Microaggressions in the United States

Kiara Wyndham Douds, Michael Hout

Sociological Science November 2, 2020
10.15195/v7.a22


“Microaggressions” is the term scholars and cultural commentators use to describe the ways that racism and other systems of oppression are upheld in everyday interactions. Although prior research has documented the types of microaggressions that individuals experience, we have lacked representative data on the prevalence of microaggressions in the general population. We introduce and evaluate five new survey items from the 2018 General Social Survey intended to capture five types of microaggressions. We assess the prevalence of each microaggression as well as a constructed microaggression scale across a key set of sociodemographic characteristics. We find that black Americans experience more microaggressions than other racialized groups, twice the rate of the general public for some types. Younger people report more microaggressions than older people. Women are more likely to report some types of microaggressions, and men others. Experiencing microaggressions is associated with an array of negative physical and mental health outcomes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kiara Wyndham Douds: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: kiara.douds@nyu.edu

Michael Hout: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: mikehout@nyu.edu

Acknowledgments: This research was conducted with institutional support from New
York University and no external funding.

  • Citation: Douds, Kiara Wyndham, and Michael Hout. 2020. “Microaggressions in the United States.” Sociological Science 7: 528-543.
  • Received: September 11, 2020
  • Accepted: September 25, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a22


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