The scholarship on structural and individual-level racial discrimination has largely existed in separate camps in sociology and psychology, respectively. There have been few empirical studies, to date, that link how the interchange of structural and individual-level racial discrimination impact the emotions and behaviors of people of color. In order to gain a more complete understanding of this interplay, I conducted two studies for this dissertation. In the first study, I analyze the effect of competency microaggressions, behaviors that subtly communicate to Black people that they are less competent than White people. I conducted an experiment informed by the status characteristics theory research program to test how competency microaggressions affect the emotions and deference behavior of Black workers. Overall, I find t¬hat after experiencing a competency microaggression from their White partner, Black American workers report high negative emotion and defer less to their partner than those in the control condition. The findings contribute to status characteristics theory by identifying possible conditions under which low status actors do not defer to high status actors in a workplace interaction setting. In the second study, I draw on interview data to explore how Black and Asian Americans react emotionally to experiencing racial discrimination. I also explore how these groups cope with the emotional distress from racial discrimination. I find that distinct feelings – specifically, anger, shock, annoyance, and shame - are related to the level of hostility and overtness of the discrimination. I also find that participants coped with racial discrimination by seeking social support from family and friends, social media, and humor. Racial differences in feelings and coping strategies map onto differences in 1) the hostility and overtness of the discrimination, 2) racial stereotypes attributed to each group, 3) racial socialization, and 4) their social networks. Together, these studies demonstrate that structural-level racial discrimination creates differences in the types of individual-level racial discrimination that racial groups experience and speak to how the emotional and behavioral reactions to individual-level racial discrimination sometimes reify the racial hierarchy.