Microaggression - Other Forms of Microaggression

Other Forms of Microaggression

Microaggressions can take a number of different forms, for example, questioning the existence of racial-cultural issues, making stereotypic assumptions, and cultural insensitivity. Some other types of microaggressions that have been identified include Colorblindness (e.g., "I don't think of you as Black. You are just a normal person"), Denial of personal bias (e.g., "I'm not homophobic; I even have gay friends."), and Minimization of racial-cultural issues (e.g., "Just because you feel alone in this group doesn't mean that there's a racial issue involved."). "Colorblindness" in particular has been associated with higher levels of racism and lower levels of empathy.

Racial Microaggressions

The concept of racial microaggressions is one of the relative new contributions of Social Psychology to the understanding of factors that influence intergroup relations. Commonplace, public experiences or situations such as being stopped for a check-up at an airport, being ignored by a waiter/waitress at a restaurant or being assigned to a particular task by an employer, might seem irrelevant or innocuous situations under most circumstances. However, when such situations are interpreted as being linked to racial differences, they become distinct, and take on a different connotation. As a result, people subjected to them (racial minorities) may experience emotional pain or other negative feelings.

Supporters of the theory argue that racial microaggressions are reported to be common, including among people who think of themselves as being fair and nonracist, and who have received multicultural training.

According to P.C. Davis (1989), microaggression is enabled because “cognitive habit, history, and culture unable to hear the range of relevant voices and grapple with what reasonably might be said in the voice of discrimination’s victims”.