Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Health

Advisor

Kimberly Dixon-Lawson

Abstract

Racial microaggressions are brief daily negative verbal behaviors and environmental slights directed as intentional or unintentional towards minorities. These negative interactions lead minorities to feel powerless and oppressed in their environments. These adverse experiences result from stressors in their environment that negatively affect the human body by causing acute and chronic stress. This qualitative study aimed to investigate the relationship between personal, racial microaggression experiences, and their impact on health through a phenomenological approach. The critical race theory provided a framework to explore and understand how systematic discrimination experiences impacted the 17 African American faculty member participants’ health. A phenomenological transcendental approach revealed nine emergent themes: description of physical health before entering academia, description of physical health after entering academia, description of mental health before entering academia, description of mental health after entering academia, recalling personal experiences that reveal health issues, recognizing how the effects of racial microaggression experiences impact their physical health, recognizing how the effects of racial microaggression experiences impact their mental health, coping, and moving on from these everyday adverse experiences that are detrimental to health. The findings of this study revealed that understanding the effects of racial microaggression experiences is vital in implementing policies and programs that support African American women faculty and curtail these adverse experiences in academia, which could also lead to recommendations that decrease the occurrence of health conditions among these members.

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