Hi and welcome back to the savvy psychologist podcast. I'm your host

Dr Ellen Hendrickson and I'll help you meet life's challenges with

evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

So listener Crystal Allen from New York wrote in asking for tips on how to deal with racist

interactions.

So today we'll tackle how to deal with comments about

race that leave you thinking did that just happen? These incidents called

micro-aggressions leave everyone in pain. So we'll cover six tips to deal.

So let me start off with a disclaimer. I will not pretend that a 10-minute

podcast can solve racism. However, I can provide tips for those on the receiving end of often innocent yet nonetheless offensive comments.

Next week we'll cover what to do if you're the one who makes the accidental

blunder and we all will. Now since this is a psychology podcast we'll cover individual to

individual racism specifically the subtle kind

called microaggressions. Microaggression is a term popularized by

psychologist Dr. Gerald Wing Sue at Columbia University, author of two books and many studies on the subject.

In a nutshell, microaggressions are unintended discrimination. They include insulting actions

like clutching your purse a little tighter around minority men,

invalidations like assuming a Latino student is on scholarship,

or asking an Asian American individual,

no, where are you really from?

And backhanded compliments, like you sure are articulate, or I don't even think of you as Mexican.

A micro-aggression that made the news occurred at Harvard when an African-American student dressed

...