Microaggressions are subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously. Using critical race theory as a framework, the study described in this article provides an examination of racial microaggressions and how they influence the collegiate racial climate. Using focus group interview data from African American students at three universities, it reveals that racial microaggressions exist in both academic and social spaces in the collegiate environment. The study shows how African American students experience and respond to racial microaggressions. It also demonstrates how racial microaggressions have a negative impact on the campus racial climate. ... one must not look for the gross and obvious. The subtle, cumulative miniassault is the substance of today's racism... (Pierce, 1974, p. 516) In and of itself a microaggression may seem harmless, but the cumulative burden of a lifetime of microaggressions can theoretically contribute to diminished mortality, augmented morbidity, and flattened confidence. (Pierce, 1995, p. 281) These two epigraphs by psychiatrist Chester Pierce over a 21-year period speak volumes about an important, persistent, and underresearched social problem in the United States: racial microaggressions. Little is known about microaggressions, and yet this subtle form of racism has a dramatic impact on the lives of African Americans. Pierce and his colleagues have defined racial microaggressions as "subtle, stunning, often automatic, and nonverbal exchanges which are 'put downs' of blacks by offenders" (Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, & Wills, 1978, p. 66). They further maintain that these "offensive mechanisms used against blacks often are innocuous" and that the "cumulative weight of their never-ending burden is the major ingredient in black-white interactions" (p. 66). Additionally, Davis (1989) defined racial microaggressions as "stunning, automatic acts of disregard that stem from unconscious attitudes of white superiority and constitute a verification of black inferiority" (p. 1576). Racial microaggressions, or unconscious and subtle forms of racism, though pervasive, are seldom investigated (Delgado & Stefancic, 1992; Johnson, 1988; Lawrence, 1987; Sol6rzano, 1998). Occasionally, African American students get a glimpse into the world of unconscious racism as demonstrated in comments such as those related to us by students who participated in the study described in this article: "When I [a White person] talk about those Blacks, I really wasn't talking about you," "You [a Black person] are not like the rest of them. You're different," "If only there were more of them [Black people] like you [a Black person]," and "I don't think of you [a Black person] as Black." Referring to White authority figures in particular (i.e., judges and other criminal justice authorities), Davis (1989) has suggested that Whites are capable of such utterances because "cognitive habit, history, and culture [have made them] unable to hear the range of relevant voices and grapple with what reasonably might be said in the voice of discrimination's victims" (p. 1576). Subsequently, as Pierce (1974) maintained, each Black person "must be taught to recognize these microaggressions and construct his future by taking appropriate action at each instance of recognition" (p. 520). RACE, RAcism, AND RACIAL MICROAGGRESSIONS Our study of the collegiate racial climate and the effect of racial microaggressions begins by defining race and racism. One can argue that dominant groups often attempt to legitimate their position via ideological means or a set of beliefs that explains or justifies some actual or potential social arrangement. According to Banks (1995), an examination of U.S. history reveals that the "color line" of race is a socially constructed category, created to differentiate racial groups and to show the superiority or dominance of one race-in particular, Whites-over others. …

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2696265.pdf

Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.

Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students

People automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions, and these evaluations predict important social outcomes, ranging from electoral success to sentencing decisions. Based on behavioral studies and computer modeling, we develop a 2D model of face evaluation. First, using a principal components analysis of trait judgments of emotionally neutral faces, we identify two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, that are sufficient to describe face evaluation and show that these dimensions can be approximated by judgments of trustworthiness and dominance. Second, using a data-driven statistical model for face representation, we build and validate models for representing face trustworthiness and face dominance. Third, using these models, we show that, whereas valence evaluation is more sensitive to features resembling expressions signaling whether the person should be avoided or approached, dominance evaluation is more sensitive to features signaling physical strength/weakness. Fourth, we show that important social judgments, such as threat, can be reproduced as a function of the two orthogonal dimensions of valence and dominance. The findings suggest that face evaluation involves an overgeneralization of adaptive mechanisms for inferring harmful intentions and the ability to cause harm and can account for rapid, yet not necessarily accurate, judgments from faces.

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The functional basis of face evaluation

The hypothesis that possessing multiple subordinate-group identities renders a person “invisible” relative to those with a single subordinate-group identity is developed. We propose that androcentric, ethnocentric, and heterocentric ideologies will cause people who have multiple subordinate-group identities to be defined as non-prototypical members of their respective identity groups. Because people with multiple subordinate-group identities (e.g., ethnic minority woman) do not fit the prototypes of their respective identity groups (e.g., ethnic minorities, women), they will experience what we have termed “intersectional invisibility.” In this article, our model of intersectional invisibility is developed and evidence from historical narratives, cultural representations, interest-group politics, and anti-discrimination legal frameworks is used to illustrate its utility. Implications for social psychological theory and research are discussed.

/pdf/intersectional-invisibility-the-distinctive-advantages-and-39nd4f2oqe.pdf

Intersectional Invisibility: The Distinctive Advantages and Disadvantages of Multiple Subordinate-Group Identities

Using critical race theory as a framework, this article provides an examination of how racial and gender microaggressions affect the career paths of Chicana and Chicano scholars. This paper reports on open-ended survey and interview data of a purposive sample of six Chicana and six Chicano Ford Foundation Predoctoral, Dissertation, and Postdoctoral Minority Fellows. There are three objectives for this study: (a) to extend and apply a critical race theory to the field of education, (b) to ''recognize,'' ''document,'' and analyze racial and gender microaggressions of Chicana and Chicano scholars, and (c) to ''hear'' the voice of ''discrimination's victims'' by examining the effect of race and gender microaggressions on the lives of Chicana and Chicano scholars. Three patterns of racial and gender microaggressions were found: (a) scholars who felt out of place in the academy because of their race and or gender, (b) scholars who felt their teachers professors had lower expectations for them, and (c) scholars'...

Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience of Chicana and Chicano scholars

Researchers previously have investigated the role of race in capital sentencing, and in particular, whether the race of the defendant or victim influences the likelihood of a death sentence. In the present study, we examined whether the likelihood of being sentenced to death is influenced by the degree to which a Black defendant is perceived to have a stereotypically Black appearance. Controlling for a wide array of factors, we found that in cases involving a White victim, the more stereotypically Black a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death.

/pdf/looking-deathworthy-perceived-stereotypicality-of-black-1bisi3wcyr.pdf

Looking Deathworthy Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results - which are both discouraging and encouraging - raise profound issues for courts and society. We find that judges harbor the same kinds of implicit biases as others; that these biases can influence their judgment; but that given sufficient motivation, judges can compensate for the influence of these biases.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1374497_code43904.pdf?abstractid=1374497&type=2

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the Implicit Association Test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results--which are both discouraging and encouraging--raise profound issues for courts and society. We find that judges harbor the same kinds of implicit biases as others; that these biases can influence their judgment; but that given sufficient motivation, judges can compensate for the influence of these biases. INTRODUCTION Justice is not blind. Researchers have found that black defendants fare worse in court than do their white counterparts. In a study of bail-setting in Connecticut, for example, Ian Ayres and Joel Waldfogel found that judges set bail at amounts that were twenty-five percent higher for black defendants than for similarly situated white defendants. (1) In an analysis of judicial decisionmaking under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, David Mustard found that federal judges imposed sentences on black Americans that were twelve percent longer than those imposed on comparable white defendants. (2) Finally, research on capital punishment shows that "killers of White victims are more likely to be sentenced to death than are killers of Black victims" and that "Black defendants are more likely than White defendants" to receive the death penalty. (3) Understanding why racial disparities like these and others persist in the criminal justice system is vital. Only if we understand why black defendants fare less well than similarly situated white defendants can we determine how to address this deeply troubling problem. Two potential sources of disparate treatment in court are explicit bias and implicit bias. (4) By explicit bias, we mean the kinds of bias that people knowingly--sometimes openly--embrace. Explicit bias exists and undoubtedly accounts for many of the racial disparities in the criminal justice system, but it is unlikely to be the sole culprit. Researchers have found a marked decline in explicit bias over time, even as disparities in outcomes persist. (5) Implicit bias--by which we mean stereotypical associations so subtle that people who hold them might not even be aware of them--also appears to be an important source of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. (6) Researchers have found that most people, even those who embrace nondiscrimination norms, hold implicit biases that might lead them to treat black Americans in discriminatory ways. (7) If implicit bias is as common among judges as it is among the rest of the population, it might even account for more of the racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system than explicit bias. In this Article, we report the results of the first study of implicit racial bias among judges. We set out to explore whether judges hold implicit biases to the same extent the general population and to determine whether those biases correlate with their decisionmaking in court. Our results are both alarming and heartening: (1) Judges hold implicit racial biases. (2) These biases can influence their judgment. (3) Judges can, at least in some instances, compensate for their implicit biases. Our Article proceeds as follows. We begin, in Part I, by introducing the research on implicit bias and its impact on behavior. In Part II, we briefly describe the methods of our study. We provide a much more detailed account in the Appendix. …

/pdf/does-unconscious-racial-bias-affect-trial-judges-466k7qqsp3.pdf

Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes

/pdf/future-dangerousness-in-capital-cases-always-at-issue-18lnpp6o46.pdf

Sheri Lynn Johnson

Papers

Looking Deathworthy Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges

Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes

Future Dangerousness in Capital Cases: Always "At Issue"