Discrimination is treating a person or group unfairly or with prejudice based on race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or other personal characteristics. While the definition is generally understood, the reasons why discrimination happens is more complex. We learn as young children to categorize people and things to make sense of the world. It is the positive and negative values that parents, peers, and our society place on those categories that create perceptions and eventually actions—like discrimination—based on those values.

Some forms of racial and ethnic discrimination are obvious and severe—denying housing and employment, for example. Other forms of discrimination can be more subtle acts that are still harmful, like giving poor service to a Black family at a restaurant, clutching your purse in an elevator with a Latino teen, or denying a playdate with a child of a different race. These subtler acts are microaggressions, and despite the “micro” name, they hold big consequences.

Discrimination can create chronic stress that in turn causes anxiety, depression, obesity, high blood pressure, and more. If you have been discriminated against, we want to say to you that your experiences and feelings are VALID. Coping with discriminatory behavior is exhausting.