Racial Justice Resources for Activists, Advocates & Allies

Dr. Sue classifies microaggressions under three distinct categories:

• Microassaults: Microassaults (otherwise known as “old-fashioned” racism, sexism, or heterosexism) are conscious and deliberate biased attitudes communicated to marginalized groups through environmental cues, verbalizations, or behaviors. Examples of this behavior include Mel Gibson’s well-remembered drunken, anti-Semitic tirade or racist epithets, like “coon,” “raghead,” or “cracker.”  
• Microinsults: Microinsults are subtle snubs and behaviors that communicate a belief in denigrating stereotypes against marginalized groups. For example, if a female technology expert appeared for a technology assistance request, and the person seeking help asked her, “Are you sure you know what you are doing?”
• Microinvalidations: Microinvalidations are communications or environmental cues that exclude and/or negate the experiential reality of marginalized groups. For example, the “I don’t see color” assertion, intrinsically denies a person of color’s racial experiences by implying that those differences do not exist.   (Derald Wing Sue, ACRL)

Microaggressions in the Classroom

Yolanda Flores Niemann is Professor of Psychology at the University of North Texas (UNT), she has recently developed a faculty training video to help prevent faculty to student microaggressions

Eliminating Microaggressions: The Next Level of Inclusion | Tiffany Alvoid: Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group. In this Talk Tiffany, lays out how this behavior manifests itself, the role you play, and what you can do to avoid perpetuating its continued existence in society.

How unintentional but insidious bias can be the most harmful: National attention has been focused on overt racial tensions on college campuses across the country. But what about smaller, subtle, more persistent forms of racism? Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault speaks to Derald Wing Sue of Teachers College at Columbia University about the ways that everyday “microaggressions” can affect people.

Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Bestselling author Derald Wing Sue explains what a microaggression is, how it manifests itself, how it impacts people, and what can be done to address it.