A tone-deaf inquiry into an Asian-American’s ethnic origin. Cringe-inducing praise for how articulate a black student is. An unwanted conversation about a Latino’s ability to speak English without an accent.I get mistaken for a Hindu/Pakistani sometimes. When I go to Dunkin Donuts, sometimes I get a stare that I recognize as "are you one of us?" kind of thing. Nothing to get hung up about.
This is not exactly the language of traditional racism, but in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers, they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour — microaggressions — used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse culture.
On a Facebook page called “Brown University Micro/Aggressions” a “dark-skinned black person” describes feeling alienated from conversations about racism on campus. A digital photo project run by a Fordham University student about “racial microaggressions” features minority students holding up signs with comments like “You’re really pretty ... for a dark-skin girl.” The “St. Olaf Microaggressions” blog includes a letter asking David R. Anderson, the college’s president, to address “all of the incidents and microaggressions that go unreported on a daily basis.” READ MORE
However, if you read the linked column carefully, I believe the students are talking about something slightly, maybe not altogether different. Microaggression IS NOT ChipA taking a bat to his Microgreen Garden. I don't want you to jump into a conclusion. As difficult as that may sound, "jumping into a conclusion" is never recommended. Like I said, read the article and please say something, even if it's of the microagressive variety.
43 comments:
My observation is that the last 50 years have witnessed an unprecedented improvement in racial and ethnic comity. Everything is better. People are getting along fine.
The business of Diversity and racial and ethnic grievance has grown into a monster that needs to be fed. New grievances have to be found, or manufactured, to feed all the commissars and functionaries.
The constant expansion of the discrimination biz isn't for the kids. It's a sop to the Diversity Directors, administrators, teachers, consultants and various hangers on who depend on this shit for a living.
It's a perpetual motion machine. And, it must be fed. So many of the jobs in this biz are make work devised to employ women and minorities with worthless liberal arts degrees.
Lem:
"So, I have to go where the conversation goes, I can't just sit here and pretend that Althouse is staying above the fray."
I don't understand the placement of this sentence in reference to the sentences on either side of it. Would you mind expanding on your thoughts?
I note the microaggressive manner in which you keep telling me to read the article.
Microagression: Noun. 1). Interactions between people that are not 100% in synchronicity with expectations of the other, given opportunity to feel aggrieved over, when nothing real can be found.
Previously; normal conversation between the non-telepathic.
Examples: "Hi. Do you mind if I ask where you're from?"
Previously, an expression of interest in another person's unique background.
Currently, a microagression designed to make a person feel uncomfortable about their unique background.
Verdict... complete and utter bull sh*t designed with malice aforethought to increase discomfort and separation and communication barriers between people.
My take is that if it were not for those obsessed, employed, or empowered by the grievance industry, we would have a pretty even society, not entirely free of racism (which it will never be), but a society with it pretty evenly distributed, and relatively innocuous in real effect on individuals. What we are in now is a classic human obsession with the "grass is greener" syndrome where many imagine a society where everyone is respected and nobody is ever slighted. It's a silly goal, and the pursuit of it at this point is much more damaging than reparative to our culture. We are just creating new problems and preventing the further acceptance of each others differences.
Even if we eliminate microaggressions there will always be nanoaggressions raising their ugly head as our sensitivity adjusts to a finer resolution.
Have you noticed that many of the horrors of sci-fi dystopias seem to be coming true? We now have the beginning of the much of it with a real life Big Brother, speech codes, government mandated everything, a single acceptable mindset if you want to stay out of trouble, increasing control in the name of "peace, justice, and security", etc, etc. All enforced by snitching tattle tales who run to the courts, shamers and finger pointers to get you some punishment for being different.
The microaggression police remind me of the cops in Hawaii who want to be allowed to have sex with prostitutes in order to bust them.
The cops want to bust the prostitutes for getting paid for sex by themselves getting paid for sex.
Pointing out micro aggression is mostly just doing exactly what they claim to be fighting. People always think they have a good reason for being dicks.
I prefer microbreweries to microagressions.
Would you mind expanding on your thoughts?
Well, it has to do with what do I mean by "Levity" and going to where the commenters are, at TOPs.
In other words, I can't pretend I don't wish for some of them to stop by once in a while. If you want me to answer your question it includes the admission of being human.
I note the microaggressive manner in which you keep telling me to read the article.
Man up Hazman ;)
I'm changing my name to Micro Haz, Lem, and I don't like your pushy tone.
I think Synova got it just right.
ha ha #banpushy
"Micro Haz"
TWSS
You know what? this comes from the same place. A place that says we know better than you and you are going to do exactly what we tell you to do and say.
All of it from ObamaCare, banbossy, to microaggression (two gs) all of the bs.
Yea but for a nanoaggressions to become apparent you would need an electron microscope.
I don't know this for sure but something tells it would very difficult to squeeze money out of a student loan for an electron microscope.
So, I kind of welcome the possibility of not doing away with aggression all together but relegating it to the world of the nano-small.
Everybody is ganging up on aggression... wasup with that?
Fuck micro anything - .45 caliber aggression is the way to go. Micro sounds like something Asians would be good at.
Lem:
"Well, it has to do with what do I mean by "Levity" and going to where the commenters are, at TOPs."
So you are aiming at coaxing more Toppers here?
I understand if you are drawn to her. Many are.
Libruls are mentally ill. The proof is stuff like this: micro-aggression, ban bossy, Koch Bros. Derangement Syndrome, Environment as a religion, writing that white women should not be belly dancers and they can't do math.
The author, Tanzina Vega, who is the race and ethnicity reporter for the Times, looks like she could be a real firecracker after hours.
Setting my hot Latina fantasies aside, I got the impression that she wasn't really down with the microagression thing. They tend to be no-nonsense types, those black-haired beauties with big dark eyes.
And, I am definitely feeling microagressed by the commas offsetting the "too" in the title of the Harvard play. Grammatically acceptable, yes, but I sense an implication.
The obvious way to cope with microaggressions is to count them, using one of those little clickers. Every time it hits 1,000, you scream and punch the perpetrator in the mouth. The rest of the time, you ignore them and get on with your life.
The real problem with the entire concept of microagression is this...
If it's a case of person after person after person in your upper class neighborhood assuming that you're the domestic help (as one commentor complained) it's not microagression... it's racism.
Microagression is asking someone who is tired of being asked, yet again, what their accent is because you can't place it. I asked a fellow student just the other week if he minded if I asked where he was from... he went all sexy/smarmy and purred (I'm not exaggerating, and the guy was probably all of 20) "Of course, I don't mind if you ask me where I'm from." (picture the crook of an eyebrow, very latin) and made me ask the question all over again... turns out, he's from Cuba.
Now, even I'm a little iffy on the propriety of asking someone, "Cuba? How can you be from Cuba, I thought we were all embargoed and stuff." Though *not* asking, was probably also a microagression.
Microagression is if I complement the very cute black girl who sits next to me in calculus on her new braids, and doubly so if I ask if it takes forever to get them done.
Any well meaning and interested question that someone is tired of hearing, yet again, from someone is a "microagression." But you can't tell if someone is going to be annoyed or pleased that you noticed that they're not around here or got a new hair style until after you ask it.
Microagressions are the smallest of all the aggressions.
Therefore discussions of microagressions are about the smallest of things and when it comes to racism that is good.
But everything I read my experience is contrary to.
Except for that little old black guy who was going to let the door close on me, "Sorry, can't letchya in" -- how could he be so rude? Can't he see I am somebody? Two abrupt questions as the door closes behind him, my fingers reach over his head through the crack catch the door edge, I LIVE HERE! "Oh, sorry, Pal." Except for him, and our microaggressions back and forth in a flash, everything is fine.
Oh! And the woman who did let the door close behind her assuming I'm some kind of stalker, what have you, then the uncomfortable moment of me entering and passing her as she paused for something feminine and stupid and private and hidden. What a strange woman. She's a sexist microaggresser.
Now that you got me thinking about it... ))) whap (((( I don't have to take these door-related micro aggressive injustices.
These are actually miniaggressions, or possibly midiaggressions, not anywhere near maxiaggressions so I can relax about that, but still injustice that I suffer due to lack of societal trust, that is societal distrust perpetrated against white males specifically through media control and other means such as family laws and pervasively so by such things even so banal as depictions of males in films, t.v. shows, and as hapless dummkopfs in advertisements.
I made all that up except the door part.
This is worse than the metric system, which I don't like because it means that I need to own two sets of perfectly fine wrenches when one set is all a person should have to need.
How many microaggressions equal a miniaggression, and then how many miniaggressions equal one regular aggression?
Because if a microaggression is like a nanoparticle or a quark or something, then screw those kids in New York, I'm not changing a thing.
Libruls are mentally ill.
And they're IN CHARGE!
Other than that slight glitch everything's copacetic, to hear half the folks on this thread tell it.
The concept is easily recognizable, but it's just as easy to mock. Calling attention to micro-aggressions that you have suffered is a kind of micro-aggression. The proper response to a micro-aggression is to practice micro tolerance.
Lem you have to stop going over there. They are upsetting you chi.
Yay, William's here. I missed those wild comments you would deposit from time to time at She Who Must Be Obeyed's den of iniquity. If you are that William. If not...nevermind.
Thank you ric. Your love and support have given me the courage to go on......Speaking of microaggressions, doesn't turning off the comments section for a few days fall under that rubric. One of the few advantages to being socially maladroit and clueless is that a lot of slights pass unnoticed. It's just not a grudge worthy offense.
How many microaggressions equal a miniaggression, and then how many miniaggressions equal one regular aggression?.
1000 micro-aggressions sum to a mini-aggression. And there are 1000 mini-aggressions in a real aggression. So you should be able to inflict about a million micreo-aggressions before you worry that it adds up to aggression. I base that analysis on standard scientific notation wherein a micro of anything is 10^-6 of the base unit.
Micro-accountablilty of aggressions is Lilliputian strategy -- death by a thousand cuts.
Micro-accountablilty of aggressions is Lilliputian strategy -- death by a thousand cuts.
Or in other words, the aggressions these days are so slight that we need a microscope to see them.
What about nano-aggressions?
Is that when Nana 'forgets' to send your birthday money?
Michael Haz said ... (who has it right on the money!)
How many microaggressions equal a miniaggression, and then how many miniaggressions equal one regular aggression?
And how many of all that crap equals a hard punch in the mouth? Or a gunshot in the gut?
Micro-aggression: Bwahahahaha
Y'all're kidding right?
bagoh20 said...
Even if we eliminate microaggressions there will always be nanoaggressions raising their ugly head as our sensitivity adjusts to a finer resolution.
Yes, just as Haz has said...you got it dead to rights, too.
PS: Sorry I was insulting to you the other day...it was my period to be an asshole...happens now and then. It's why they call me "Dickhead."
Aridog, I didn't sense any aggression from you, mini, micro or nano. I love you, dude, and you would have a hard time pissing me off. I know you have a tough skin, so I'm not careful, and you can assume the same about me anytime. We're good to go.
Bagoh20...thanks.
It's all about postmodern deconstruction.
The reader / listener / observer always knows bettter than the writer / speaker/ performer what they *really* mean.
Sort of like telepathy.
The Age of Aquarius has arrived.
Everyone knows without asking anything, but by definitely not taking *anyone* at face value. Like they would like to know where you are from but can't ask in a PC way.
Didn't read the article, but did they mention Joe Biden's description of Barack Obama in 2007?
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man." J.FBD.B.
I mean is that a microaggression squared?
And look where it got him.
""I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,"
Really Joe? The first one you ever saw? No mainstream, articulate, bright, clean Black men before Obama? He really is something special.
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