Page 185 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

Racial Microaggressions and Native Americans 159

about discussing these matters for fear that those in power may use
the issue to assuage their own feelings of guilt and racism, to serve as a
“divide and conquer ploy,” and to divert action away from the injustices
of society. Yet, understanding and dealing with interethnic and inter-
racial microaggressions is as necessary as acknowledging and dealing
with the hidden prejudices of all groups.
• If research on racial microaggressions is to advance, there must be the
development of measurement instruments that allow us to quantify their
manifestations before we can begin to truly understand their detrimental
impacts on people of color. Currently, instruments that measure race-
related stress, perceived ethnic discrimination, and schedules of racist
events/racial hassles exist. However, the items in these measures are
generally confounded by a lack of distinction between overt old-fashioned
racism, aversive racism, and their more subtle manifestations: no instrument
currently distinguishes between the forms of microaggressions (assaults,
insults, and invalidations), whether they are from perpetrator or target, and
their degrees of conscious intentionality. Developing such instruments will
allow us to quantify the microaggressions experienced by populations
of color, to distinguish between ethnic-specific manifestations, and to

allow research into their detrimental impact (physical, psychological, and
standard-of-living factors).
In the study of racial microaggressions, there are many unanswered
questions. It is incumbent upon our profession to begin systematically to
acknowledge, understand, and unmask the dynamics, power, and impacts
of these forms of oppression so that intervention strategies can be devel-
oped to aid in stopping the constant denigration of people of color.

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