Black, Latinx, and Asian College Students’ Experiences of Hate, Microaggressions, Stress, Perceived Racism and Oppression, and Coping Strategies: Identifying Predictors of a High Prevalence of Microaggressions

Exposure to hate, racism, discrimination, and microaggressions is prevalent on college campuses, and such exposure also occurs beyond the context of the college campus, whether involving police violence against Blacks, in particular, as well as Hispanics. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic year of 2020 saw a rise in hate and violence toward Asians. The present study aimed to identify the significant predictors of a high prevalence of experiences of microaggressions for Black, Latinx, and Asian students enrolled in college during the pandemic whether at the undergraduate or graduate level in the United States (U.S.). A total of 341 participants (mean age=26.62, female=40.6%, Black/Latinx=54.5%, Asian=45.5%, U.S. born=66.9%, ever attended Historically Black Colleges or Universities/Hispanic Serving Institutions (HBCU/HSI)=52.2%) participated online, having been recruited via a social media campaign and asked to complete the I EXPERIENCED HATE Survey. Independent t-tests indicated that U.S. born respondents experienced significantly more microaggressions (mean=1.91, SD=.843) than non-U.S. born (mean=1.62, SD=1.016; t=-2.595, df=190.5, p=0.01), and those who ever attended an HBCU/HSI experienced significantly more microaggressions (mean=1.97, SD=0.705) compared to those who never attended HBCU/HSI (mean=1.65, SD=1.073; t=-3.247, df=275.8, p=0.001). Pearson’s correlations showed that a higher level of experiencing microaggressions was significantly correlated with lower rating of college climate (r=-.185, p=.001), higher stage of change for coping and responding to racism and oppression (r=.182, p=.001), higher or more frequent experiences of hate (r=.397, p=.000), and higher stressful and traumatic impact of hate (r=.325, p=.000). Backwards stepwise regression analysis indicated that the significant predictors for a high prevalence of experiences of microaggressions were ever attending an HBCU/HSI (b=.447, SE=.109, p = .000), more experiences of hate (b=.360, SE=.059, p=.000), and more stressful and traumatic impact from hate (b=.131, SE=.052, p=.013). However, the final model explained 26.3% of the variance (adjusted R2=.263). This suggests that future studies should identify additional independent variables for inclusion. The present study findings supported the initial anticipated findings that Black, Latinx, and Asian students who had more frequent hate experiences and had more and higher negative stressful/traumatic impact from hate experiences would significantly predict the high prevalence of experiences of microaggressions. Implications of findings are discussed