At the Root of Their Stories: Black and Latinx Students’ Experiences with Academic Microaggressions

In this narrative study, Rosalie Rolón-Dow explores the nature of academic microaggressions that racially minoritized undergraduate students experience at predominantly white institutions. She illustrates microaggression incidents related to (in) visibility, intellect or academic contributions, and curriculum relevant to students’ racial identities, communities, or histories. Using a critical race theory microaggression framework, she analyzes academic microaggressions in the broader context of institutional racism and white supremacy to show how white supremacy tools like othering, monoculturalism, nativism, white ascendancy, normativity, and ignorance are deployed. Rolón-Dow calls for colleges and universities to deepen their understanding of the effects of microaggressions on students’ academic lives and contends that institutions seeking to become more racially inclusive must address the ways that ideologies inherent in white supremacy continue to be expressed through racial microaggressions.