microaggression
n. brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or situational indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights or insults, especially toward members of minority or oppressed groups. Microaggression may be intentional (e.g., calling a transgender person a “she-male”) or implicit (e.g., a White employee asking a Black colleague how he or she got a certain job, implying that the colleague may have obtained it through affirmative action or a quota system). Three subtypes have been identified: microassaults, which are purposefully discriminatory actions (e.g., uttering a racial slur, displaying a swastika); microinsults, which are subtle snubs that devalue a person’s identity; and microinvalidations, which are unintentional exclusions or negations of an individual’s thoughts, feelings, or experiences. Research on microaggression is limited but shows that this form of bias can cause recipients
to feel that they are abnormal, inferior, invisible, powerless, or untrustworthy. [introduced in 1970 by U.S. psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce (1927– ); the subtypes were proposed in 2007 by U.S. psychologist Derald Wing Sue]