power, privilege, and everyday life.

this project is a response to “it’s not a big deal” - “it” is a big deal.  ”it” is in the everyday.  ”it” is shoved in your face when you are least expecting it.  ”it” happens when you expect it the most.  ”it” is a reminder of your difference.  ”it” enforces difference.  ”it” can be painful.  ”it” can be laughed off.  ”it” can slide unnoticed by either the speaker, listener or both.  ”it” can silence people.  ”it” reminds us of the ways in which we and people like us continue to be excluded and oppressed.  ”it” matters because these relate to a bigger “it”: a society where social difference has systematic consequences for the “others.” 

but “it” can create or force moments of dialogue.  

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This blog seeks to provide a visual representation of the everyday of “microaggressions.” Each event, observation and experience posted is not necessarily particularly striking in and of themselves. Often, they are never meant to hurt - acts done with little conscious awareness of their meanings and effects. Instead, their slow accumulation during a childhood and over a lifetime is in part what defines a marginalized experience, making explanation and communication with someone who does not share this identity particularly difficult. Social others are microaggressed hourly, daily, weekly, monthly.

This project is NOT about showing how ignorant people can be in order to simply dismiss their ignorance. Instead, it is about showing how these comments create and enforce uncomfortable, violent and unsafe realities onto peoples’ workplace, home, school, childhood/adolescence/adulthood, and public transportation/space environments. 

The term “microaggressions” was originally coined to speak particularly to racialized experiences.

“Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.”  - “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life”

This blog, however, is a space to extend this concept to different socially constructed identities that embody privilege in different ways - sexuality, class, religion, education level, to name a few - in hopes of making visible the ways in which social difference is produced and policed in everyday lives through comments of people around you.

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This project was founded in 2010 and is in a state of constant revision. If you have any comments, questions or ideas, please email editors@microaggressions.com!

Learn more:

Featured in The New York Times, Bitch Magazine, Racialicious, Ms. Magazine, The Line Campaign, Feministing, Scientific American Blog Network, New Hampshire Public Radio, and Buzzfeed. 20,000+ Tumblr followers and growing!