In a great post at Bloomberg View, Megan McArdle reminds us that rude talk and offensive slights have always been with us, but our culture over time has given rise to different ways of addressing it. Today, they’re called “microaggressions.”
We used to call this “rudeness,” “slights” or “ignorant remarks.” Mostly, people ignored them. The elevation of microaggressions into a social phenomenon with a specific name and increasingly public redress marks a dramatic social change, and two sociologists, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, have a fascinating paper exploring what this shift looks like, and what it means. (Jonathan Haidt has provided a very useful CliffsNotes version.)
Cutting to the chase, we’re now in victim culture.
Microagressions mark a transition to a third sort of culture: a victim culture, in which people are once again encouraged to take notice of slights.
Victim status is rewarded, and thus incentivized. Good stuff. Read it. But that’s not why I was moved to write about McArdle’s post.
The debate over microaggressions often seems to focus on whether they are real. This is silly. Of course they’ve always been real; only the label is new.
Not so fast. While it is certainly true that offensive remarks have always been with us, today’s microaggressions are not limited to the slights of yesteryear, and cannot be dismissed as an issue by the flip “of course they’ve always been real.”
Was it rude, a slight, an ignorant remark, to call America the “melting pot” or the “land of opportunity”? Just the opposite. These were good things, inspirational things. These were slogans that filled an immigrant’s heart with pride as she took her place in the new world. At least, back then. Today, not so much.
Microaggressions may include rudeness of old, but it doesn’t end there. Not by a long shot. Rather, it’s an incomprehensible shift in what constitutes offensiveness, a hypersensitivity of such an extreme degree that even people whose world is built around not offending anyone end up offending someone.
This is a problem of people looking for reasons to be offended, turning over rocks in search of hurt feelings. Screaming of oppression, trauma, PTSD, because someone didn’t use their preferred pronoun.
Go ask your grandfather what his preferred pronouns are. If he doesn’t laugh, he’s likely to pull off his belt and show you exactly his preference. No, this isn’t an invitation to explain why gender-ambiguous people are deeply hurt by the binary choice of male or female, but that every trivial twinge of not receiving the concession to which they’re entitled gets elevated to earth-shattering trauma.
Get over it. There will be no viable language left after you’re done with vetting speech to eliminate any word that could conceivably be twisted into a slur. And when you’re done, the SJWs will come up with new claims of offense. And this can all be solved by not looking for offense hiding in our ordinary speech conventions, which exist for the silly purpose of being capable of communicating.
And this is where we return to McArdle’s point, that grown-ups don’t spend their lives seeking things to be offended about. Damn straight. Do something useful with your life, and whining about the never-ending stream of trivial slights, whether real or imagined, is not a good use of a human life.
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Yes, I know. But…
http://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/1982/11/14/
That was the last round of political correctness. It didn’t work out any better than this one will. But grandpa was just laughing at Bloom County, shrugging off the silliness: “Those crazy kids.”
Reinstate the Code duello. That way all these microaggressions can be properly escalated. Although they will find a way to fluffify that too. Cream pies at two paces?
Never happen. People who are likely to feel micro-aggressed upon also tend to have an animistic fear of fire arms, and gaining the skill to duel with sword requires a level of training and hard work that special snowflakes just can’t seem to muster. Also cream pies have gluten in them, you fiend!
Swords. Yes!
In cutting to the chase, either you or McCardle cut out the original scholarship. Campbell and Manning certainly don’t say “we’re now in victim culture.” Few, if any, serious scholars would write about culture without defining its boundaries. The authors are serious enough to be published and serious enough to write:
“Microaggression complaints and other specimens of victimhood occur in atomized and diverse settings that are fairly egalitarian except for the presence of strong and stable authority. In these settings behaviors that jeopardize equality or demean minority cultures are rare and those that occur mostly minor, but in this context even minor offenses – or perceived offenses – cause much anguish. And while the authorities and others might be sympathetic, their support is not automatic.”
The settings where microagressions can thrive as a value system, per the underlying scholarship, are communities like colleges where deference to admins and authority is more palatable and equality is highly prized, yet not fully achieved.
I’m guessing that when these kids move out into the real world and those atomized groups become more cohesive communities without admins to solve their petty disputes, the resulting microagressions will need to be resolved by alternative means. Hopefully that will be the radical step of talking to your fellow man. Here’s hoping.
As atoms in an atomized community, these kids will be absorbed into society. The college folks who push this stuff are generally marginalized from college community as it is. They might be involved in protests or even school government, but the vast majority of students that go to college in order to get a job, they don’t care much about these people. They might find sympathy in some communities like Amherst, Massachusetts, but they will continue to be marginalized.
And in the private sector, they won’t get much sympathy unless legal proceedings are involved.
So you write a comment that has nothing to do with the point of the post. Keith responds, further removed from the point of the post, but focus has never been his strength. And you reply, taking this straight down the rabbit hole. No. If this is an interesting tangent, start your own blog and discuss it all you want. Not at mine.
Was there something about this post that suggested to you that it’s purpose was a recapitulation of a sociological study?
I read this post assuming said scholarly article was something more than an excuse to rant about the innocuous people on college campuses overly concerned microaggression. Too paraphrase an esteemed, criminal defense attorney that once questioned my purpose, are you just calling these people poopyheads?
If your answer was yes, then my apologies.
Well, no. That wasn’t the point either. It was actually a post about Megan McArdle’s assertion that today’s microaggressions are merely the same rude slights that have always been around, where I dispute this characterization. But good try, and tell the lady at the door I said to give you a red balloon.
Thanks. I was getting sick of the lollipops.
http://www.clowncrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Teapot.jpg
I am microaggressed by official forms that ask me whether I’m an ex-offender and allow only yes and no as answers. Not because I feel offended, but because there is no honest way to answer, given that I was falsely convicted. Bring back the good old-fashioned term “ex-convict.”