Microaggression Quotes

The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.

I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide.

I understood 'microaggressions' to mean 'little bullshit acts of racism.

People who worry about microaggressions usually have never faced macroaggressions.

Sleepovers, as far as Toby could tell, consisted of the girls in her class getting together and forming alliances and lobbing microaggressions at each other in an all-night cold war, and they did this voluntarily.

The most frustrating thing in the world, even more annoying than woke students who complain about every little microaggression, is a fundamentalist who is racist, homophobic & misogynistic, but is always crying about how unjust the world is. Most people in the Middle East are in fact not politically correct at all, do not want to be, and hate the guts of anyone who is.

What feminists refer to as microaggressions, the rest of us sane adults call life....The concept of microaggressions encourages women to think that every single thing in the world is, or should be, about them. It encourages breathless levels of narcissism, solipsism and just plain delusion....Feminism encourages women to believe that they have the same reasoning and coping abilities as toddlers. No thanks.

If fascism ever comes to America", Ronald Reagan told Mike Wallace in 1975, "it will come in the name of liberalism". Indeed, ideological fascism has come in place of academic freedom, waiving the banners of trigger warnings, microaggressions, and safe spaces on college campuses across the land. You must submit. You must agree. You must comply with the fasces--the acceptable bundle of ideas--or you will be silenced and expelled.

Through it all, being demeaned and feeling disheartened and dispirited, Alice was expected to be nice. To overlook the microaggressions when they continuously rained down on her and find solidarity wherever she could. She was expected to endure in silence.

While 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.

From invisible girlhood, the Asian American woman will blossom into a fetish object. When she is at last visible—at last desired—she realizes much to her chagrin that this desire for her is treated like a perversion. This is most obvious in porn, where our murky desires are coldly isolated into categories in which white is the default and every other race is a sexual aberration. But the Asian woman is reminded every day that her attractiveness is a perversion, in instances ranging from skin-crawling Tinder messages (“I’d like to try my first Asian woman”) to microaggressions from white friends. I recall a white friend pointing out to me that Jewish men only dated Asian women because they wanted to find women who were the opposite of their pushy mothers. Implied in this tone-deaf complaint was her assumption that Asian women are docile and compliant. Well-meaning friends never failed to warn me, if a white guy was attracted to me, that he probably had an Asian fetish. The result: I distrusted my desirousness. My sexuality was a pathology. If anyone non-Asian liked me, there was something wrong with him.

Common-enemy identity politics, when combined with microaggression theory, produces a call-out culture in which almost anything anyone says or does could result in a public shaming.

Recognizing sexism is harder than it once was. Like the micro-aggressions that people of color endure daily—racism masked as subtle insults or dismissals—today’s sexism is insidious, casual, politically correct, even friendly. It

She inhaled deeply—and sneezed. Stupid allergies. “Gods bless you,” Rishi said. Dimple arched an eyebrow. “Gods?” He nodded sagely. “As a Hindu, I’m a polytheist, as you well know.” Dimple laughed. “Yes, and I also know we still only say ‘God,’ not ‘gods.’ We still believe Brahma is the supreme creator.” Rishi smiled, a sneaky little thing that darted out before he could stop it. “You got me. It’s my version of microaggressing back on people.” “Explain.” “So, okay. This is how it works in the US: In the spring we’re constantly subjected to bunnies and eggs wherever we go, signifying Christ’s resurrection. Then right around October we begin to see pine trees and nativity scenes and laughing fat white men everywhere. Christian iconography is all over the place, constantly in our faces, even in casual conversation. This is the bible of comic book artists . . . He had a come to Jesus moment, all of that stuff. So this is my way of saying, Hey, maybe I believe something a little different. And every time someone asks me why ‘gods,’ I get to explain Hinduism.” Dimple chewed on this, impressed in spite of herself. He actually had a valid point. Why was Christianity always the default? “Ah.” She nodded, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “So what you’re saying is, you’re like a Jehovah’s Witness for our people.” Rishi’s mouth twitched, but he nodded seriously. “Yes. I’m Ganesha’s Witness. Has a bit of a ring to it, don’t you think?

Unfortunately, 'post racism' is also a myth, like unicorns and black people who survive to the end of a horror movie.

This is the culture of the micro-aggression, where people literally seek out opportunities to be offended....Victim status is so desirable that it's constantly faked or exaggerated, and claims that one is not a victim are met with indignation.

As a straight, cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical, first-world, middle-class white woman, she struggled to maintain a constant awareness of her privilege, and to avoid using it to silence or ignore the voices of those without the same unearned advantages, who had more of a right to speak on many, many subjects than she did. It went without saying that she was a passionate opponent of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape culture, bullying, and microaggression in all its forms.

She’s tied her amazingly wild, energetic, strong and voluminous Afro back because people sitting behind her in venues complain they can’t see the stage When her afro’d compatriots accuse people of racism or microaggressions for this very reason, Yazz asks them how they’d feel if an unruly topiary hedge blocked their view of the stage at a concert?

Many today have difficulty understanding how the Puritans could execute people based on something like spectral evidence. Yet modern moral panics are more like witch hunts than one might suppose.

The answer: assimilation. Always, the pressure is there. Assimilate, assimilate. Dissolve yourself into the melting pot. And then flow out, pour into the mould. Bend your bones until they splinter and crack and you fit. Force yourself into their form. Assimilate, they say it, encouraging. Then frowning. Then again and again. And always there, quiet, beneath the urging language of tolerance and cohesion - disappear!

Sleepovers, as far as Toby could tell, consisted of the girls in her class getting together and forming alliances and lobbing microaggressions at each other in an all-night cold war, and they did this voluntarily. It

One of the most critical aspects of inclusion is that it must happen actively. When we just passively think of ourselves as good people but don’t do anything to actively include others, that creates passive exclusion.

Magnifying small offenses, mind reading by identifying subconscious thoughts even the offenders are unaware of, and labeling others as aggressors are all integral to the microaggression program but possibly harmful to mental health.

The universe, the landscape, it is all changing. It has not changed enough-that is a given- but it is changing, and evolution is something to embrace. Racism is alive and well and we still encounter microaggressions on a regular basis, bat at least now we can go home and close the door and enjoy some entertainment, see ourselves on-screen, imagine ourselves as superheroes and goddesses. Before, you got hassled, you went home, and you had nothing. That's the difference

What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse. And I call the zero-tolerance policies preventing and punishing these abusers what they are: antiracist. Only racists shy away from the R-word—racism is steeped in denial.

Outrage compounds. Riots, protests, and mass movements are rarely the result of a single event. Instead, a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spreads like wildfire.

Regular exposure to microaggressions causes a person of color to feel isolated and invalidated. The inability to predict where and when a microaggression may occur leads to hypervigilance, which can then lead to anxiety disorders and depression.

Brett proposes that perhaps, instead of bringing in an outsider, we can have Candice do the sensitivity read instead. Candice responds curtly that she is Korean American, not Chinese American, and that Brett’s assumption otherwise is a racist microaggression.

These microaggressions help hold the system of White Supremacy together, because if we didn’t have all these little ways to separate and dehumanize people, we’d empathize with them more fully, and then we’d have to really care about the system that is crushing them.

was the only one picking up on the microaggressions aimed at my younger siblings flipped something like a light switch inside of me. It was an awareness of just how vulnerable they were and a realization that I was the only one who was willing and somewhat able to protect them.

smokey eye eyeliner as defiance. eyeliner as a statement, a declaration, a fuck you to a society that shames people for expressing themselves the way they feel the most at home, the same society that labels everything from toys to toothbrushes “boy” and “girl” rather than letting individuals cultivate their own identities. eyeliner as a call to arms. eyeliner as a weapon, a raised fist, a shield from judgmental expressions and microaggressions disguised as questions, from the insults and slurs shot out of car windows like bullets in a drive-by because i dare exist in a way they don’t and refuse to understand.

More insidious than those moments of outright hostility, though, and maybe more powerful, are the constant, low-level reminders that you're different. Many of us feel different in some way, but it's really jarring when one of your differences is obvious at a glance—other people can tell you're different simply by looking at you . . . Even when you feel like you belong, other people's reactions—even stares and offhand remarks—can make you feel that you don't, startlingly often.

short term always leaves us in a place worse off than when we started. — To properly heal from addiction, we need a holistic approach. We need to create a life we don’t need to escape. We need to address the root causes that made us turn outside ourselves in the first place. This means getting our physical health back, finding a good therapist, ending or leaving abusive relationships, learning to reinhabit our bodies, changing our negative thought patterns, building support networks, finding meaning and connecting to something greater than ourselves, and so on. To break the cycle of addiction, we need to learn to deal with cravings, break old habits, and create new ones. To address all of this is an overwhelming task, but there is a sane, empowering, and balanced approach. But before we discuss how to implement solutions to the Two-Part Problem, we need to address one of the bigger issues that women and other historically oppressed folks need to consider, which is how patriarchal structures affect the root causes of addiction, how they dominate the recovery landscape, and what that means for how we experience recovery. If we are sick from sexism, homophobia, racism, classism, microaggressions, misogyny, ableism, American capitalism, and so on—and we are—then we need to understand how recovery frameworks that were never built with us in mind can actually work against us, further pathologizing characteristics, attributes, and behaviors that have been used to keep us out of our power for millennia. We need to examine what it means for us individually and collectively when a structure built by and for upper-class white men in the early twentieth century dominates the treatment landscape.

Racism in the UK takes a different form than it does in the United States, but there is no mistaking its existence and how engrained it is. A major theme of racism in the UK centers on the question of who is authentically “British.” It can come through in subtle acts of bias, micro-aggressions such as the Palace staffer who told the biracial co-author of this book, “I never expected you to speak the way you do,” or the Daily Mail headline, “Memo to Meghan: We Brits Prefer True Royalty to Fashion Royalty.” While their columnist was criticizing Meghan for her Vogue editorials, there was another way to read it, and that was that to be British meant to be born and bred in the UK—and be white.

The word “racism” went out of fashion in the liberal haze of racial progress—Obama’s political brand—and conservatives started to treat racism as the equivalent to the N-word, a vicious pejorative rather than a descriptive term. With the word itself becoming radioactive to some, passé to others, some well-meaning Americans started consciously and perhaps unconsciously looking for other terms to identify racism. “Microaggression” became part of a whole vocabulary of old and new words—like “cultural wars” and “stereotype” and “implicit bias” and “economic anxiety” and “tribalism”—that made it easier to talk about or around the R-word. I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide.

Explain air. Convince a sceptic. Prove it's there. Prove what cant be seen.

Much scholarship is nothing more than political activism, and much teaching nothing more than indoctrination.

A social environment that is conducive to false accusations could lead us to people being falsely accused of falsely accusing others.

Haidt shows that people of different political persuasions draw on different intuitive concepts -or moral foundations- when thinking about right or wrong.

But other times, a person doesn't even know that they've insulted you or your culture. You must remember: No matter how it comes at you, the impact matters more than the intent.

As communicators, we are complicit in the harm caused by performative communications, microaggressions, reinforcing stereotypes in our content, and contributing to damaging our brand’s reputation…. As conscious communicators, with an awareness of others’ experiences and a commitment to centering them, we are uniquely positioned to help build a truly people-centered workplace.

As communicators, we are complicit in the harm caused by performative communications, microaggressions, reinforcing stereotypes in our content, and contributing to damaging our brand’s reputation…. As conscious communicators, with an awareness of others’ experiences and a commitment to centering them, we are uniquely positioned to help build a truly people-centered workplace.

Bad social science might result from systematic bias, but to embrace blame analysis as a way of evaluating theory or to transform sociology into advocacy for the oppressed is to do something else entirely.

Remember: it’s not just this one incident. This incident is the continuation of a long history of microaggressions for people of color. Racial trauma is cumulative, and you cannot expect a person of color to react to each situation the way that you would having encountered it for the first time. It may not seem fair that you would take some of the blame for what has happened in the past, but what is truly unfair is the fact that people of color have to endure this every day.

Black people forgive because we need to survive,” Gay wrote. “We have to forgive time and time again while racism or white silence in the face of racism continues to thrive. We have had to forgive slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, lynching, inequity in every realm, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement, inadequate representation in popular culture, microaggressions and more. We forgive and forgive and forgive and those who trespass against us continue to trespass against us.

In my research, I came across a neuropsychologist at Emory University, Negar Fani, who studies the effects of PTSD on people of color. She did a study where she scanned the brains of Black women who had experienced continued racist microaggressions in their personal lives and at work, and found that this abuse had changed the structures of their brains.[2] What’s more, their brains had undergone similar structural changes to people who had complex PTSD. The takeaway here: Racism can cause PTSD.

For nonwhites, racial microaggressions find a way into every part of every day. Microaggressions are constant reminders that you don’t belong, that you are less than, that you are not worthy of the same respect that white people are afforded. They keep you off balance, keep you distracted, and keep you defensive. They keep you from enjoying an outing on the town or a day at the office. Microaggressions are a serious problem beyond the emotional and physical effects they have on the person they are perpetrated against. They have much broader social implications. They normalize racism.

The act of forgiveness seems a silent clause in a one-sided contract between the subordinate and the dominant. “Black people forgive because we need to survive,” Gay wrote. “We have to forgive time and time again while racism or white silence in the face of racism continues to thrive. We have had to forgive slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, lynching, inequity in every realm, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement, inadequate representation in popular culture, microaggressions and more. We forgive and forgive and forgive and those who trespass against us continue to trespass against us.

While Meena had been battling for her life and, later, fighting against crippling social ostracizing, Smita had been sitting in cafés in Brooklyn with her friends, sipping her cappuccinos, all of them feeling aggrieved as they talked about acts of microaggression and instances of cultural appropriation, about being ghosted by a boyfriend or being overlooked for a promotion. How trivial those concerns now seemed. How foolish she had been to join that chorus of perceived slights and insults. How American she had become to not see America for what it had been for her family—a harbor, a shelter, a refuge.

One odd artifact of these growing obsessions with race is that the theory of omnipotent white supremacy (which has supplanted “white privilege” as the latest narrative) and oppression, so necessary to the narrative, is often not borne out in fact. There are certainly vestigial white supremacists. But the charge that such racist ideology, known as “systemic racism,” permeates all of American society is rarely demonstrated. Still, the charge is put to good use by the industry of diversity that must find ever-subtler ways of tracking down biases by employing terms like “microaggressions” and “implicit bias” that reveal by their very qualifiers a poverty of such overt pathologies.

Science fiction creators taught me not to take the machine personally: the wear and tear, day in and day out, of microaggressions and weird looks and empty bank accounts, and off conversations and news reports and movies and some drunk guy trying to holla at me and another cop found not guilty for shooting a Black boy who wasn't even old enough to vote and our water tasting like rusty metal. While we do need to constantly unplug from the violence of the invisible machines, we aren't going to survive simply by boycotting products made in Isreali settlements or having multiracial babies. We aren't going survive by "voting with our dollars," and we aren't going to make a revolution through the purity of our lifestyles.

It is crucial to teach incoming students to be thoughtful in their interactions with one another. A portion of what is derided as "political correctness" is just an effort to promote polite and respectful interactions by discouraging the use of terms that are reasonably taken to be demeaning. But if you teach students that intention doesn't matter, and you also encourage students to find more things offensive (leading them to experience more negative impacts), and you also tell them that whoever says or does the things they find offensive are "aggressors" who have committed acts of bigotry against them, then you are probably fostering feelings of victimization, anger, and hopelessness in your students. They will come to see the world - and even their university - as a hostile place where things never seem to get better.

An antiracist movement that emphasizes the *actions* of individual 'white people' with a docus on things like 'calling out' everyday racism, or holding a company 'to account' for not catering to darker skin tones, perhaps isn't up to the task of defeating a concept that our societies have been deeply invested in for centuries, and that has assumed the 'truth' status that whiteness has. The focus on microaggressions and interpersonal slights often occurs at the expense of considering 'whiteness' or as a pervasive, insidious modus operandi, a particular way of engaging with the world. It is a system that is extractive, oppositional, and binary - a dominant system, one that asserts not just that white people should be dominant over other 'races' but that, more fundamentally, sees human life as dominant over all other life forms.

Only when people feel comfortable discussing race or gender or creed or socioeconomic status honestly will true change occur. When Americans can freely talk to one another, and listen, and allow for those uncomfortable moments that happen in a free society. Such communication does not come from the position that what came before me must be wrong; that what my opponent is proposing must be wrong; that only my team’s words are correct and all others are racist, sexist, micro-aggressive, threatening…

Amber was painfully aware of the mismatch between her politics and her desires. She was an intersectional feminist, an advocate for people with disabilities, and a wholehearted ally of the LGBT community in all its glorious diversity. As a straight, cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical, first-world, middle-class white woman, she struggled to maintain a constant awareness of her privilege, and to avoid using it to silence or ignore the voices of those without the same unearned advantages, who had more of a right to speak on many, many subjects than she did. It went without saying that she was a passionate opponent of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape culture, bullying, and microaggression in all its forms. But when it came to boys, for some reason, she only ever liked jocks. It kind of sucked ... And of course they used her like a disposable object, without regret or apology, because that’s what privilege is—the license to treat other people like shit while still getting to believe that you’re a good person.

The Bernie Bros looked up from the vegetarian snack bar we’d put in across from the copier. “Yeah, bro,” one of them said. “Righteous.” “You’re out of organic cashew butter,” the other one said. “Got it,” I said. “See? We’re already building a solid base of support.” “Excuse me for being a progressive,” the first Bernie Bro said, “but I threw out the cashew butter. It’s not a native plant to the Northern Hemisphere.” “So what?” the second one said. “Some of us have peanut allergies. Cashew farming is totally sustainable and supporting organic cashew cultivation supports anti-deforestation efforts in Brazil. Unless there’s something anti-progressive about the rainforest.” “Microaggression. You’re forgetting the carbon footprint of shipping cashews to North America. And the cultural appropriation issues. You could just as easily eat almond butter.” “Oh, really? Have you looked at what almond growers are doing to the ecology of central California?” “Microaggression.” “Yeah,” Polly said, “that’s a solid base of support you got there. You can really build a political movement on that.

If you feel you’re experiencing “micro-aggressions” when someone asks you where you are from or “Can you help me with my math?” or offers a “God bless you” after you sneeze, or a drunken guy tries to grope you at a Christmas party, or some douche purposefully brushes against you at a valet stand in order to cop a feel, or someone merely insulted you, or the candidate you voted for wasn’t elected, or someone correctly identifies you by your gender, and you consider this a massive societal dis, and it’s triggering you and you need a safe space, then you need to seek professional help.

Sexual-patriarchal relational systems overwhelm, from media glorifying sexual connection above other forms of intimacy and interaction, to medical, economic, and legal structures that automatically privilege sexual/domestic/romantic dyadic partnerships and genetic family bonds over other chosen platonic relationships and support systems. Oppressive social structures and micro-aggressive interpersonal interactions constantly grate on us, damaging our health and maybe even pushing us to seek care, but often available formal assistance is part of the same harmful system and populated by the same privileged persons.

We experience specific traumas that affect us profoundly. And we are living amidst institutional standards, family systems and normative practices that perpetuate sexual violence, segregation and domination. A host of macro and micro-aggressions punish sexual identities and experiences outside a norm that almost no one fits inside. Neglect of our sexuality is also vigorously enforced. Most children are born into a world that disregards their sexuality and admonishes or exploits its expression. Adults typically have their sexual experiences rationed to occasional and unsatisfying exchanges. It is well past time we recognize that this neglect in itself is traumatizing. By working and playing to transform our personal neurobiology, we also look to understand and transform the social context.

He saw a boy around Hannah’s age coming down the street dribbling a basketball. He looked over at Hannah to tell her that he thought she knew this kid, but she had already seen him and her face was flushed. He had the white-toothed glow of an athlete and a rich kid. He said to Toby’s daughter, “Hey, Hannah.” Hannah smiled and said, “Hey.” And the boy dribbled on. “Who was that?” Toby asked. Hannah turned to him, angry. Her eyes were wet. “Why can’t we take cabs like regular people?” “What is it? What happened?” “I just don’t know why we have to do this walking to the park all the time like we’re babies. I don’t want to go to the park. I want to go home.” “What is the matter with you? We always go to the park.” She sounded a great big aspirated grunt of frustration and continued walking ahead of them, her arms stiff and fisted and her legs marching. Toby jogged and caught up with Solly, who had stayed obediently until Toby got to him. “Why’s she so angry?” Solly asked as he remounted his scooter. “I don’t know, kid.” More and more, Toby never knew. — HANNAH WAS INVITED to a sleepover that night. Sleepovers, as far as Toby could tell, consisted of the girls in her class getting together and forming alliances and lobbing microaggressions at each other in an all-night cold war, and they did this voluntarily. It had begun when Hannah was in fourth grade, or maybe before that, wherein the alpha girls set to work on a reliable and unyielding establishment of a food chain system—jockeying for position, submitting to a higher position. Licking your wounds when you learn you are not the absolute top; rejoicing to know you are not the absolute bottom.

Since 1970, the concept of microaggressions has expanded to apply to interpersonal abuses against all marginalized groups, not just Black people. In the last decade, the term has become popular in social-justice spaces through the defining work of psychologist Derald Wing Sue. He defines microaggressions as “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership.

Othering is unique in that it’s a sort of Gateway Microaggression.

I don’t think it’s coincidental that the term “microaggression” emerged in popularity during the so-called post-racial era that some people assumed we’d entered with the election of the first Black president. The

a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spreads like wildfire.

Talking about microaggressions is hard. It’s hard for the person constantly having to bring up the abuses against them, and it’s hard for the person constantly feeling like they are doing something wrong. But if you want this to stop—if you want the deluge of little hurts against people of color to stop, if you want the normalization of racism to stop—you have to have these conversations. When it comes to racial oppression, it really is the little things that count.

Haidt and Lukianoff discuss this type of problematic “us versus them” thinking, and how the theory of intersectionality10 has been corrupted and interpreted to mean a power struggle between the privileged and the oppressed. In any power struggle, there is a perceived “good” and “bad” side, thus pitting us against each other before the conversation has even begun. This form of identity politics combined with 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 members of their community, and then publicly ‘calling out’ the offenders.” The authors write, “They have learned to interpret mere words and social behaviors as acts of aggression. They have learned to associate aggression, domination, and oppression with privileged groups. They have learned to focus only on perceived impact and to ignore intent.” This learned behavior of assuming the worst of intentions has had a chilling effect on freedom of speech and a supremely caustic effect on political discourse.

Employees denounce the advocacy of gender- and race-blind policies as a “microaggression” and the product of “racism” and “misogyny.

In a politically correct university culture packed with too many spoiled rich kids complaining of micro-aggressions, parsing every word and statement for any hint it might give offense, no matter how convoluted the logic behind it, desperately needing to separate the world into victimizers and victims. People with so much time on their hands, and so few actual struggles, that the brush of a metaphoric butterfly wing would send them howling in outrage.

Chelsea, if I spoke up every time someone at this school said a micro-aggression against me, I’d always be saying something. Sometimes for my own sanity, it’s just better to walk away.

A microaggression. A comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a racial minority or otherwise marginalized group.

Their moral philosophy is but a description of their own passions. Leviathan, Chapter 46 The origins of what has come to be called the woke movement are in the decay of liberalism. The movement is most powerful in English-speaking countries – tellingly, the countries where classical liberalism was strongest. Beyond the Anglosphere, in China, the Middle East, India, Africa and most of continental Europe, it is regarded with indifference, bemusement or contempt. While its apostles regard it as a universal movement of human emancipation, it is recognized in much of the world as a symptom of Western decline – a hyperbolic version of the liberalism the West professed during its brief period of seeming hegemony after the Cold War. Hyper-liberal ideology plays a number of roles. It operates as a rationale for a failing variety of capitalism, and a vehicle through which surplus elites struggle to secure a position of power in society. Insofar as it expresses a coherent system of ideas, it is the anti-Western creed of an antinomian intelligentsia that is ineffably Western. Psychologically, it provides an ersatz faith for those who cannot live without the hope of universal salvation inculcated by Christianity. Contrary to its right-wing critics, woke thinking is not a variant of Marxism. No woke ideologue comes anywhere close to Karl Marx in rigour, breadth and depth of thought. One function of woke movements is to deflect attention from the destructive impact on society of market capitalism. Once questions of identity become central in politics, conflicts of economic interests can be disregarded. Idle chatter of micro-aggression screens out class hierarchy and the abandonment of large sections of society to idleness and destitution. Flattering those who protest against slights to their well-cultivated self-image, identity politics consigns to obloquy and oblivion those whose lives are blighted by an economic system that discards them as useless. Neither is woke thinking a version of ‘post-modernism’. There is nothing in it of Jacques Derrida’s playful subtlety or Michel Foucault’s mordant wit. Derrida never suggested every idea should be deconstructed, nor did Foucault suppose society could do without power structures. Just as fascism debased Nietzsche’s thinking, hyper-liberalism vulgarizes post-modern philosophy. In their economic

Political correctness has nothing to do with fairness; it’s a weaponized psyop designed to induce people to let others do their thinking for them.

A white person can date a Black person and still be racist. Because there’s levels to that sh*t. Like a lasagna.” I frown but Shu says, “Stay with me. So, on the top, that cheesy layer, that’s what you can see clearly. Hate speech, mad looks, and violence. Obvious stuff you can’t ignore. But all them layers underneath, the ones that are harder to see, microaggression and unconscious bias? Giving your white “girlfriend jewelry, boat rides, and meet-and-greets with the family, but your Black girlfriend pasta in your house? Racism, hun.

I've seen what stress can do to how the heart functions. Just walking down the street here, or even in a big, mixed place like LA or New York, watching people watch you, listening to their questions, and figuring out the right answers, can calcify arteries. You know what I mean?

On a personal level, I have never appreciated when people asked for my country of origin, however it has only been in the past few years that society has identified this query as a “racial microaggression.

Microaggressions are the subtle, everyday verbal and nonverbal slights, snubs, or insults which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to people of color based solely on their marginalized group membership.

Scholars call what I saw a “microaggression,” a term coined by eminent Harvard psychiatrist Chester Pierce in 1970. Pierce employed the term to describe the constant verbal and nonverbal abuse racist White people unleash on Black people wherever we go, day after day. A White woman grabs her purse when a Black person sits next to her. The seat next to a Black person stays empty on a crowded bus. A White woman calls the cops at the sight of Black people barbecuing in the park. White people telling us that our firmness is anger or that our practiced talents are natural. Mistaking us for the only other Black person around. Calling the cops on our children for selling lemonade on the street. Butchering Ebonics for sport. Assuming we are the help. Assuming the help isn’t brilliant. Asking us questions about the entire Black race. Not giving us the benefit of the doubt. Calling the cops on us for running down the street. As an African American, Pierce suffered from and witnessed this sort of everyday abuse. He identified these individual abuses as microaggressions to distinguish from the macroaggressions of racist violence and policies.

psychologist Derald Wing Sue. He defines microaggressions as “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership.

Microaggression” became part of a whole vocabulary of old and new words—like “cultural wars” and “stereotype” and “implicit bias” and “economic anxiety” and “tribalism”—that made it easier to talk about or around the R-word. I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide. What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse. And I call the zero-tolerance policies preventing and punishing these abusers what they are: antiracist. Only racists shy away from the R-word—racism is steeped in denial.

The consequences of systemic racism are vast—from the burgeoning racial wealth gap, political disenfranchisement, mass incarceration and racist immigration policies to micro-aggressions, racial profiling, racist media imagery, and disparities in health, education, employment, and housing.

First, we acknowledge the realities of inequity that impact students in and out of school. It could be acknowledging that students of color have historically been treated differently at school. Or it can mean that their culturally different ways of learning are often mistaken for intellectual deficits. Often in an effort to be color-blind, some teachers downplay or trivialize subtle but persistent microaggressions directed at culturally and linguistically diverse students on a daily basis. For students, these situations cause stress and emotional pain. As an ally, we have to let them know they are not crazy. Inequity is real.

I brought two Frappuccinos, and before you ask which one I’d pick for myself, they’re both caramel. Because I would pick caramel.” “Hmm.” She stuck out her lower lip. (It wasn’t a surprise; he knew she had lips.) (It was still good, though.) “I like having a choice.” He handed her a caramel Frappuccino. “But you always pick the one I like best.” “That’s part of what makes it delicious! The microaggression.

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 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 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 people of color.” (The term was first applied to people of color but is now applied much more broadly.)

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 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.)

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 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.) 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 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 from giving talks on campus has increased in the last few years; such efforts are often justified by the claim that the speaker in question will cause harm to students. But discomfort is not danger. Students, professors, and administrators should understand the concept of antifragility and keep in mind Hanna Holborn Gray’s principle: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.

Intersectionality is a popular intellectual framework on campuses today; certain versions of it teach students to see multiple axes of privilege and oppression that intersect. While there are merits to the theory, the way it is interpreted and practiced on campus can sometimes amplify tribal thinking and encourage students 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 of “walking on eggshells,” and it teaches students habits of self-censorship. Call-out cultures are detrimental to students’ education and bad for their mental health. Call-out cultures and us-versus-them thinking are incompatible with the educational and research missions of universities, which require free inquiry, dissent, evidence-based argument, and intellectual honesty.

Social justice warrior concepts themselves also fosters a mistrust of others. Thanks to the focus on microaggressions and unconscious bias, social just warriors live in a world where everyone is out to hurt them. To social justice warriors, the smallest remark or the most subtle facial expression, might symbolise a deep hatred of them.

[...] The social justice warriors paved the way for a Trump government through accusing people of wrongdoing for trivial reasons. This lets actual bad guys slip past. When everyone is bad, who is really bad? If every white person is guilty of racism and white supremacy, what makes Trump worse than any other white person? Or if all men are sexist, what makes Trump more sexist than any other man? When we are constantly hearing about microaggressions, and subtle sexism and racism, it gets hard to know if to take public accusations seriously anymore.

Who’s the girl?” asked Morosov. “My bodyguard.” “She doesn’t look Jewish to me.” “Was that a microaggression, Sergei?” “A what?” “A microaggression. A comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a racial minority or otherwise marginalized group.

Who’s the girl?” asked Morosov. “My bodyguard.” “She doesn’t look Jewish to me.” “Was that a microaggression, Sergei?” “A what?” “A microaggression. A comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a racial minority or otherwise marginalized group.” “Jews are hardly marginalized.” “You just did it again.” “Don’t pull that shit with me, Allon. At this point, I’ve practically made aliyah. Besides, if anyone is guilty of prejudice, it’s you.” “Not me, Sergei. I love everyone.” “Everyone except Russians,” said Morosov.

When sharing your thoughts about an incident, such as a microaggression, approach the person who made the comment as an ally. Social advocacy is more effective when you start with “calling people in” to dialogue instead of “calling them out” or simply critiquing them. Todd Kashdan, author of The Art of Insubordination, said that “calling in” is ultimately about admitting that we’re all of the same nature. “We all have flaws, make mistakes, and often don’t have the energy or mental capacity to do the things we care about. What’s important is we acknowledge it and choose to do better,” Kashdan adds.

Your life is ultimately your responsibility, and the consequences of your actions cannot be casted on anyone else, no matter their skin tone. Safe Spaces and Microaggressions Over time Sambos have shifted their attention from discriminatory laws and institutions to the mental apparitions of White people.

It’s hard not to see the way things are as the way things will always be—and as soon as you start to believe that, speaking out against the million microaggressions or the many large ones becomes an act of pointless stupidity and self-sabotage

To find a meaningful place in politics, one that doesn’t require us to lie about “white adjacency” or ignore the pain of everyone who looks like us, upwardly mobile Asian Americans must drop our neuroses about microaggressions and the bamboo ceiling, and fully align ourselves with the forgotten Asian America: the refugees, the undocumented, and the working class. What we do now—the lonely climb up into the white liberal elite, the purchase of Brennan’s old house—might lead to personal comfort, but it will never make us full participants in this country, nor will it ever convince others to join in our fight. Naked self-interest and narcissism do not inspire solidarity.

series of identity-related aggressions (IRAs) she faced in this prestigious setting. IRAs, a term we coined to remove the “micro” from microaggressions, would come in all forms—from patients, fellow peers, and supervisors.

Whites simply do not experience either what have come to be called the ‘micro-aggressions’ of everyday racism—habitually being followed by security guards in department stores is one extremely familiar experience; noticing the discomfort of white people in your presence is another

But at what point does that neglect—given that we live in a time when almost any microaggression against a minority can be flagged as racism—shade back into racism?

Microaggression is an example of the emotional violence of contempt.

Because they watch (us). They're taught how to, from school. They are taught to view our bodies (selves) as objects.

You’d think they’d have something better to do,” she complained. “In fact, send-ing a memorandum about micro-aggression amounts to a micro-aggression, in my view. Certainly sending two copies does. It’s like sending an email in capital letters. That’s a micro-aggression if ever there was one.