The National Institutes Of Health gave the University of Miami a $2.2 million grant to study the impact of “microaggressions” on “black queer women” living with HIV, according to a grant listing reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The project, called Monitoring Microaggressions and Adversities to Generate Interventions for Change (MMAGIC), looks to further research on the relationship of “microaggressions,” defined as “everyday and subtle insults via comments, jokes, and behaviors,” to health outcomes. The $2.2 million is being spent conducting in-person interviews asking black queer women with HIV about their experiences with “microaggressions” and “discrimination” and asking them how they are “navigating these experiences,” the grant’s description reads.
The grant description says that “despite their frequency and potential importance, microaggressions have largely been ignored in the scientific literature on black women living with HIV.” Black women with HIV “live at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities and within social structures that take a daily toll,” the description says.
The grant is being used by Sannisha Dale, an associate professor of psychology who chairs the psychology department’s Diversity and Equity Committee, according to the University of Miami’s website.
“Although COVID and George Floyd’s death weren’t part of the equation when we started this study, they were unfortunate fits into the overall question of how systems of marginalization affect the health of Black women living with HIV,” Dale told the university’s newspaper.
The MMAGIC program was initially funded by the NIH in 2019, according to the university.
“[Microaggressions] can be someone saying, ‘She doesn’t look like she’s positive,’ as if HIV has a face,” Dale continued. “Or ‘I’m HIV negative, I’m clean,’ as if someone else is dirty. (RELATED: REPORT: School Board Revokes Offer After Superintendent Candidate Commits ‘Microaggression’ | The Daily Caller)
University of Miami and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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