A Case Study of the Impact of Microaggressions
Understanding the impact of microaggressions at work can be complex and full of nuances. Sometimes, it can be helpful to think of specific cases where microaggressions impacted minority employees specifically to help us understand how this impacts a work environment and our role within it.
Let’s consider now a case study of how microaggressions can impact employees in a workplace setting now. Read through the following scenario below to learn more.
A Case Study On the Experience of Minority Faculty
A case study research conducted by Pittman (2012) examines the experiences of minority faculty members, highlighting the pervasive impact of racial microaggressions.
Microinvalidations: Minority faculty faced exclusion, alienation, and differential treatment by their colleagues. These experiences included subtle undermining of credibility, exclusion from social networks, and being assigned race-specific roles, leading to a feeling of invalidation in their professional environment.
Microinsults: Interactions with students often led to microinsults, challenging the competence, authority, and existence of minority faculty. In addition, being mistaken for service staff, not recognized as professors, and questioned based on racial stereotypes were common, impacting their perceived competence and authority.
Pittman (2012) reported the impact of these microaggressions as follows:
- Emotional Toll: Experiences of microaggressions led to feelings of frustration, alienation, and heightened racial awareness, causing emotional distress and invalidation.
- Professional Challenges: Microaggressions affected professional identity, credibility, and the ability to perform optimally, creating obstacles to career advancement and success in academia.
Additional Responsibilities: In response to these microaggressions, minority faculty members took on supplementary responsibilities beyond their primary roles. They dedicated efforts toward advocating for change, creating safe spaces, mentoring students, and addressing racial issues on campus. These additional obligations increased their workload.
Now that you have read through this case study, let’s take a minute to reflect on what we have learned by answer the following questions below. Take some time to think about how you would answer these questions on your own, or use them to have a discussion with a colleague or peer:
Reflection
- How do you think that both these overt and covert examples of microaggressions would impact the daily work of minority employees in this setting?
- Do you think that these microaggressions could have a long-term impact on both the minority employees and the work environment as a whole?
- What are some institutional and individual level changes that could be made to help counteract these microaggressions experienced by minority employees?
