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Racial Microaggressions and Coping Mechanisms Among Latina/o College Students

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Sociological Forum

Published online on

Abstract

["Sociological Forum, EarlyView. ", "\nThis study investigates Latina/o students’ experiences of racial microaggressions and how they cope with them through semi‐structured and open‐ended interviews with students attending a primarily White higher education institution in the Midwestern United States. Borrowing from Sue et al.’s (2007) categories of racial microaggressions and discussing their relationship to Bonilla‐Silva’s (2014) color‐blind racism, we illustrate the diverse ways in which Latina/o college students experience racial microaggressions and how these experiences varied by gender and skin color. Addressing a gap in the literature that examines Latina/o college students’ coping mechanisms, we develop a coping‐mechanism typology consisting of external coping mechanisms (i.e., interest‐based counterspaces and race‐ and ethnic‐based counterspaces) and internal coping mechanisms (i.e., color‐blind coping mechanism and racially cognizant coping mechanism) that may be useful for future research into how minority populations cope in a variety of settings as well as for higher education institutions that intend to increase educational attainment among Latinas/os.\n"]