Keep the initial conversation short and schedule a time to talk about it later to give the other person time to think things over, Buchanan suggests. But if the microaggressor is someone closely connected to you, you don't want to burn bridges by being overly blunt.
If the person committing the microaggression is someone you don't care about maintaining a relationship with, respond however you see fit if it seems safe to do so, says NiCole Buchanan, PhD, an associate professor of psychology who leads workshops on microaggressions at Michigan State University and beyond. When you're the targetĬonsider the context. Given the ubiquity of microaggressions and the harm they cause, how can you help stop them? Here's advice, whether you're the target, a bystander or the perpetrator. In a 2016 literature review in American Psychologist, she and co-authors found that the increase in stress hormones and sleep disruptions elicited by race-based stressors may even contribute to the achievement gap between white and minority students. It can also "consume cognitive resources" as you try to figure out what just happened. "There's uncertainty about whether or not your experience was due to your race, for example, or due to something unrelated, such as the other person being in a bad mood or having a bad day," says Levy, a visiting assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences. Levy, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University's Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society. The fact that microaggressions are often subtle can make them harder to shake off than more overt forms of discrimination, says psychologist Dorainne J. "Everyone, including marginalized group members, harbors biases and prejudices and can act in discriminatory and hurtful ways toward others." "No one is immune from inheriting racial, gender and sexual orientation biases," says Derald Wing Sue, PhD, a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College of Columbia University, who studies multicultural counseling and racism. In a study published in Educational Researcher in 2015, for example, psychologist Carola Suárez-Orozco, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, observed microaggressions in almost a third of the 60 community college classrooms she and her team studied, most committed by instructors. Microaggressions-the brief statements or behaviors that, intentionally or not, communicate a negative message about a non-dominant group-are everyday occurrences for many people. "You'd be pretty if you lost some weight."