“I understand the people who are saying, ‘don’t be a whiner,’ ‘enter the real world.’ What they don’t understand is what the real world is like for people of colour [for example],” says Sue.

That student complimenting Sue probably thought they were doing just that – paying him a compliment.

But in actuality, the comment sent a message to Sue that he, despite being an American, is an outsider. And because this has happened over and over throughout his life, he says these comments make him feel like a foreigner in his own country of birth.

And herein lies the problem with microaggressions: slow-building, incremental damage that snowballs into something a lot bigger.

Uppala Chandrasekera is the director of public policy at the Canadian Mental Health Association in Toronto. She says that “to onlookers, [the reaction to a microaggression] may seem disproportionate. ‘Why is that person so angry? I meant it as a joke or a compliment.’ But the person is not just reacting to what happened today.” They’re also reacting to something that happened five days ago, five months ago or five years ago.

“We always remember the first time it happened,” Chandrasekera says, referring to the first time we might experience discrimination in our lives. “It’s a deeply painful moment. Because it’s so painful, we end up storing it away in a box. But, the body remembers the trauma, so the next time it happens, it triggers [a reaction].”

Subtle discrimination compounds over time, Chandrasekera adds, leading to stress and anxiety at best or drug or alcohol addictions at worst.

How to take action



So what do you do if you see or hear this happening at work?

“The best thing to do in that moment is acknowledge that it happened,” Chandrasekera says. “The person is feeling very much alone. They’re very ‘triggered,’ because it’s not the first time it’s happened,” she says, referring to microaggressions’ repeating nature. Ask if they’re OK or if they want to talk, she adds.

“Checking in with them is important because that goes a long way in mental health, in terms of social inclusion,” she says.

If you are on the receiving end, Sue suggests microinterventions – comebacks that simultaneously “disarm the microaggression but also educate the perpetrator,” he says, for example, when he told the student who said he spoke good English that he was in fact born in the US.

Sue, who specialises in racism and multiculturalism, reminds us that “no one is immune from inheriting racial, gender or sexual biases in our society.”