Let’s Talk About Microaggression in Higher Ed: A Reading of Structural and Personal Inequity

By Zainab Cheema 

Let’s Talk About Microaggression

Let’s talk about microaggressions in Higher Ed. According to Benjamin Reese’s June 2020 article with Inside Higher Ed, there is a significant gap between DEI programming sponsored by colleges and universities following the murder of George Floyd and a real, tangible ecology of inclusion at such Higher Ed spaces. While a majority of universities have embraced diversity and inclusivity trainings, work remains to be done to build deep level structural and interpersonal equity.

Luke Wood has discussed microaggressions directed towards students of color as “race-lighting.” In his Feb 2021 op-ed for Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Wood defines this genre of microaggressions. “Racelighting refers to the process whereby People of Color question their own thoughts and actions due to systematically delivered racialized messages that make them second guess their own lived experiences with racism.” “The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination or macroaggressions, is that people who commit microagressions might not even be aware of them,” says Kevin Nadal, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “When racelighted, People of Color may begin to question their interpretation of reality and begin to wonder if they are being overly sensitive,” observes Wood. 

According to a 2011 article published in The Journal of Negro Education, black men often develop “racial battle fatigue” syndrome after being exposed to “racial climates that are replate with gendered racism, blocked opportunites, and mundane, extreme, environmental stress.” Wood cites this article as a foundation for his theory of race lighting. This syndrome approximates battle fatigue experienced on military battle grounds. This Fordham University photojournal captures the quotidian nature of such put downs that can render them so exhausting.

Microaggressions are especially devastating because of their everyday, mundane nature. Sociologist Derald Sue defines microaggressions as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group.” As Andrew Limbong observes in a June 2020 episode of the NPR podcast Life Kit, “sometimes it’s an insult, other times it’s an errant comment or gesture.” Microaggressions don’t make the news. They can elude water cooler conversations. Often rooted in implicit bias, they escape below the radar because its perpetrators can believe themselves to have good intentions.

Microinsult and Microinvalidation: Faculty and Student Examples 

While there are a number of categories of microaggressions, I’ll highlight two today. The first is Microinsult: “subtle remarks about a person’s minoritized identities that are insensitive, demeaning and rude.” The second is Microinvalidation: “an experience that excludes, negates, and nullifies a person’s minoritized worth or reality.” These categories are drawn from Derald Sue’s research as profiled by Jennifer Crandall and Gina Garcia’s 2016 Higher Education Today article. I’ll offer two spotlights, one faculty-centered and one student-centered.

For the faculty-centered spotlights, I’ll focus on the 2016 article published in the Journal of Black Studies, “Listening to Our Voices: Experiences of Black Faculty at Predominantly White Research Universities With Microaggression.” According to the study of Black faculty members at white institutions, the microaggressions they suffered could be catalogued into seven themes. They included alternating feelings of invisibility and hypervisiblity; qualifications or credentials questioned by other faculty colleagues, staff or students; receiving inadequate mentoring in the workplace; low estimation of their service contributions; self-consciousness regarding choice of speech, language; or clothing; and difficulty determining whether subtle discrimination was race or gender based. Outright racism can be rare. Rather, faculty of color frequently experience microinvalidation of their contributions and space in the campus ecology.  

For the student-centered spotlight, I’ll discuss some examples highlighted in the 2015 Racial Microaggressions Report from the University of Illinois Racial Microaggressions Research Project. The report described students of color describing the unwillingness of white students to sit next to them in class or social spaces. At times, Black or Latinx students overheard groups of white students openly put down the university as depreciated as a result of the presence of minorities. In the words of one African American student from UIU, “In the classroom setting, someone behind me was discussing how [he or she] did not feel that African Americans deserve to be here, and that we only got in because the school has to let ‘them.’” These microinvalidations maligned the worth and intelligence of students of color. They trigger imposter syndrome, which harms the confidence and performance of students of color and reinforce the performance gap between white students and other minorities.

The Pain is Real  

Microaggression hurts. It’s costly on an institutional and personal level. Data shows that it makes faculty and students less productive. In his December 2020 article for Insight into Diversity, “Microaggressions: The Hidden Retention Killer,” Kwadwoh Assensoh highlights how the health and productivity of faculty of color are negatively impacted by microaggressive acts towards them. Moreover, the pain that derives from microaggressive acts are biologically akin to physical pain. Neuroscience shows that social pain activates the same brain circuitry as physical pain. If faculty and students of color are already facing increased barriers within  Higher Ed, then microaggression is another cost that they must pay .