomies such as the above, which was proposed by Sue nearly ten years earlier. While acknowledging the reality of 'subtle slights and insults directed toward minorities', Lilienfeld concluded that the concept and programs for its scientific assessment are 'far too underdeveloped on the conceptual and methodological fronts to warrant real-world application'. He recommended abandonment of the term microaggression since 'the use of the root word 'aggression' in 'microaggression' is conceptually confusing and misleading'. In addition, he called for a moratorium on microaggression training programs until further research can develop the field. In 2017 Althea Nagai, who works as a research fellow at the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, published an article criticizing microaggression research as pseudoscience. Nagai said that the prominent critical race researchers behind microaggression theory 'reject the methodology and standards of modern science.' She lists various technical shortcomings of microaggression research, including 'biased interview questions, reliance on narrative and small numbers of respondents, problems of reliability, issues of replicability, and ignoring alternative explanations.' Social scientists Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal, and Torino (2007) described microaggressions as 'the new face of racism', saying that the nature of racism has shifted over time from overt expressions of racial hatred and hate crimes, toward expressions of aversive racism, such as microaggressions, that are more subtle, ambiguous, and often unintentional. Sue says this has led some Americans to believe wrongly that non-white Americans no longer suffer from racism. One example of such subtle expressions of racism is Asian students being either pathologized or penalized as too passive or quiet. Another is a teacher correcting a student's use of 'indigenous' in a paper by changing it from upper- to lowercase. According to Sue et al., microaggressions seem to appear in three forms: Some psychologists have criticized microaggression theory for assuming that all verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities are necessarily due to bias. Thomas Schacht says that it is uncertain whether a behavior is due to racial bias or is a larger phenomenon that occurs regardless of identity conflict. However, Kanter and colleagues found that microaggressions were robustly correlated to five separate measures of bias. In reviewing the microaggression literature, Scott Lilienfeld suggested that microassaults should probably be struck from the taxonomy because the examples provided in the literature tend not to be 'micro', but are outright assaults, intimidation, harassment and bigotry; in some cases, examples have included criminal acts. Others have pointed out that what could be perceived as subtle snubs could be due to people having conditions such as autism or social anxiety disorders, and assuming ill will could be harmful to these people.