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Microaggressions are phrases white people say to minorities that don't sound racist but are actually very racist messages.

Here is the PDF of their two page handout, which was given out during a race seminar on nine different campuses.

Some examples:

"Where are you from or where were you born?” → You are not a true American.

"Wow! How did you become so good in math?” → People of color are generally not as intelligent as Whites.

"America is a melting pot.” → Denying the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience and history.

"I believe the most qualified person should get the job." → People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.

“America is the land of opportunity.” → People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.

You notice that only white people can commit microaggressions, and they can only be considered aggressive when said to "people of color".

They also use a handout to suggest responses that you can use to interrupt microaggression and save whatever poor "person of color" is being ambushed by a White racist.

Thoughts, comments, concerns?

Well to be honest, some of the examples are pretty wretched things to say, and I couldn't blame some people if they do take offense to them. Like this one: "You are a credit to your race.” Seriously, why the fuck would you say something like that? Anyone with a bit of tact should be able to avoid saying something that patronizing

But other examples sound like really ordinary conversation that could be said with the most honesty and I kinda question if we should be taking the pursuit of political correctness that far.

For instance I always get asked questions like "Where are you born?" thanks to my non-standard-kiwi accent. I'm pretty sure people aren't asking this question with some racist undertone considering how white I am. But rather out of genuine curiosity. I'm sure it's not that different for anyone coming from an interesting origin. Calling it a micro aggression would only put me through more misery than I need.

By asking the reading to caution even ordinary questions like that, the whole document comes off as some white-guilt checklist for people looking for a reason to be offended by anything you say. I can't say I humor such sensitivity.

The document even labels some egalitarian opinions as microaggressions. Well I guess equality is screwed then. It's a lose lose situation. Offensive if you do. Offensive if you don't

This is literally making mountains out of molehills, who would even be offended by something as simple as "You speak English well" that's more of a compliment if anything.

And the examples that were kinda mean, what kind of normal person would say those things? I can't name one person who after saying "You're quiet" to me followed up by saying "Be louder" with the intent of being racist or forcing me to "assimilate to the dominate culture" (Jesus Christ what?)

This is political correctness gone wild, and I think Jerry Seinfield said it best on people who constantly label things as sexist/racist:

There are a few examples that are really insensitive (as opposed to racist, some people are just assholes, not everybody is a racist asshole), but the overwhelming majority are, like you say, curiosity questions or asked with no reference or expectation of race at all.

Even "why are you so good at math" isn't generally followed up with "you're black so your knowledge is really surprising", it's more like "why are you so good at math and why do I suck so bad at math please help me figure out what's going on". Especially in a school setting. The document assumes the speaker must be racist if they're saying these kinds of things, no alternative explanation available.

The interrupter questions don't seem all that helpful either.
"Where are you from?"
"Well, what makes you ask him that?"
"…..I… want to know where he's from…?"
This is the same document that says "America is a melting pot" denies the significance of racial/ethnic history, so are we supposed to talk to each other and appreciate each others racial/ethnic history or are we supposed to assume everyone here is 100% American made and that we're default racist for daring to ask otherwise?

Someone saying "you people" (acknowledging different racial/ethnic history?? or a slip of the tongue that reveals white man's secret desire for segregation?! "you people" is a no go but "people of color" is a PC label used to separate whites from everyone else~) is supposed to be interrupted by saying "I was so upset by that remark that I shut down and couldn’t hear anything else." I'm going to think there is something wrong in the head of anybody who says that in response to any remark tbh.

Alien in one's own land Interested in learning about someone's ethinicy? RACIST!
Color blindness This one is weird. It says it denies one's culture. No, it doesn't, being "color blind" means you don't assume someone's culture by their skin color. It means you don't assume someone is less American simply because they aren't white.
There is literally 0 coloration between skin color and culture.
Assumption of criminal status I.. don't think people go by skin color alone. No one is going to see a black guy in a business suit and be worried. Anyways, black people are the most likely to commit crimes, so i'm not sure if its too racist to be more worried.
Myth of Meritocy ..Wait, believing the most qualified person should get a job is racist? Umm… Oh, also, yes, affirmative action is racist/sexist. Hiring someone simply because of their sex or race is the very definition of sexism/racism.
Communication styles This is getting ridiculous. I'm white, and other white people have asked me to speak up, so what does that mean? Or is simply asking anyone of a different race to change something about themselves racist? "You should lower your voice" "YOU'RE JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE I'M BLACK AREN'T YOU?"
Sexist language "being forced to choice male or female" Everyone is male or female, no one is both or neither. "Two options for relationship status: married or single" How is this oppression? sounds more like a bad form.
Traditional Gender Role Prejudicing and Stereotyping "A person asks a woman her age and, upon hearing she is 31, looks quickly at her ring finger" .. Implying people don't look to see if men are married? right… "Labeling an assertive female committee chair/dean as a “b____,” while describing a male counterpart as a “forceful leader." That totally happens.

Some of these things make sense, and some can be seen as prejudiced under certain conditions, but wow.

I remember one time I asked an Asian looking student at my college where they were from and they said San Fransisco and I said 'oh, cool. I've never been to California; what's it like there?' USA is a big enough country that asking someone where they're from doesn't mean you're assuming they're from another country.

As for the OT, the language of "microaggressions" furthers the fallacious utopian thought that gets passed around the mainstream university discourse nowadays-- it's the idea that all our problems can be regulated away. It's the same sort of fallacy that encourages "trigger warnings."

Plato quoted Socrates as saying "education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel." Yet another profound issue with the contemporary university culture is that the corporate nature of contemporary higher education treats the student like a vessel to be filled with the facts needed for a profession, while it should inspire the student to orient themselves towards the good and provide them with the intellectual means to adapt to whatever scenario they find themselves in.

This idea that a higher education is just the filling of check boxes then propagates the idea that the university should "give the student what they're paying for" and not challenge their preconceived notions. The University becomes a place to reaffirm notions (progressive notions; after all, what gender studies professor doesn't hope for a straw Christian to make their punching bag?) rather than present challenging ideas.

The medieval university was structured in the following way: the students would spend an entire semester learning a given subject, becoming as proficient in it as humanly possible. Then, they would prepare a thesis and present it to the entire class, after which their peers could drill them on the thesis as hard as possible, with the aim of tripping them up; the student would only be deemed successful if he could defend his thesis accurately.

That is the ideal of the collegiate education, an education that forces its students into contact with big ideas and hard questions and makes them come to terms with those ideas through rigorous study and eloquent advocacy. It works for the humanities as well as the sciences-- in the same way a scientist needed to defend his thesis with he data of experiments, so did the historian need to defend his thesis with historical data, the philologist with proofs of language, the theologian with the insights of the saints.

This modern university system teaches students not to fight for their beliefs and their discoveries, not to become seekers of truth and advocates for carefully researched ideas but rather timid chanters of regurgitated ideas. It is only natural that such a stifling and dogmatic and ossified system eventually comes around to the destruction of free speech, since it is inimical to free thinking.

Millenials: the first generation to come with its own fainting couch.

This is quite a conundrum. On one hand you're putting higher education in the past on a pedestal and criticizing students of today. On the other hand those students are only trying to make right the wrongs committed in those glorious medieval days.

Actually Maud Menten was one of the first Canadian women to get an MD around 1911. That's only like 2-3 generations ago? Where was all this free thinking and challenging of ideas between Plato's time and when women weren't allowed to do research in Canada? So maybe you should take it down a notch (just a little bit).

As for the original post, I think labeling statements as racist without any context is stupid. Its so dumb you can do that with anything.

"Have you ever worked in a lab before" -Implies my people live simplistic lives and aren't interested in research.

"Careful not to get that on your eyes the label says its toxic." Racist because assumes I can't read English with high proficiency.

"Should I call 911?" Are you implying I don't have medical insurance because I'm not from here?

It's a fallacy to think that because a system didn't allow for women to participate it would still be flawed if it did. You're buying into the progressive myth that the modern state of affairs is a complete "take it or leave it" and that synthesis is unachievable. You're also confusing the idea of classical education for the practice of classical education. Traditional teaching methods can still be used in contemporary times. Furthermore, the inclusion of women in higher education has nothing to do with the corporatization of collegiate culture and culture of offense and outrage of the present generation; the former has to do with the development of political thoughts and citizens' rights while the latter has to do with the popularizing of a business model. Scholars like Mary Boyce are a good representation of how women have succeeded in and made substantial contributions to a more authentic, traditional study of the humanities.

I never said it would be flawed if it did. I don't know what you mean was that even directed to me? It would certainly be better though.

You’re buying into the progressive myth that the modern state of affairs is a complete “take it or leave it” and that synthesis is unachievable.

Sounds like a lot of figurative jargon to me. Perhaps you want to rephrase that so its more explicit as to what you are trying to say. Maybe use an example? Also how can I be buying into anything when I'm simply stating my opinion on the matter with an observation or two thrown in?

You're absolutely right though, the inclusion of women in higher education has nothing to with the culture of offense as you put it and I never meant to relate them. In fact the only reason I posted was to comment on your post on how education has changed since ages ago.

This idea that a higher education is just the filling of check boxes then propagates the idea that the university should “give the student what they’re paying for” and not challenge their preconceived notions. The University becomes a place to reaffirm notions (progressive notions; after all, what gender studies professor doesn’t hope for a straw Christian to make their punching bag?) rather than present challenging ideas.

Here it is. Here you make modern students sound like sheep just confirming the same ideas. Whereas historically university was a place for students to be enlightened by "presenting challenging ideas" as you put it. Was the reason why women couldn't do research in Canada not a challenging idea back then? Why weren't preconceived notions not challenged and changes not made? If so why did it take so long?

My point was that higher education wasn't that different and that these topics on racism are doing exactly what you described by forcing students to see reality and defend their ideas with facts. The thing is you disagree with some aspect of the majority and label everyone as conformists. Like you just did with me earlier. I'm a science student and I haven't come across these issues personally and you just labelled me as a progressive that bought into some myth. Why would you do that without first having further discussion to hear me out?

{ Here you make modern students sound like sheep just confirming the same ideas. }

Well… have you been to college? Are you being asked for your opinion and interpretation or are you presented with information you're told to accept as unchangeable fact and use that information to form your "own" opinion? It's especially relevant in the sciences, where you're cast out and called insane for offering a dissenting opinion.

I'm not really understanding how some of these statements actually imply any of those things. The ones you have in the OP are really bad honestly from a logical perspective.

"Where are you from/where you are born" can simply be where are you born in America, the US is the fourth largest country geographically in the world after all. It's not entirely unreasonable to ask someone where they live.

"Wow! How did you get so good at math". Why is the UCLA even suggesting that nonwhites are worse at math than others? derp derp

"America is a melting pot" – they claim that "Denying the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience and history" but the fact is that America IS a cultural melting pot where those things don't matter on a MACROSCOPIC level. Just because the UCLA's interpretation of this statement is microscopic doesn't mean it actually is a microscopic concept – the melting pot has nothing to do with individuals so individual feelings shouldn't matter in regards to it.

"I believe the most qualified person should get the job." If anything this argues against the idea of having unfair benefits because of your race but ok

“America is the land of opportunity.” – While not necessarily true I can't even begin to understand how anyone could interpret it as how you suggested in the OP.

When people complain about “When I look at you, I don’t see color," it's always bugged me. Yes, I see obviously colour, but because of other circumstances the difference in skin colour is not important to me. Because of various conditions I have I don't even look at people when I see them, my "colourblindness" is genuine. Also, the whole "colour" thing is honestly injected by the individual, blind people also generally don't care about people's skin colour as it turns out. Is it a microaggression that I have to lay out my medical history every fucking time whenever some offended SJW tries to lecture me about how I should "see" colour? And should that even be necessary? Most people don't give a damn about colour anyways except for the people getting butthurt at that statement and actual racists.

Some of these are really debatable. As a woman it would be laughable to be offended by someone asking if you are planning to have children. You're a woman, women tend to have children at my age, it's just a thing that happens a lot. That's not a microaggression, that's an assumption based on a statistical fact. Is it a microaggression to ask your manager if he's watching the next baseball game because he's a guy?

Ultimately, "microaggressions" are just typical SJW bullshit and I stopped taking the UCLA seriously when they kept trying to tell me I get paid 77% of what my coworkers do when I actually know their actual wages. I mean some of this shit really frankly is awful and insensitive but some of it really is just plain dumb. Policing people's language is not going to fix anything, the actually racist/sexist/whatever people are going to keep doing that and just use new words to describe it. It's like the same thing when they try to ban the word "retarded", they don't realize that people will use new words, like "autistic" or "special" to take their place.

Why are there so many dumb people being allowed to affect higher education? Micro-aggressions, privilege, safe-spaces, the entire thing comes off like some kid friendly parody of an Orwellian policy.

We now have to judge interactions solely in the context of race and genders. Peoples race and genders now per-determine their status and position in any given conversation. Seeing everyone be treated in a fair and equal way is now bad. I swear, the US is going backwards when it comes to race and gender.

The butthurt generation has arrived. Everyone gets a medal or else you're a bigoted shitlord.

What bothers me about this whole thing is that it's not like people don't need progressivism anymore. It just seems like so-called "progressives" have decided that actually being an advocate and trying to fix things that actually hurt people's lives is too fucking hard so let's go and try to monitor how people speak because A+ for effort. Because apparently being butthurt about what people say in casual conversation is apparently more important than actual issues that harm people.

I mean this genuinely pisses me off. I'm a blind advocate, my goal is to become THE name in blind computer accessibility… this is my life challenge. I may joke about being a blind spy but I take my work seriously. And it's horrendous how much the general activism scene pulls stupid shit like this when blind people are losing their jobs, having their SS checks cut, being literally told they can't do anything because they're blind, not even being able to read their money, all while with the right set of assistance they would be able to do all of these things. I mean it's like, 90% of the issues that blind people face are social and people are too fucking busy being butthurt when someone asks them where they were born or if they'll ever have kids. I am convinced at this point that nobody gives a fuck because most people just aren't blind, and it's not as easy to tack on of a label as being transgender.

I mean it basically boils down to this:

I'm entering my fourth year thanks for asking. My major is biochemistry and no professor has ever told me in a lecture that something is an "unchangeable fact" in fact in my metabolism course one of my professor's most frequent use of phrase was "we don't know". We had a whole section on diabetes and the prof brings up the drug metformin. How does it work? "We don't know". Why does the autoimmune system target the pancreatic islets in people with type 1 diabetes at an early age? "We don't know." I can go on and on. This will probably sound cheesy to you but that prof actually said to us "This will be your job to figure out" (she was retiring that year). One final thing I wanted to say about lectures is that no professor says "this is fact A". Rather my professors present articles in their powerpoints and tell us "this is the currently believed mechanism of action". Because in science only the data is "an unchangeable fact"; the inference is up to discussion.

Am I asked about my opinion? Of course not I am the student at the lecture not the experienced researcher. What a dumb question. Since we are talking about science who would possibly care about my opinion without data to back it up. The only situation where that happens is in the laboratory courses. And let me tell you, as a double major I have lab courses non-stop every semester.

In my biochem II lab we had a semester long proteomics project where we studied the set of proteins expressed in E. coli under certain starvation conditions. Part of the requirement in my 30 page lab report was to compare the differences between the starved and the control E.coli samples. Since I am not an expert on any of the 50+ proteins we collected and we "weren't told the facts" about any of those proteins, our job was to first identify them and explain why the expression levels increased or decreased. Of course we can't just pull ideas out of the air we needed to reference articles with similar results. Don't confuse this as conforming to the "unchangeable facts" all we simply do in a discussion is say: "We got these results, this other researcher got the same results and the additional experiments they did say this is why."

At no point do I use information presented to form my opinion because the markers don't care about my opinion. They care that I researched experiments and made connections not that I regurgitated information.

Well, you're in STEM (as I'll be in less than two months oh jesus fucking christ), so it makes sense that you haven't really encountered this bullshit. These are issues primarily found on the humanities/sociology side of universities.

{ My major is biochemistry and no professor has ever told me in a lecture that something is an “unchangeable fact” }

My degree is wildlife ecology & conservation, try telling any public college ecology professor that the majority of the scientific world firmly rejects anthropogenic global warming and see where that gets you. "FLAT EARTHER" "DUMB RELIGIOUS SLAVE" "ARE YOU STUPID OR JUST CONFUSED"

I almost dropped out a handful of times because I simply could not take the overwhelming willful ignorance, lucky you for having decent professors, I bet none of them were under 35.

{ Of course not I am the student at the lecture not the experienced researcher. What a dumb question. }

Good girl! Give her a treat and reinforce the absolute authority of any adult with a PowerPoint and a laser pointer! Of course your opinions and interpretations are worthless, you're a dumb student, sit there and absorb what the authorities are saying, dumb student! Question nothing because you know nothing, and we know everything.

Congrats on being exactly what is wrong with education today.

I took Political Science as my major, and every one of my professors told us right off the back, you'll be covering subjects that make you uncomfortable, and working with scenarios that have no clear right and wrong answer. And it's your job to deal with it, whether you are or aren't comfortable with the issue.

My philosophy class was especially hard on this new culture. Once we had an entire period where we discussed the concept of privilege as a "student suggestion" type study, and basically the whole class from the hardest left leaner to reddest conservatives supporter, agreed its pretty much not only false, but a borderline racist, idea.

None of my professors let their own bias get in the way of teaching. None of them ever came out with "that's wrong" unless it was an incorrect fact stated ((For instance, Govt has 5 branches isn't correct)). They encouraged us to come up with different ideas, and to voice them, and to discuss them as a class without resorting ti strawmans. They even brought forth uncomfortable ideas themselves if nobody wanted to say them in order to get us thinking critically and express ourselves articulately.

Maybe its cause it was a public university. Maybe it was because it's a more right-leaning area of the State of Washington. But the more I read about other higher education places, the luckier I consider my experience.

^ it's also because it's a college/university. Even with these crazy policies from UCLA the majority (maybe, UCLA is seriously a melting pot of all the worst kind of liberal extremists) of students there aren't saying YEAH, STOP SAYING AMERICA IS A MELTING POT, THAT'S SO RACIST! They can see that this handout is ridiculous.

We have to be more consciously aware that these sorts of policies were obviously not in effect when we grew up. When we were in middle school, nobody told us about white privilege. Nobody told the black kids in my school that they couldn't succeed because the school is structured around white culture. That's what kids are growing up surrounded by now, they're the middle and high school students being preached at by the Pacific Education Group/et al.

We grew up hearing the phrases they're trying to get rid of now, "It doesn't matter what race or ethnicity you are, you can succeed here if you're honest and work hard enough". They're growing up hearing "you can not succeed here no matter how hard you work because this place is too white". What is that doing to these kids' mentalities? If you're told from the day you were born that your race will always hold you back because the world you live in is just too white, what sort of effort are you going to put into your future? When you're told "you can get a job just because of your race because of how slaves were treated in the past" what does it matter what your grades are? When you're told "you're white so you don't understand these minority children so you need to watch your racist mouth around them" are you gonna even try to make minority friends?

1. The sarcastic derision of the "glorious medieval ages" indicates a notion that things are simply better today than they ever were. There might be better aspects to today (e.g. equality of opportunity) but there are also less desirable ones (e.g. trying to foist the scientific way of knowing onto the humanities).

2. I didn't call you a progressive but rather I said that you were buying into a progressive idea. That idea is that, like I said in point 1, the modern perspective tends to imagine that the past has nothing to offer or that because someone in the past did something bad, we can't accept the contributions they made. It would be like invalidating Thomas Jefferson's contributions to democracy because he was a slave owner.

3. I don't know much about Canadian education, but I can tell you women received collegiate educations in the USA at an earlier time; one of the most prestigious US women's colleges today, Mount Holyoke, was founded in 1836 as (and still is) an all-female school.

4. The culture of the modern university tries to tackle issues of the human condition using the scientific method (sociology, anthropology, gender studies) when it should be using the philosophical and theological methods to attack these issues-- appealing to the common humanity and shared experiences of man does more to unite us against adversity than, say, wagging your finger and saying "check your privilege" or making tons of artificial distinctions to catalogue all the ways in which people differ.

The attempts to grapple with the eternal human questions get bogged down in technical language and artificiality and distance people from the ideas with an excess of words: a sociology textbook lectures whereas a philosophical treatise inspires thought.

I just don't understand how the concept of a cultural melting pot is racist. It's not. It's the exact opposite of racism. It's literally every culture and race coming together as a single one. Goddammit, what kind of mental gymnastics am I going to have to go through with this one!

I agree with what you're generally saying. I mean I think that privilege is an acceptable concept but I think it's extremely oversimplified by these crazy ass people. And it's not something that should be taught like "oh yes you're white so therefore you have more privilege than this black person", it's just the fact that some people are more advantaged than others.

Like privilege doesn't even work that way. The idea that some people have some advantages in society because who they are born as is not something that is really questionable (just ask anyone born blind) but this simple concept is put into such a concrete and rigid form that it doesn't even reflect what's going on anymore. I mean, by their logic, Stevie Wonder is less privileged than me even though he earns thousands more than I do. I struggle to pay my bills, Stevie never really had that. So if a blind and black man can be more privileged than a white chick, then what's the point in teaching it that way?

If anything I think that these "privilege" bullshit talks are drifting people more and more apart. I'm constantly told by people that I have to acknowledge that people are different. Why? Why do I HAVE to do this? Going back to totally blind people again, they can't even physically see the colour of your skin, why should they have to acknowledge it? That has nothing to do with privilege, that's you gloating about the fact that you have more melanin in your skin cells than I do.

Yes, we have different amounts of privilege. So instead of going around and basically just sucking on oppressed cock all day, why don't we, I don't know, actually help people out with each other? For example, I found out that I have a rare mental disorder back in November and it caused me to completely crash, I wanted to fucking die, I thought I was horrible, ect. and I kept thinking, "well my blind friends have more problems than me". But I called them anyways, I needed someone to talk to, I was borderline suicidal, I told them about how I feel.

What I learned was that people who actually care about you don't go and have a dick measuring contest about how much their life sucks – people who honestly love you just help each other out through the thin bits and have fun during the thick bits. I don't understand why this mentality, built not on some bullshit statistics but genuine love for your fellow human being, has been shoved to the side for this… garbage. I mean, for me, I'm in a relationship with a blind person. He has trouble, so I just help him out. People are dicks to him, I talk him through it. And even though my problems are more unusual, it's the same thing. He helps me out. He talks me through it. And honestly, isn't that the way it should be? I've connected far more with him, even though our problems are practically polar opposites, because of the fact that we care for each other when we are hurt.

Also, I have found that college is essentially a joke, at least in my field. Seriously I'm pretty much only there for the accreditation and it was starting to eat me alive… I think my skills and work experience is more important than just how much I can ace a test or suck the teacher's social justice cock. Thank god you don't see that a lot in IT though. lol

>I don't believe in race = assimilate to the dominate culture
>I believe the most qualified person should get the job = people of color are lazy and need to work harder
>where are you from = you're a perpetual foreinger
No matter what you say or do, it's racist/sexist. The only winning move is not playing (although that's probably being microaggressive due to your desire to not confront your biases).

>denying the individual as a racial/cultural being
The fuck does that mean?

Farm Zombie said:

Millenials: the first generation to come with its own fainting couch.

You mean a room full of cookies, coloring books, and Play-Doh. I really wish that was an Onion article I was linking to.

The idea that all races and ethnicities are welcome and equal is now racist.

You know, thanks to this, I'm starting to think that this song is starting to be come more of a reality than anything….

"You are a credit to your race."

In all seriousness though there are offensive ones in there. People with half a brain though would realize why such a statement was a problem though, so I'm not really convinced it's a "micro aggression".