“You’re pretty for a black girl,” “You act white,” “You sound white,” “Is that your real hair, ” “No, where are you actually from,” are just some of many rude comments that people say to People of Color to downgrade or to belittle them. These insults are called racial microaggressions.  

According to Psychology Today, racial microaggressions are defined as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults towards people of color.” The term first came around about the late ’60s, early ’70s, after the civil rights era when expressions of racism were used by non- colored people, which was seen often and could be very violent. Racial microaggressions are beliefs and everyday exchanges that send diminishing messages to people of an underrepresented ethnic group. These messages can be sent verbally, nonverbally, or environmental. 

Racial microaggressions come in three forms: Microassaults, Microinsults, and  Microinvalidations.

Microassaults are biased beliefs, actions, or slurs through racial name-calling, avoidant behavior, or purposeful discriminatory actions. Referring to someone as “oriental” or “colored”, preventing interracial relationships, displaying symbols like swastikas, etc… These are all examples of microassaults. Microassaults are generally large scale acts of racism such as riots, cross-burning, lynches, separate facilities based on race, hate crimes, etc… Microassaults are most similar to “old fashioned racism.” When people are doing these actions they are conscious of the message they are putting out and do it intentionally.

Microinsults are behavioral or verbal comments/ remarks that convey rudeness and insensitivity  that demand a person’s racial heritage or identity. Microinsults are commonly subtle, ambiguous, and presented as compliments most of the time because the person is usually unconscious of the underlying insult behind their comment but the recipient usually is very conscious of the message behind their comment. An example of this would be telling a person of color, “You’re so articulate,” which the underlying message is it’s unusual for someone of your race to be intelligent. Another example would be telling a well-spoken person of color that they, “sound white.” Microinsults are the most commonly used form of microaggressions.

Microinvalidations are comments or behaviors that attack or deny the experiences, feelings, and thoughts of people of color. Another way it could be explained is when someone tells or implies to someone that their experiences of discrimination aren’t real. When people say Microinvalidation comments they never realize they’re saying something harmful because that’s not their intention to do harm but in reality, it’s very harmful. An example of a microinvalidation would be someone telling a friend a microaggression they’ve just experienced, but their friend tells them that they’re just imagining things, or just reading too much into it. Another example would be a person telling someone that they’re being oversensitive. Phrases like these are meant to smooth over the attacker’s discomfort of the situation and dismiss the racialized experience of people of color. 

Believe it or not, we see all these forms of racial microaggressions in everyday life in some shape or form. They’re everywhere you go especially in the work and school environment. Students of color actually have experienced more than one form of microaggression within their schooling career. Some examples of racial microaggressions in the classrooms would be failing to learn to pronounce or continuing to mispronounce the names of students after they have corrected you, singling students out in class because of their backgrounds, using inappropriate humor in class that degrades students from different groups, ignoring student‐to‐student microaggressions, ect…. There’s an ongoing list of microaggressions in schools that would unfortunately never stop.

Here at Lake Shore High School, unfortunately, microaggressions are used all the time. Being a diverse school there’s many ethnicities that go here which is great, but also opens up the door for bullying especially towards PoC. For example, an incident involving a Caucasian student using very inappropriate racial slurs and being very aggressive toward an African American student who did nothing to the student at all. Another example, would be the racial slurs the Chinese exchange students have to endure while studying here. At school, all students should feel welcomed and included, but, unfortunately, sometimes that isn’t the case.        

Racial microaggressions are more than just insults, thoughtless comments, and generalized rude behavior. To be specific, they’re remarks, questions, or actions that are very painful because they are directed toward a person who identifies in a group that is often discriminated against or are  automatically subjected to stereotyping. This may cause them to question themselves. What makes this even worse is that this just happens casually, frequently, and very often in everyday life.