Page 20 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

xviii preface

become visible, they are seen as trivial or small slights that
produce only minimal harm. Fourth, targets are placed in an
unenviable catch-22 position where they are “damned if they
do” (choose to confront the perpetrator) and “damned if they don’t”
(choose to do nothing).
Section Two: Microaggressive Impact on Targets and Perpetrators is
composed of three chapters.
Chapter 4: The Microaggression Process Model: Microaggressions
from Beginning to End describes our most recent findings on what

triggers microaggressions (incidents), how they are perceived by
the recipient, the numerous reactions that can occur, how events are
interpreted, and their impact or consequences. I propose a process
model to understand the various dimensional components of micro-
aggressive dynamic fl ow.
Chapter 5: Microaggressive Stress: Impact on Physical and
Mental Health summarizes the theory and research literature
on the psychological and physical detrimental consequences
that accrue to marginalized groups through microaggressions.
Far from being benign, microaggressions have major mental and
physical health consequences to the targets. The chapter discusses
stress-coping models and makes a strong case that microaggressions
are not only qualitatively different from the hassles of everyday
life, but that they have even stronger effects.
Chapter 6: Microaggressive Perpetrators and Oppression: The
Nature of the Beast is perhaps quite unique because it explores
the consequences of oppression and racial, gender, and sexual-
orientation microaggressions on perpetrators. In other words,
research is beginning to reveal that microaggressions not only
have detrimental impact on targets, but the perpetrators as well.

Some of these findings suggest that perpetrators are likely to
develop a warped sense of reality, callousness, anxiety, guilt, and
other damaging effects.

Section Three: Group-Specific Microaggressions: Race, Gender, and
Sexual Orientation is composed of three chapters.
Chapter 7: Racial/Ethnic Microaggressions and Racism dis-
cusses racial/ethnic minority groups (African American, Asian

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