After Pierce and Sue: A Revised Racial Microaggressions Taxonomy

Abstract

Harvard psychiatrist Chester Pierce’s conception of “subtle and stunning” daily racial offenses, or microaggressions, remains salient even 50 years after it was introduced. Microaggressions were defined further by Sue and colleagues in 2007, and this construct has found growing utility as the deleterious effects of microaggressions on the health of people of color continues to mount. Many studies seek to frame microaggressions in terms of a taxonomic analysis of offender behavior to inform the assessment of and interventions for the reduction of racial microaggressions. This article proposes an expansion and refinement of Sue et al.’s taxonomy to better inform such efforts. We conducted a review of published articles that focused on qualitative and quantitative findings of microaggressions taxonomies ( N = 32). Sixteen categories of racial microaggressions were identified, largely consistent with the original taxonomy of Sue et al. but expanded in several notable ways. Building on our prior research, other researchers supported such new categories as tokenism, connecting via stereotypes, exoticization and eroticization, and avoidance and distancing. The least studied categories included the denial of individual racism from Sue et al., and newer categories included reverse-racism hostility, connecting via stereotypes, and environmental attacks. A unified language of microaggressions may improve understanding and measurement of this important construct.