Microaggressions

Microaggressions are brief, everyday exchanges — verbal, behavioural, or environmental — that communicate negative, demeaning, or invalidating messages to members of marginalised groups, often without conscious intent. The concept was introduced by psychiatrist Chester Pierce in the 1970s and further developed by psychologist Derald Wing Sue. Three forms are typically distinguished: microinsults, which communicate rudeness or insensitivity based on group membership (commenting on a Black colleague's "articulate" speech in a way that implies surprise); microinvalidations, which exclude or negate the experiences of marginalised groups (telling a person of colour that you "don't see colour," or asking a British-born Asian colleague where they are "really" from); and microassaults, which are more conscious and deliberate acts of discrimination that an individual might still claim were "just a joke."

The intent of the person delivering a microaggression is legally and practically separate from its impact on the recipient. Good intentions do not prevent harm. When someone points out that a comment was a microaggression, the most common unhelpful responses are: denial ("I didn't mean it like that"), centering the deliverer's feelings ("I feel terrible that you took it that way"), or dismissal ("you're being oversensitive"). All of these shift the focus away from the impact and onto the deliverer's discomfort with being told they caused harm. The effective response is to listen to the impact described, acknowledge it, thank the person for the feedback, and consider how to behave differently — without requiring the recipient to perform emotional labour to manage the deliverer's reaction.

The cumulative effect of microaggressions is well-documented and is the reason researchers use the phrase "death by a thousand cuts" to describe the experience. A single interaction that makes you question whether you belong, whether your presence is welcome, or whether your identity is seen as lesser might be manageable in isolation. Repeated daily across months and years — often with no single incident egregious enough to formally complain about — the effect on cognitive load, psychological wellbeing, job engagement, and career trajectory is significant. This cumulative effect is why the response "it was just a comment" misses the point: the comment is not being assessed in isolation, but as one instance of a pattern that the recipient has experienced repeatedly.