Microaggressions and Macro-Injustices: How Everyday Interactions Reinforce and Perpetuate Social Systems of Dominance and Oppression

Abstract

In this article, we draw from a range of scholarly disciplines to connect the “micro” to the “macro,” revealing microaggressions to be an integral component of systems of social oppression and injustice. Our broad framework locates microaggressions in the larger context of micro-interactions, the minute components of everyday interactions comprised of gestures, facial expressions and words. Applying a lens from theory and research in social cognition, it becomes clear why these tiny acts that constitute the “lingua franca” of social interaction exert such significant impact on individual experiences and social behaviors. The impact and even the occurrence of microaggressions, most often based in race, gender, and sexual orientation, are often denied or disputed by members of dominant classes who commit them despite the testimony of harm by targeted-class individuals who receive them. Our framework helps to illuminate why the experiences of people who commit microaggressions are often so disparate from people who receive them and, also why microaggressions contain such power over the recipient. Further, the role of microaggressions in sustaining the very macro–systems of oppression and structural injustice from which they arise has been largely overlooked in scholarly analysis. In part, this lacuna results from the fact that different scholarly disciplines use different lenses to analyze social systems. For example, psychology focuses primarily on individuals and interpersonal interactions, while sociology explores mostly populations and social norms. Through encompassing both of these disciplines, and others, our framework recognizes that a multitude of interactions between individual people leads to emergent characteristics at the population level. These characteristics in turn affect individual experience and behavior. The micro constructs the macro; the macro shapes the micro.

Keywords: microaggressions, systems, injustice, dominance, oppression

JEL Classification: Y