Racial Microaggressions in U.S. High Schools: New Findings From the Youth Research Council

• In Event: Youth-Led Research on the Effects of Racial Microaggressions in U.S. High Schools: Processes and Findings

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives: A growing body of research demonstrates that racial microaggressions result in negative academic and mental health outcomes for Black and Brown youth. However, much of the current evidence suggests that the responsibility for addressing these issues is on the youth themselves (Keels et al., 2017). In some instances, schools have created opportunities for what researchers have dubbed “counter spaces” through which students of color seek and find support for grappling with their encounters with microaggressions (Huber & Cueva, 2012). Even in these spaces, though, it is the students’ own acts of resilience and resistance that provide the countermeasures to these subtle forms of racism. These “counter spaces” should be recognized as small measures that may have the effect of reproducing and instantiating oppression rather than as policy measures that have the potential to lead to systems or structural change. Indeed, system-level support for addressing the needs of students of Color remains underdeveloped.

Modes of Inquiry: Over the 2021-2022 academic year, YRC Fellows engaged in youth participatory action research (YPAR) to better understand how high school-aged students experience racial microaggressions within the school context – an agenda set by YRC Fellows at the beginning of the year. After designing a research plan, YRC Fellows engaged in qualitative research by conducting interviews with their peers (n=70) and developed a questionnaire (n=732) to better understand the prevalence and effects of racial microaggressions. The YRC engaged in collaborative data analysis of these data to arrive at findings and to offer concrete recommendations for change. In keeping with a YPAR epistemology, which demands that we center the experiences, expertise, and voices of youth co-researchers at every step of the knowledge production process, we have chosen to highlight portions of a conversation we held in July 2023 with the intention of teasing out and discussing the implications of the YRC’s findings of our first two years of research.

Significance and Conclusion: One of our most surprising and disappointing findings was that teachers are often aggressors in instances of racially-motivated micro (and macro) aggressions. According to YRC data, the majority (60%) of racial microaggressions take place in classrooms, in full view of teachers who often dismiss racial microaggressions as misunderstandings or “not racist”, or who were the perpetrators themselves according to 29% of questionnaire respondents. We conclude our paper focusing on the lack of accountability structures that exist for teachers and other school adults who commit these acts. We offer recommendations for ways in which these teachers need to be held accountable. We think these are significant because they are recommendations created by the very students who are most affected by these offenses.

Authors

• Jeffery Keller, George Mason University

• Widad Khalid, Youth Research Council

• Sara Berhe-Abraha, Pomona College

• Amy Best, George Mason University