Moving Beyond Obfuscating Racial Microaggression Discourse

Abstract

In this article, we argue that the concept of racial microaggression is a white supremacy construct that is an ideological and discursive anti‐Black practice. We discuss how microaggressions’ reduction of historical and hegemonic white supremacy to everyday relations that are merely performative, not integral to sustaining such larger forces, is an analytical shortcoming. We contend that without the adequate heft of historical white supremacy as a part of capitalist and colonial expansion, genocide, and Indigenous erasure, microaggression scholars will remain enthralled with the idea that individual behavior changes can eradicate anti‐Black violence.