Microaggression

Microaggressions are brief and commonplace everyday exchanges that communicate hostile, derogatory, denigrating or negative slights and insults to certain individuals because of their group membership. The persons making the comments may otherwise be well-intentioned and unaware of the potential impact of their words. There are three categories of microaggressions: microassaults, microinsults, microinvalidations. The term was first coined by African-American Harvard psychiatrist Chester Pierce in 1970.