Another microaggression conveys how Rankine stays quiet to maintain American social construct. While Rankine drives an associate home, he complains about needing to hire a colored person. Rankine contemplates this conversation’s purpose because she doesn’t know what she did to provoke this conversation. Her associate’s complaint causes her extreme discomfort and shock, triggering her intentional silence. Unlike the previous example with her friend, the shocked silence ends quickly and intentional silence replaces it. The silent response contains intent because she can’t run away from this microaggression since they are in that confined space. When many people encounter microaggressions, the incidents dash by without giving the option to respond
