Harvard has a microaggression blog too, many schools do. You may find yourself turning the other cheek pretty often…
There has to be a balance between being aware that what one says might be considered an insult or a micro-agression and having an overly sensitive ear to a parenthetical that is not implied and certainly not intended. There is a huge difference, at least IMO, between someone using the R word, which most people know is considered unacceptable and hurtful by many, and the use of the term futbol by a non-Hispanic person.
I grew up with everyone knowing “what” everyone else was - Italian, Catholic, Jewish, Wasp. We all knew we were Americans but growing up in the NYC suburbs in the 1970s, pretty much everyone was “something” and, for most of us, it didn’t matter what you were it just gave some context. When I moved to the West Coast as an adult and someone asked me what I was, my roommate thought I should be very insulted and that it was inappropriate because it meant the questioner would only be asking to figure out my “place”. I thought, just as in my youth, it was to get to know me better.
By the way, Mamalion are you sure that this mom relaxed because you said he was a good learner instead of a good athlete? Could she have been concerned simply that he might be bothering you and relaxed when you spoke kindly to him? Do you think she really would have been upset if you said her 5 yo must be a good athlete and how is that aggressive? I certainly think what you said was a better comment, but not sure something else would have been a case of micro-(or macro) aggression. Most (not all) little boys like to think of themselves as good athletes and good at everything.
I have a very tall, very white friend from a tall family, none of whom were athletic, but both the boys and girls were often asked if they played basketball. They did not and found it annoying. Is that micro-aggression against someone tall?
I agree with those that say that, at least initially, others should be given the benefit of the doubt over silly/intrusive questions or comments. A teaching opportunity to explain politely why someone would find the comment offensive, but not necessarily aggressive.
And the actual Oberlin blog has very few posts. I am not sure that the incident noted is characteristic of the school. Perhaps the author is being aggressive against Oberlin!
Parenthetical perhaps, but “futbol” is more or less how one says soccer in Albanian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Catalan, Czech, French, etc. etc etc. Not sure why anyone of Spanish descent would think they owned the word.
Btw I’m amused at the simultaneous “oh I guess my Latino event isn’t worth your precious white male time to attend” AND “how dare you assume that because I’m Latina that i’d automatically attend a Latino focused event.” Simultaneous “how dare you not treat my culture as worthy of learning about” and “hey! get offa my culture! It’s mine and you don’t belong!”
Oh, I’m not being microaggressive here. I’m being aggressive. The girl in the Oberlin case is a major loser. The world doesn’t owe her the right not to be offended. She will fall flat on her face in the real world, where no one has time for this nonsense.
If it’s a “microaggression” to tell a black person he is articulate, is it also microaggression to tell a white man he’s a good dancer? Why is it assumed that the first one carries an implied “for a black guy” but it’s not assumed that the second carries an implied “pretty good for a white guy”? This is a serious question, by the way.
I think the second does carry that implication, if said by a black person. The white guy may agree that black people are better dancers on the whole than white people but how important to anyone’s life is that? Compared to black people being seen as inarticulate?
Of course it is a microaggression to stress the athletic prowess of black boys. “They get football scholarships, not academic scholarships.” URM get hit with this microaggression all the time on CC.
Certain people seem to want racism and discussions of racism to be so simple that they don’t have to think: just avoid the N word. Really, after all the attention to shootings of unarmed black men, it should be obvious that racism is deeply embedded in the culture. Microaggression may be a tiny part of it, but when I read refusals to acknowledge its existence, I understand the attitude that authorizes the shooting in the Charleston church. Extremist need a continuum.
Own your racism.
Wait, what?
Seems like you’re making some possibly-unwarranted generalization about what’s important to people of different racial groups. But even if you’re right about dancing being relatively unimportant, replace it with athleticism. (Or maybe a white musician being complimented on their sense of rhythm.)
“The girl in the Oberlin case is a major loser.”
“No one has time for this nonsense.”
“Not everything said to a person of color is because they are a person of color.”
In part, it is the impulse to over-generalize, the need to “label” people, and the unfiltered judgment of people that leads to microaggressions IMO. This is not nonsense. Micro-aggressions occur every day. Whether or not one person perhaps overreacts in one instance in no way diminishes the very real hurt experienced by many people every day.
I’m sure this has been posted in a few other threads, but Colin Quinn’s take on the new PC is hilarious:
^#(^
HEY NOW! Easy on the gators! Where are the vegans when you need them!!! Talk about aggression…
I think all racial groups value “being articulate” (sort of a stand-in for intelligence) over “dancing well”, our society does, overall.
Athleticism is IMO also not as important as being intelligent. Is a basketball player “more athletic” than a hockey player? Where it is problematic for black people is when it is assumed that their athleticism is ALL they bring to the table (for college or whatever). I don’t think white athletes get that to the same degree though the dumb jock stereotype is certainly real and crosses racial lines.
I’m with PG on this one. That girl has major issues which have nothing to do with being Hispanic and and nothing to do with that guy’s innocuous e-mail.
I recently attended a training for suburban volunteers who are going to teach and run service programs in some city environments. (By the way, is it a micro-aggression to assume I couldn’t relate to an urban person without a day of training?" We were taught to ask questions of those “different” from ourselves and to try to find common ground as a way to build relationships. Somehow I’m thinking that strategy won’t work. For one thing, the common ground can’t be “futbol” or the fact I watch soccer on Univision and we may like the same club team. How dare I appropriate the Hispanic channel for my white self? For another, after reading some of the complaints in the Harvard microaggression project, I also can’t ask an African-American anything like “Do you like basketball?”
People need to decide if they’re different from the majority culture or they’re not. As it is now, they get offended if you see them as different and also if you don’t.
The problem in the US is everyone is expected to go about their daily routine in pretend denial that people are of different races & sexes, lest someone spill the truth that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes and we all really do look different.
People in other countries aren’t so uptight about ACKNOWLEDGING racial/sex differences.
If the hurt is caused by people saying things like “fútbol” then I have to disagree, it really does diminish it.
No doubt the hispanic student who got offended by the white student’s utterance of the word “futbol”, thinks the white student owes her a debt of gratitude for adding diversity to the Oberlin campus.
Some of the responses in this thread remind me of why Starbucks is the largest employer of recent social science grads in the country.
Yeah, the Starbucks stats is made up. It is fake, but accurate.
"Of course it is a microaggression to stress the athletic prowess of black boys. “They get football scholarships, not academic scholarships.”
Except telling a PARTICULAR black boy whom you’ve just observed being athletic that he’s athletic isn’t remotely the same thing as “you black people, you’re good for nothing except for athletics.”
So the rules are different? I can’t tell black boys they are good at athletics, but I can tell white boys that they are? How about if those white boys are Jewish - does that fall closer to microaggression than if the white boys are WASPs?
And what if I find out someone is biracial?
Could we stop defining people by race when it’s not pertinent? If I saw a young MAN who was athletically gifted and I compliment him on it. I’m complimenting HIM. Not “him as a representative of all black people,”
I guess it would be a microaggression to call Michael Jordan athletically talented. Or Jackie Robinson.
This stuff embarrasses liberals like me. It’s too over the top and too wallowing in self inflicted victimhood.
“Whether or not one person perhaps overreacts in one instance in no way diminishes the very real hurt experienced by many people every day.”
And stuff like this distracts from the issues that REALLY matter. What’s more of an outrage, young black men going about their business being roughed up by cops, or young black men being subjected to the “outrage” of being complimented on their athleticism?