"An old white man walked up to me at a bar in Central Pennsylvania and said, 'Hi, I'm not racist and you are really pretty.' It's happened multiple times."

By the way: The term “racial microaggression” was first proposed by psychiatrist Dr. Chester Pierce in the ‘70s, and was later defined by Columbia professor Derald Wing Sue as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” Recently, scholar and anti-racist activist Ibram X. Kendi, author of How To Be an Anti-Racist, has rejected the use of the term, saying, "A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term 'abuse' because aggression is not as exacting a term."

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.