Assessing Racial Microaggression Distress in a Diverse Sample.

Abstract

Racial microaggressions are everyday subtle or ambiguous racially related insults, slights, mistreatment, or invalidations. Racial microaggressions are a type of perceived racism that may negatively impact the health and well-being of people of color in the United States. This study examined the reliability and validity of the Racial Microaggression Scale distress subscales, which measure the perceived stressfulness of six types of microaggression experiences in a racially and ethnically diverse sample. These subscales exhibited acceptable to good internal consistency. The distress subscales also evidenced good convergent validity; the distress subscales were positively correlated with additional measures of stressfulness due to experiencing microaggressions or everyday discrimination. When controlling for the frequency of one's exposure to microaggression incidents, some racial/ethnic group differences were found. Asian Americans reported comparatively lower distress and Latinos reporting comparatively higher distress in response to Foreigner, Low-Achieving, Invisibility, and Environmental microaggressions. African Americans reported higher distress than the other groups in response to Environmental microaggressions. Results suggest that the Racial Microaggressions Scale distress subscales may aid health professionals in assessing the distress elicited by different types of microaggressions. In turn, this may facilitate diagnosis and treatment planning in order to provide multiculturally competent care for African American, Latino, and Asian American clients.