Racial Microaggressions, Racial Battle Fatigue, and Racism Related Stress in Higher Education
The college experiences of students of color today are described as distinct from their White peers due to racial microaggressions. Recently, higher education research has begun to describe racial microaggressions, but scholars often do not take the next step to investigate the impact of racial microaggressions on health and academics. This literature review highlights the differences among racial microaggressions, racial battle fatigue, racism related stress and racial trauma through theoretical and empirical studies. The paper argues that institutions, practitioners, researchers, and higher education leaders can address racial microaggressions and racial battle fatigue to make their campuses more equitable. Introduction Analyses of higher education have historically been concerned with access, retention, and graduation rates. Early studies and frameworks did not consider the experiences of students of color and did not include the possibility of an unhealthy campus racial climate (Astin, 1993; Pascarella Terenzini, 1991; Tinto, 1993) Many of the findings from these early 1 Students of color, historically underrepresented students, marginalized groups, and people of color are used to identify students who are not of European American/White descent (e.g. African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latina/o, and Pacific Islander) frameworks were less relevant for students of color and do not reflect what scholars know today about campus racial climates, cultures, and racial microaggressions (Franklin, Smith, Hung, 2014; Harper, 2012; Hurtado, 1992; Johnson, Wasserman, Yildirim, Yonai, 2014; Museus Jayakumar, 2012, Perez Huber Solorzano, 2015; Solorzano, Ceja, Yosso, 2000) Institutionalized racism and the negative impacts on historically underrepresented groups are rarely mentioned in higher education literature (Harper, 2012) While access to higher education opportunities has increased for students of color since the 1960s and 1970s, (Allen Jewell, 1995) admission to a university does not necessarily correspond with equitable social conditions (Allen, 1992; Feagin, 1992, Harper, 2012; Hurtado, 1992; Museus Jayakumar, 2012) Recent events at University of Missouri with the resignation of the president and chancellor over longstanding racial incidents demonstrate that social conditions are still detrimental for students of color (Thomason, 2015) Strayhorn (2008) states that even though "college participation rates have increased for all groups over the past 30 years. significant gaps across racial/ethnic groups persist" (p. 301) William A. Smith (2009b) characterizes this discrepancy when he states, "White campus racial culture..promotes Plessy like environments on post Brown campuses" (p. 616) Simply put, greater access and opportunity for students of color did not eradicate racism or racist ideologies on college campuses. Instead, society witnessed a shift to a