microaggression

Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist

by Michael Shermer  · 8 Apr 2020  · 677pp  · 121,255 words

UC Berkeley in the 1960s, the past several years have seen campuses around the country erupt in flames over these charged issues, issuing lists of microaggressions that might offend people, trigger warnings about books that might upset readers, safe spaces to go to for protection from dangerous ideas, and the disinvitation

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, films, and lectures; the opening of safe spaces for students to retreat to when encountering ideas they find offensive; and the dispersal of lists of microaggressions – words, phrases, statements, and questions that might offend people. We now know that 2013 was a pivotal year as this is when the iGen (or

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students from allegedly offensive speech and disagreeable ideas – defined differently by different interest groups – with demands for everything from trigger warnings and safe spaces to microaggressions and speaker disinvitations. Trigger Warnings Before readings, classroom lectures, film screenings, or public speeches, professors and administrators are now supposed to warn students that they

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if this opinion triggers you or makes you feel unsafe, then you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in the world. Microaggressions Comments or questions that slight, snub, or insult someone, intentionally or unintentionally, in anything from casual conversation to formal discourse, are now labeled as

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microaggressions.8 According to the University of California publication Recognizing Microaggressions, examples include (see Figure 6.1 for a full list): Asking, “Where are you from or where were you born

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that they are lazy or incompetent and just need to work harder.9 Figure 6.1 Tool: Recognizing microaggressions and the messages they send. Reproduced in part, with permission from Sue, D. W., Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation, Wiley & Sons, 2010. Yes, language matters, and some comments that

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,” “racist,” or “sexist” speech? Who it happens to bother or offend? Students? Faculty? Administration? And as with the problem of trigger words, the list of microaggressions grows, turning normal conversation into a cauldron of potential violations that further restricts speech, encourages divisiveness rather than inclusiveness, and forces people to censor themselves

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what they believe. An incident at Brandeis University in 2015 is instructive: When Asian American students installed an exhibition on microaggressions, other Asian American students claimed that the exhibit was itself a microaggression that triggered negative feelings, leading the president to issue an apology to anyone “triggered or hurt by the content

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of the microaggressions.”10 I agree, blurting out “Why do you Asians always hang out together?” is lame, but at this point in history it just makes the

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is not that there are no longer real victims of actual crimes, but it is a disservice to them to equate the trivial peccadillos of microaggressions or triggering words with brutal rapes and murders. A feminist blogger named Melody Hensley, for example, claims that years of online stalking and social-media

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short tags: BLM, BDM, MSM, LGBTQI, SJW, #metoo, #TakeAKnee, Dreamers, Google Memo, Milo, Charlottesville, Evergreen, Berkeley, Yale, Middlebury, Parkland, Sandy Hook, fake news, alternative facts, microaggressions, safe spaces, no platforming, hate speech, etc.5 And the accusatory labels hurled back and forth across the political divide have been shifting ever outward

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and Advocates for Youth. 2005. Creating Safe Space for GLBTQ Youth: A Toolkit. Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth. http://bit.ly/1HtRHpd 8. “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.” In “Diversity in the Classroom.” Adopted by UCLA Diversity and Faculty Development from: Derald Wing, Sue. 2010

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. Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation. New York: Wiley & Sons. http://bit.ly/2pcnKn1 9. Ibid. 10. Kukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt. 2015. “

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U.S. 1(1967) No. 395. http://bit.ly/1QTA3yX 19. Campbell, Bradley and Jason Manning. 2014. “Microaggression and Moral Cultures.” Comparative Sociology, 13:6. http://bit.ly/1PkUaoh 20. Haidt, Jonathan. 2014. “Where Microaggressions Really Come From: A Sociological Account.” The Righteous Mind. http://bit.ly/1PZlogZ 21. Johnson, Catherine. 2016

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against professor Bret Weinstein), Berkeley (protests against Milo, Ann Coulter, et al.), Yale (protests over Halloween costumes), Middlebury (protests against Charles Murray), Parkland (school shooting), microaggressions (offensive words or phrases), safe spaces (places for students to go after hearing offensive speech), no platforming (disinvitation of speakers), hate speech (v. free speech

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. 2018. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Science, Reason, Humanism and Progress. New York: Penguin; Campbell, Bradley and Jason Manning. 2018. The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars. New York: Palgrave; Greene, Joshua. 2013. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason & the Gap Between Us and Them. New York

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drive to censor controversial subjects, 64–78 Free Speech Movement of the late 1960s, 64–65 Generation Z and how they handle challenges, 64–65 microaggressions, 68–70 provision of safe spaces for, 67–68 trigger warnings, 66–67 views on freedom of speech, 64–78 colleges avoidance of controversial or

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, 76–78 Collins, Francis, 60 Collins, Jim, 263–264 Columbine murders, 169 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), 271 communication microaggressions, 68–70 competitive victimhood, 132 Conan Doyle, Arthur, 280, 283 confirmation bias, 24, 316–318 conjecture and refutation, 8, 23 conscription as slavery, 1–2

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–43 increasing viewpoint diversity in colleges, 76–78 Intelligent Design conspiracy theory, 55–63 Jordan Peterson on gender pronouns and Bill C-16, 300–303 microaggressions, 68–70 Ten Commandments of free speech and thought, 7–8 trigger warnings, 66–67 French Revolution, 72 Fuji film, 206 Gacy, John Wayne, 35

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–109 Mencken, H. L., 201 Menon, Latha, 287 Merckx, Eddy, 286 Merkel, Angela, 2 methodological naturalism, 224 #metoo movement, 132 Meyer, Stephen, 55, 57–59 microaggressions, 68–70 Miele, Frank, 21 Mill, John Stuart, 92, 136, 139, 231On Liberty, 4 Millennials, 65 Miller, Geoffrey, 209–210 Mill’s Maxim, 4 Milton

The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

by Yascha Mounk  · 26 Sep 2023

of this focus on identity as a way of interpreting social reality, parts of the left are now more likely to invoke new concepts like “microaggressions” and “implicit bias” than they are to invoke older concepts like social class. In a second step, the rejection of universal values and neutral rules

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the website, I couldn’t stop looking at it. Over the next months, I read articles with titles like “6 Ways to Respond to Sexist Microaggressions in Everyday Conversations,” “White Privilege, Explained in One Simple Comic,” and “So You’re a ‘Breasts Man’? Here Are 3 Reasons That Could Be Sexist

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fifteen-fold in The Washington Post. Goldberg draws an unambiguous conclusion. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, key concepts of the identity synthesis, like microaggression and white privilege, “went from being obscure fragments of academic jargon to commonplace journalistic language,” he writes. “Along with the new language came ideas and

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like “melting pot” or “there is only one race, the human race.” A growing number of universities even empowers administrators to intervene when students use “microaggressions” in conversation with each other, encouraging students to report infractions to an anonymous hotline. The influence of the identity synthesis is especially pronounced at America

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to engage in what social scientists have termed “insider activism.” Whether they suffered from serious injustices like sexual harassment or less serious ones like perceived microaggressions, they used a combination of internal channels of dissent and external threats of bad publicity from Twitter or The New York Times to push their

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the population. Widely cited articles cast skepticism of affirmative action and the idea that America is a land of opportunity as paradigmatic examples of a “microaggression.” Anyone who is exposed to such forms of prejudice or injustice was portrayed as being at risk of suffering serious harm, vastly expanding the realm

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have even gone so far as to create anonymous hotlines that allow students to report their classmates when they believe they have engaged in a microaggression. This erodes the trust that people need to manage conflicts in a cooperative manner. Because many institutions now send their members the message that they

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UCLA offered to its students, for example, they should always treat their classmates as “racial/cultural beings”; a failure to do so qualifies as a “microaggression.” According to Ibram X. Kendi, “The language of color blindness—like the language of ‘not racist’—is a mask to hide racism”; it follows that

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shifted from encouraging a form of mutual respect that aims for equal treatment to an awareness of the ever-present potential for implicit bias and microaggressions that encourages people to be highly aware of the specific identity markers of their interlocutor. THE LIBERAL RESPONSE TO THE IDENTITY SYNTHESIS There are rational

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author, Jan. 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “racial beings”: For instance, a UCLA guide to recognizing microaggressions asserts the importance of recognizing individuals as “racial/cultural being[s].” “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send,” UCLA, https://web.archive.org/web/20150611163315/https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs

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/_files/seminars/Tool_Recognizing_Microaggressions.pdf. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT doctor was flabbergasted: Jon Levine, “NYC Will Consider Race When Distributing Life-Saving Covid Treatments,” New York Post,

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-oppression/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT I read articles: Aliya Khan, “6 Ways to Respond to Sexist Microaggressions in Everyday Conversations,” Everyday Feminism, Jan. 18, 2015, everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/responses-to-sexist-microaggressions/; Melissa A. Fabello, “White Privilege, Explained in One Simple Comic,” Everyday Feminism, Sept. 21, 2014, everydayfeminism.com

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-of-californias-insane-speech-police. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT intervene when students: Nick Gillespie, “Finally: An Anonymous, Online, Geo-Tagged System to Report Microaggressions at College!,” Reason, March 25, 2015, https://reason.com/2015/03/25/anonymous-online-geo-system-to/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Yale, for

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, no. 3 (2019): 522–59, doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000160. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT paradigmatic examples of a “microaggression”: See, for example, Derald Wing Sue et al., “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice,” American Psychologist 62, no. 4 (2007), as well as examples of the application of

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this idea such as “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT suffering serious harm: For more on this, see Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The

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Americans” amounts to “denial of the racial experiences of people of color” and “denial of the necessity to take action against racism.” Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2020), 38. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT subtle signs of prejudice: For instance, one

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microaggressions guide from the University of California, Santa Cruz, states that asking, “How did you get so good at math?” communicates that “people of color are

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generally not as intelligent as Whites.” “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT report their classmates: Ashe Schow, “University Introduces Website to Report

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Microaggressions,” Washington Examiner, Feb. 24, 2016, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/university-introduces-website-to-report-microaggressions. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the central distinction: Michael Lind, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism

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.com/c.php?g=1046516&p=7616506. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “racial/cultural beings”: Brendan O’Neill, “College Codes Make ‘Color Blindness’ a Microaggression,” Reason, Aug. 5, 2015, reason.com/2015/08/05/speech-codes-and-humanism/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “The language of color blindness”: Ibram

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 health care mental illness, 31, 34, 37, 305n meritocracy, 226, 231–35 metanarratives, 34, 36 Mexican culture, 151–52, 156–57 Michels, Robert, 350–51n microaggressions, 12, 94, 100, 108, 187, 196, 210, 245, 359n Middle East, 42–43, 259 Mill, John Stuart, 43, 164, 169, 179, 308–9n, 349n, 350n

Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself

by Nedra Glover Tawwab  · 16 Mar 2021  · 325pp  · 67,076 words

a better job of not triggering them. Now that you have a few examples, let’s talk about some common micro- and macroaggressions. Little “b” Microaggressions Microaggressions are subtle and can occur in any relationship. They include passive-aggressive behaviors meant to convey displeasure, hidden messages, or anger toward another. Whether intentionally

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or unintentionally, microaggressions communicate negativity. In the early stages of her relationship, Jamie’s boyfriend made small comments about how she spoke. Whenever she mispronounced a word or

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it became a consistent issue in their conversations. Later, when their relationship became rocky, he used her phrasing as an example of her poor communication. Microaggressions are commonly used in terms of race or LGBTQI+ bias, but they aren’t limited to derogatory behaviors or comments based solely on race, gender

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, or sexual preference. Here are a few other examples: Microaggression Examples Racism (Judging People Negatively or in a Derogatory Manner Based on Race) A white woman is on an elevator when a Black man gets

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, “I didn’t know you were that way. You don’t act gay.” Underlying issue: Belief that gay men present as feminine. * * * — Microaggressions are considered harmless by the deliverer. However, microaggressions are harmful expressions of a more in-depth belief system. Though seemingly small, they have a huge impact. Ways to Handle

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Microaggression Assertively address what you perceive as a microaggression: “I notice that you said, ‘I don’t sound Black.’ What does that mean?” Suggest more appropriate behavior. For example, when others call

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, December 6, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/12/the-upside-of-downtime. Derald Wing Sue, “Microaggressions: More Than Just Race,” Psychology Today, November 17, 2010. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/microaggressions-in-everyday-life/201011/microaggressions-more-just-race. Emery, Lea Rose. “The First Year of Marriage Is Tough, No Matter How

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–152 Lacey and Tiffany’s story, 233–234 letting go, accepting and, 129–130, 251 limits, testing, 16, 111 little “b” micro boundary violations and microaggressions, 80–81, 82–87. See also violations of boundaries macroaggressions. See violations of boundaries Malcolm and Nicole’s story, 189–192 manipulation, 102, 117 material

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DPD and, 37–38 lacking healthy boundaries and, 34–38 thought patterns stopping boundary creation, 60–63 your self-boundaries and (See honoring your boundaries) microaggressions. See violations of boundaries neglect. See also abuse adults who were neglected in childhood, 59–60 common issues by adults that experienced, 141–142 emotional

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–87 handling habitual violators, 114, 115–116 intellectual boundaries, 71, 77 Jamie’s story, 79–80, 82, 85, 93 little “b” micro boundary violations and microaggressions, 80–81, 82–87 material boundaries, 74, 78 oversharing, 84–85 physical boundaries, 69, 77 sexual boundaries, 70, 77 time boundaries, 75–76, 78 trauma

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt  · 14 Jun 2018  · 531pp  · 125,069 words

gain nuance, and our understanding of truth advances. But what would happen if some professors encouraged students to use the distortions in our list above? Microaggressions: The Triumph of Impact Over Intent A prime example of how some professors (and some administrators) encourage mental habits similar to the cognitive distortions is

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their promotion of the concept of “microaggressions,” popularized in a 2007 article13 by Derald Wing Sue, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Sue and several colleagues defined

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microaggressions 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

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the speaker is expressing hostility or contempt, it seems appropriate to call it aggression. If the aggressive act is minor or subtle, then the term “microaggression” seems well suited for the situation. But aggression is not unintentional or accidental. If you bump into someone by accident and never meant them any

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negatively, it is likely to lead to despair, anxiety, and a network of damaged relationships. Sue’s original essay included a number of examples of microaggressions, some of which imply that a person holds negative stereotypes toward various groups—for example, a white woman clutching her purse when a black person

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of the examples offered by Sue do not necessarily suggest that the speaker feels hostility or holds negative stereotypes toward any group. His list of microaggressions includes a white person asking an Asian American to teach her words in the Asian American’s “native language,” a white person saying that “America

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feels a flash of offense as the recipient of such statements, is he better off embracing that feeling and labeling himself a victim of a microaggression, or is he better off asking himself if a more charitable interpretation might be warranted by the facts? A charitable interpretation does not mean that

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may also make them less interested in engaging with people across lines of difference.15 By Sue’s logic, however, CBT itself can be a microaggression, because it requires questioning the premises and assumptions that give rise to feelings. Sue gives the example of a therapist asking a client, “Do you

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is also contrary to the usual goals of good psychotherapy. Shadi Hamid, a scholar at The Brookings Institution, describes his approach to dealing with potential microaggressions in an article in The Atlantic: “As an Arab and a Muslim, I get the questions ‘Where are you from?’—by which people usually mean

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prepare these students to engage with one another in the most productive and beneficial way? Would you give them a day of microaggression training and encourage them to report microaggressions whenever they see them? To go along with that training, would you set up a Bias Response Team—a group of administrators

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charged with investigating reports of bias, including microaggressions?18 Or would you rather give all students advice on how to be polite and avoid giving accidental or thoughtless offense in a diverse community

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one another the benefit of the doubt and interpreting everyone’s actions in ways that elicit the least amount of emotional reactivity? More generally, the microaggression concept19 reveals a crucial moral change on campus: the shift from “intent” to “impact.” In moral judgment as it has long been studied by psychologists

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is among the most common of all cognitive distortions; most people would be happier and more effective if they did less of it. The term “microaggressions” refers to a way of thinking about brief and commonplace indignities and slights communicated to people of color (and others). Small acts of aggression are

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real, so the term could be useful, but because the definition includes accidental and unintentional offenses, the word “aggression” is misleading. Using the lens of microaggressions may amplify the pain experienced and the conflict that ensues. (On the other hand, there is nothing “micro” about intentional acts of aggression and bigotry

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.) By encouraging students to interpret the actions of others in the least generous way possible, schools that teach students about microaggressions may be encouraging students to engage in emotional reasoning and other distortions while setting themselves up for higher levels of distrust and conflict. Karith Foster

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offers an example of using empathy to reappraise actions that could be interpreted as microaggressions. When she interpreted those actions as innocent (albeit insensitive) misunderstandings, it led to a better outcome for everyone. The number of efforts to “disinvite” speakers

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an entire entering class of college freshmen whose orientation program includes training in the kind of intersectional thinking described above, along with training in spotting microaggressions. By the end of their first week on campus, students have learned to score their own and others’ levels of privilege, identify more distinct identity

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such a school react to the sorts of emails sent by Dean Spellman and Erika Christakis?68 The combination of common-enemy identity politics and microaggression training creates an environment highly conducive to the development of a “call-out culture,” in which students gain prestige for identifying small offenses committed by

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to endorse the Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. Common-enemy identity politics, when combined with microaggression theory, produces a call-out culture in which almost anything one says or does could result in a public shaming. This can engender a sense

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, that Greg began to notice this more fearful attitude about speech coming from the students themselves. In the new discussions about safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and speech as violence, students often employed arguments and justifications that seemed to come right out of the CBT training manual. That’s why Greg

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.40 Compared to their nonanxious peers, anxious students are therefore more likely to perceive danger in innocent questions (leading them to embrace the concept of microaggressions) or in a passage of a novel (leading them to ask for a trigger warning) or in a lecture given by a guest speaker (leading

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it is easy to see how this way of thinking, when brought to a college campus, could lead to requests for safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggression training, and bias response teams, it is difficult to see how this way of thinking could produce well-educated, bold, and open-minded college graduates

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identity categories, such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. But given the high levels of concept creep on university campuses and the widespread idea that microaggressions are ubiquitous and dangerous, there are sure to be some students who have a very low threshold for detecting bias in others and attributing ambiguous

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think.” In 2013, Campbell and Manning began noticing the same changes on campus that Greg had been noticing—the interlocking set of new ideas about microaggressions, trigger warnings, and safe spaces. They noted that the emerging morality of victimhood culture was radically different from dignity culture. They defined a victimhood culture

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as the speaker believes it is—and if anyone in the room is displeased by that suggestion, then you may be accused of committing a microaggression (specifically a “micro-invalidation”40). If your alternative hypothesis includes the speculation that there could be differences in some underlying factor, some input that is

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://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/special-collections/fire-guides/report-on-bias-reporting-systems-2017 19. For a review and critique of research on microaggressions, see Lilienfeld (2017). 20. For example, Heider (1958). One exception to this principle is very young children, who will often judge a well-intentioned act

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Trans.). (1993). Dhammapada: The sayings of the Buddha. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Campbell, B., & Manning, J. (2014). Microaggression and moral cultures. Comparative sociology, 13, 692–726. Campbell, B., & Manning, J. (2018). The rise of victimhood culture: Microaggressions, safe spaces, and the new culture wars. [No city]: Palgrave Macmillan. Carney, D. R., Jost, J

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, NY: Guilford Press. Lewis, H. R. (2007). Excellence without a soul: Does liberal education have a future? New York, NY: PublicAffairs. Lilienfeld, S. O. (2017). Microaggressions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(1), 138–169. Lilla, M. (2017). The once and future liberal: After identity politics. New York, NY: Harper. Lind, E

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, 1(4), 0082. Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271–286. Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American, 223(5), 96

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Center, 166 Adler, Eric, 198–99 adulthood, 148, 250, 257 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), 175, 176 aggression, 40, 71 in girls versus boys, 155, 161 microaggressions, 40–46, 51, 71, 77, 145, 205, 210, 260 Albright, Madeleine, 48 Alexander, Larry, 107–8 Alexander, Michelle, 74 Algoe, Sara, 159 allergies, 21–22

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, 14, 29, 51, 95, 144–45, 196, 259 Boethius and, 34–36 children and, 241–42 effectiveness of, 37 how to do, 275–78 as microaggression, 42 cognitive distortions, 7–10, 14, 36–40, 50, 84–85, 89, 144–45, 196–97, 212, 259 anxiety and, 7–8, 10, 158–59

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emotional reactivity, 95–96 emotional reasoning, 3, 4, 33–51, 119, 177, 202, 208, 212, 241, 247, 259, 278 disinvitations of speakers and, 47–51 microaggressions and, 40–46 “see something, say something” and, 203–4 subjective standards and, 25–26 Enlightenment Now (Pinker), 264 Epictetus, 33, 34, 50 equality: absolute

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, 258 Intellectual Virtues Academy, 247–48 intent, 51, 86, 104–5 charitability in interpreting, 42, 51, 55, 243–44, 260 impact versus, 43–44, 46 microaggression theory and, 40–46, 51, 71, 77 internet, 237, 241 see also social media intersectionality, 67–69, 71, 76–77, 90 intimidation, 14, 81–98

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-harming and, 151, 195–96 and social media and phones, 146–47, 152–56, 159–61, 265 see also anxiety; depression #MeToo Movement, 12, 27 microaggressions, 40–46, 51, 71, 77, 145, 205, 210, 260 Middlebury College, 12, 87–88, 90, 103, 127 Mill, John Stuart, 248 Millennials, 30, 31, 156

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody

by Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay  · 14 Jul 2020  · 378pp  · 107,957 words

, the idea that words are powerful and dangerous has now become widespread and underlies much scholarship and activism around discursive (or verbal) violence, safe spaces, microaggressions, and trigger warnings. 3. Cultural Relativism Cultural relativism is, of course, most pronounced in postcolonial Theory, but the widespread use of intersectionality in Social Justice

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movement from the 1970s to the 1980s; but, from the 1990s, postmodernists were increasingly in the ascendant. Over time, the postmodernists came to focus on microaggressions, hate speech, safe spaces, cultural appropriation, implicit association tests, media representation, “whiteness,” and all the now familiar trappings of current racial discourse.17 This change

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Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure 68 by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars 69 by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning. Lukianoff and Haidt focus on psychology and Campbell and Manning on

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West suggests that activism for social justice (in the real sense) has become a victim of its own success. Accusations that people who focus on microaggressions and pronoun missteps don’t have any real problems to worry about underestimate the extent to which these issues are genuinely experienced as painful (as

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it: A persistent internal critique accuses the movement of straying from its materialist roots and dwelling overly on matters of concern to middle-class minorities—microaggressions, racial insults, unconscious discrimination, and affirmative action in higher education. If racial oppression has material and cultural roots, attacking only its ideational or linguistic expression

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intrusive noises leading deaf people to find the “cure” worse than the problem. 26.See Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 27.“Naafa—We Come in All Sizes,” National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance

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by Steven Seidman, 153–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge, 2006. Campbell, Bradley, and Jason Manning. The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Campbell, Fiona Kumari. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

by Kory Stamper  · 14 Mar 2017  · 341pp  · 95,752 words

. It didn’t even have a “disparaging” label, I told her. She answered, “Ohhhh, oh God.” We had started the conversation talking about the word “microaggression.” It’s a relatively new term that refers to the small slights or comments directed particularly at a member of a minority group that could

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be perceived as inconsequential but are in fact some sort of attack. Mansplaining is often seen as a type of microaggression: a woman can never have the last word, even on something that she’s the expert on. Jane had been tasked with defining

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“microaggression” for one of the online dictionaries she worked on, and we had been talking about the difficulty of getting rid of unconscious editorial bias in

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definitions that touched on sensitive issues, like “microaggression.” She went back and forth with the editor reviewing her entry; Jane had run the definition by a friend who was a civil rights activist

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were from what she considered to be “a rich, white perspective, unfortunately.” Her editor had changed the force of the definition so that the word “microaggression” referred to comments that were merely perceived to be offensive. “But, no,” she said, “they’re just offensive—but offensive in a way that’s

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the offense.” The problem that lexicographers face with a reclaimed word like “bitch” is the same problem that Jane’s struggle with the definition of “microaggression” is, just writ large. The force of the word’s full meaning is contained in something that lexicographers can’t measure: the interplay between intention

The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged

by Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison  · 28 Jan 2019

people from different class backgrounds were doing the same work for unequal pay. Having said that, there were multiple examples of what we might call ‘microaggressions’ 224 Conclusion – of people’s working-class accents being mocked by colleagues or jokes being made about ‘chavs’19 or other stereotypes of the working

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class. These microaggressions were most marked in acting, as explored in Chapter Eight, particularly during auditions where, as Ray noted, “people just make a snap judgement about you

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ambition. As we have shown, it is more to do with rejecting expectations to assimilate, battling feelings of ‘otherness’ or negotiating low-level but constant microaggressions in the workplace. These issues should be approached sensitively. At present we believe the dominant narrative about socio-economic diversity tends to misinterpret self-elimination

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303 The Class Ceiling 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 of certain groups, can be interpreted as a form of ‘microaggression’. This is a kind of interaction that is not on the face of it overtly discriminatory or hostile, but nonetheless lets the recipient know that

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(https:// doi.org/10.1177/001872679905200401). Basford, T.E., Offermann, L.R. and, T.S. (2014) ‘Do you see what I see? Perceptions of gender microaggressions in the workplace’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(3), 340-9 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684313511420). 323 The Class Ceiling Bathmaker, A.-M., Ingram

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back 219–20, 273 interviews 247, 248t–60t measurement of social mobility 262–5 Turner Clarke (TC) 244–6 see also LFS (Labour Force Survey) microaggressions 17, 190, 224–5, 304n29 micro-class reproduction 34–5, 192 middle-class socialisation 126 Mijs, J.J.B. 298n4 Milburn, A. 9, 29–30

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by Yascha Mounk  · 15 Feb 2018  · 497pp  · 123,778 words

be aggressively shamed. If free speech is invoked as a reason to defend a public discourse that is full of overt forms of racism and microaggressions, then this hallowed principle needs to be sacrificed to the cause of racial justice.23 If laws that claim to be color blind can discriminate

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? These 9 Answers Reveal Its Harm,” Everyday Feminism, June 14, 2015, http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong/. On microaggressions see Miguel Ceja and Tara Yosso, “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students,” Journal of Negro Education 69 (2000): 60–73; Daniel

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Solórzano, “Critical Race Theory, Race, and Gender Microaggressions, and the Experience of Chicana and Chicano Scholars,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 11 (1998): 121–136; and Kevin L. Nadal, That’s

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So Gay! Microaggressions and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2013). Finally, on free speech, see Ulrich Baer, “What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right

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by Ben Shapiro  · 26 Jul 2021  · 309pp  · 81,243 words

be silenced. Thus, the Left has posited that even minor offense amounts to profound damage—hence the language of “microaggressions,” which posit by their very nature that verbiage is an act of violence. Microaggressions range from the utterly anodyne (“Where are you from?” is apparently a brutal act, since it presupposes that

…

) to the extraordinarily counterproductive (references to “meritocracy” are deeply wounding, since they presuppose that free systems reward hard work, thus condemning the unsuccessful by implication). Microaggressions require no intent—intent is not an element of the crime, since we may not be aware, thanks to our “implicit bias,” of our own

…

bigotry. They do not even require actual evidence of harm. Subjective perception of offense is quite enough. The culture of microaggression is about magnifying claims of harm in order to gain leverage. That leverage can grow to astonishing proportions: woke staffers got a reporter for The

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, participate in Maoist struggle sessions, and always—always—mirror the prevailing woke ideas. To fail to do so is to be categorized as undesirable. All “microaggressions” must be spotted. All heresies must be outed. And all logical consistency—even basic decency itself—must be put aside in the name of the

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—“Environmental justice,” “racial justice,” “economic justice,” “social justice”—modifiers that actually undercut the nature of individual justice in favor of communalism? Do they worry about “microaggressions” or “trigger warnings”? Do they use terms like “my truth” rather than “my opinion”? Do they “call out” those who ask for data by castigating

…

, conservatives scoffed at the radicals on campus. They assumed that real life would beat the radicalism out of the college-age leftists. They thought the microaggression culture of the universities would be destroyed by the job market, that paying taxes would cure college graduates of their utopian redistributionism, that institutions would

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth

by Jonathan Rauch  · 21 Jun 2021  · 446pp  · 109,157 words

were injured” because the incident had “create[d] an environment where students of color, particularly Latino, and especially Mexican … feel unsafe.”31 The concept of microaggressions turned life’s everyday misunderstandings and faux pas into rights violations and traumas, reinterpreting ordinary interactions as assaults and encompassing—well, anything, including such statements

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’t be a snowflake. In the culture wars, the term “snowflake” originally caught on among conservatives to mock students who profess to be traumatized by microaggressions and Halloween costumes. The term is not particularly accurate, though. Some student activists are coddled and fragile, no doubt, but many express their moral values

…

win?” No, not necessarily. “Here’s something you won’t often hear on campus,” I tell him. “If you elevate every offense and escalate every microaggression, you abandon the most underrated weapon in the information-warfare arsenal. Instead of protesting and punishing provocateurs, shrug and walk away.” Marginalizing bad ideas and

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Rampell, “Political Correctness Devours Yet Another College, Fighting over Mini-Sombreros,” Washington Post, March 3, 2016. 32. Those phrases are among many identified as racial microaggressions in the pioneering article on the subject by Derald Wing Sue, Christina M. Capodilupo, Gina C. Torino, Jennifer M. Bucceri, Aisha M. B. Holder, Kevin

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L. Nadal, and Marta Esquilin, “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice,” American Psychologist 62, no. 4 (May–June 2007). 33. See Julio Rosas at https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11

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medicine’s reality-based network, 66–67 Meel, Manu, 244–45 Mencken, H. L., 122 Mercier, Hugo: Not Born Yesterday, 42 #MeToo movement, 210–11 microaggressions, 206, 247 Middlebury College, 247, 255–56, 261 Mifsud, Joseph, 181 Mill, John Stuart: On Liberty, 192–93, 198, 233 Milton, John, 51 minorities: canceling

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