Mapping microaggressions on a Southern University Campus: Where are the safe spaces for vulnerable students?

Abstract

When leaders at institutions of higher education downplay everyday incivilities directed against racial and other minority groups, it can obscure the magnitude of intergroup antipathy at these schools. At the most prominent university in the only state whose flag contains the Confederate emblem, we wondered whether reports of so-called microaggressions were more common than university leaders sometimes suggest, more frequent in certain campus spaces than in others, and likely to invoke the South and its history. Using online diaries, we collected 1,301 accounts of incidents from 684 students during the 2014–2015 academic year. Our mixed-method approach revealed widespread incivilities, many of them blatant, both on and off campus. Microaggressions in classrooms were less frequent but as blatant as those in living spaces, and reports of environmental microaggressions seemed particularly likely to invoke students’ references to the history of the region. This research suggests the value of using online diaries as a method for understanding the everyday experiences of vulnerable students at predominantly white institutions of higher learning.