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Any one microaggression alone may be minimally impactful, but when they occur continuously throughout a life span, their cumulative nature can have major detrimental consequences (Holmes & Holmes, 1970; Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Jones, Peddie, Gilrane, King, & Gray, 2016; Meyer, 1995, 2003; Utsey, Giesbrecht, Hook, & Stanard, 2008; Utsey & Ponterotto, 1996). Many White individuals, for example, fail to realize that people of color are, from the moment of birth, subjected to multiple racial microaggressions from the media, peers, neighbors, friends, teachers, and even in the educational process and/or curriculum itself. These insults, invalidations, and indignities are so pervasive that they often are unrecognized. In this chapter, we contextualize racial and gender microaggressions in larger systems of oppression and apply the concepts to the two examples provided earlier in the chapter.

Similar to Philomena Essed's (1991) concept of everyday racism, racial microaggressions reflect a complex relationship between microinteractions and macrostructures. In other words, everyday racism and racial microaggressions are manifestations of systemic inequities in the larger society (e.g., income, wealth, education, and health disparities). Racial microaggressions often go unnoticed and unacknowledged because they seem so familiar in everyday settings, such as classrooms, shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, and offices. Next we describe social psychologist James Jones's levels of racism to highlight the dynamic interplay between microacts and macrostructures (Jones, 1997). Racial microaggressions are commonplace and make sense only in a world rife with institutional inequities grounded in the cultural superiority of the dominant group.

“Racism” may be defined as any attitude, action, institutional structure, or social policy that subordinates persons or groups because of their racial group membership (Jones, 1997; Ponterotto, Utsey, & Pedersen, 2006). The subordination of people of color is manifested in inferior housing, education, employment, and health services (D. W. Sue, 2003). The complex manifestation of racism occurs at three different levels: individual, institutional, and cultural (Jones, 1997; Jones & Rolon‐Dow, 2018). All of these manifestations vary in their degree of overtness and conscious intentionality.