MICROAGGRESSION EXAMPLES MESSAGE
A person asking an Asian American or Latino
American to teach them words in their native
language.Continuing to mispronounce the names of students
after students have corrected the person time and
time again. Not willing to listen closely and learn
the pronunciation of a non-English based name.
So you cannot ask how to pronounce ǂKam ǃũi-aob gye ǁẽib di gūna ǃhomi ǃna gye ǃũi hã i. But God Forbid that you should mispronounce Sara Baartman.
Might work over on the West Coast but I see a certain problem with it.
I’m working with an Iraqi woman at the moment. Her name is sort of Aly-a, but nobody pronounces it quite right as an Arabic speaker would. Likewise, she pronounces my name Eye-ann.
Clearly this microagression is everywhere, and there we were thinking we were getting on fine.
Ooh, I typically get an Umlaut added to my surname.
ANTI-IMMIGRANT MICROAGGRESSION!!!! ZMGz.
I was going to do a (probably not very funny) joke about abaca B(umlaut), but there isn’t such a character 🙁
Well, the one I get all the time:
Other: Where do you come from?
Me: Britain/Germany (depends on context).
Other: No, where are you really from? You’re not really British/German!
This is something that very, very rarely happens to white males. and thus white males are absolutely not qualified to speak on it.
Do I class it as any form of aggression? No, I’m too used to it and I’m not an efnick feminazi victim-poker player. But it is still utterly fucking tedious, in a way that white males will never appreciate.
Does this count as a micro-aggression?
“Fuck off you hypersensitive crybaby”
You owe me one new keyboard.
I have customers in the Stans. I tend to call them “mate”.
Loved these microaggressions though. It’s gold, Timmy! Gold!
“There is only one race, the human race.” – this is now an example of racism. Progress!
“America is a melting pot.” – you’re supposed to say “AmeriKKKA is the most evil country ever! Free Mumar and/or Palestine!”
Denying the experiences of students by questioning the credibility /validity of their stories. – if Cheech tells you Jesus winked at him while he was high, that’s definitely what happened.
“I’m not racist. I have several Black friends.” – Denying your guilt merely aggravates your crimes against the Party.
“I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” – basically makes you a Shitlord and Hitler: Shitler.
“Of course he’ll get tenure, even though he hasn’t published much—he’s Black!” – blackademics never get special treatment.
“America is the land of opportunity.” – Cuba is the REAL land of opportunity, comrade.
“Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.” – pay no attention to that two-term black president behind the curtain!
An advisor sends an email to another work colleague describing another individual as a “good Black scientist.” – the correct term is “unicorn”.
Use of the pronoun “he” to refer to all people – Fuck you, language!
Being forced to choose Male or Female when completing basic forms. – they should put “sweet transvestite from Transylvania” on there too.
Bloke in Germany – This is something that very, very rarely happens to white males. and thus white males are absolutely not qualified to speak on it.
Some of my best friends are blokes in Germany, so I’m not being racist, but…
Have you considered wearing a blond moustache, a mullet, and/or lederhosen?
As the underlying aim is to allow the pretext to attack/prosecute/persecute white males under any circumstances, real or imagined, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see blatant contradiction. These aren’t rules or laws to make the campus a better place. They are weapons.
“Might work over on the West Coast but I see a certain problem with it.”
I think the days of thinking “oh, that’s America; it could never happen here” are long, long gone. Our society is equally insane.
Microagression? Or does telling Bloke on Germany to “fuck off you hypersensitive crybaby” just count as plain stupid?
I’ve said it before but a lot of these people would profit mightily from a good old-fashioned macroaggression.
In France I get called Teeem-o-teeee. I never realised the French were so aggressive.
This will simply harm the Asian American or Latino American. Students will stay the hell away from them. The administration has designated them pariah. Isolation ensues.
“Continuing to mispronounce the names of students after students have corrected the person time and time again. Not willing to listen closely and learn the pronunciation of a non-English based name.”
It’s the White Man’s fault. That you can’t pronounce their name is because you weren’t “willing to listen closely and learn.” That the sounds in their name don’t exist in our language has nothing to do with it.
British microaggressions:
* Assuming that all Liverpudlians live on benefits and supplement their income by stealing hubcaps. In reality, at least four Liverpudlians are middle class or Cilla Black.
* Assuming every dishevelled, drunk, aggressive man with a Scottish accent you meet in London is a tramp. Some of them are actually Eric Joyce MP.
* Believing that all Brummies are thick. Stephen Hawking is a Brummie, but he changed his accent because nobody would hire a quantum physicist from Dudley.
* Not laughing at the chucklesome comedic capers of Lenny Henry.
* Asking Nicola Sturgeon where the other Krankie is.
* Using the following slurs for Irish people: potato fancier; leprechaun-fucker; Louis Walsh.
* Doing “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these”
* David Bowie’s video for “China Girl”.
* Offering Ed Miliband a bacon sandwich.
* Thinking that Ramadan is a music festival in Derbyshire.
* Cancelling your holiday to Tunisia.
* Chanting “Kali-ma! Kali-MA!” when they’re slow to bring the bill in an Indian restaurant.
Nicolas Sturgeon is in fact the lost 6th Bay City Roller; not a Krankie!!!
Ironman – She ran with the gang.
Haha, I give all the Chinese I meet (work and social) English names because even after almost 10 years for some of them I can’t remember their weird names. I like to use “sugar tits” when my right-on colleagues from the UK are in town.
Steve
Boy did she!
But that’s not a problem, they’ll all run and hide as soon as you stand up for yourself.
Mony a microaggression maks a macroaggression.
Steve: I looked at that Bay City Rollers pic and my first thought was that someone had obviously p-shopped Nicola’s head into the pic.
Then I looked at the rest of the photo and it was equally obvious that all the other heads had been photo-shopped in.
WTF?
Put your serious hat on and read the microaggression document.
How many microaggressions can you count in the document, when considering it according to its own rules?
I never knew you spoke Hottentot Tim. Have you worked a lot with Bushmen?
> This is something that very, very rarely happens to white males.
Really? I get it all the time. Comes from having a weird accent and really no proper answer to the question “Where are you from?”
That one is particularly brilliant. Because what if the experience of another student is that they’ve found America to be a land of opportunity where everyone can succeed if they work hard enough?
Seriously, if this is now verboten, I’d be interested to know how university facilities management are getting round the logistical problems of making sure there’s enough stuff in the right place. Like, how many urinals does the building need this year?
“That one is particularly brilliant. Because what if the experience of another student is that they’ve found America to be a land of opportunity where everyone can succeed if they work hard enough?”
False concious, natch. To doubt that immigrating to the US is a horrible experience of constant oppression is a macroaggression.
To suggest that if it were so horrible millions of people wouldn’t risk life and limb to do it is just neoliberal sophistry.
> False conscious
DON’T DOUBT MY EXPERIENCE! AGGRESSOR!
I could count the number of people who pronounce my surname correctly straight off the bat on Abu Hamza’s fingers. Ma, I’m being microaggressed!
@Rob,
It’s more about basic good manners than anything else. Something that’s notably lacking on the right fringe of libertardistan.
@SQ2, you just need to tell them how you pronounce the letter H.
Kevin B – yes. Scottish people all look like this IRL.
Except that saucy little minx Kelly Macdonald. She’s a spicy haggis, and no mistake.
S2 – I’d be interested to know how university facilities management are getting round the logistical problems of making sure there’s enough stuff in the right place. Like, how many urinals does the building need this year?
Gender neutral toilets, natch.
Urinals are triggering and problematic because male standing up to pee privilege, and ableism, or something.
“Gender neutral toilets, natch.”
Until someone gets uptight about sharing them with the insufficiently-oppressed.
“How many microaggressions can you count in the document, when considering it according to its own rules?”
Anyway, what I spotted immediately was the presumption that Asians are not “people of colour” or that their ancestors also had a hard time 150+ years ago…
Anyway, I still get “microaggressed” every time someone replies to me in High German (which I prefer not to speak) instead of dialect, then acts surprised that I even bothered to learn dialect….
> Gender neutral toilets, natch.
OK, so bad example. But it’s still a genuine logistics problem. For instance, even gender-neutral toilets contain disposal facilities for tampons and sanitary towels, and someone has the job of organising their capacity and how often they need emptied. Universities have sports facilities with changing rooms. They provide health services, which are not the same for men and women.
I get pissed off about being asked to provide my ethnicity and religion on forms, but male or female is actually just useful information that gets used for completely practical and non-oppressive purposes. This must be a genuine pain for facilities managers.
abacab,
My wife can speak High German, but prefers to speak Swabish. She says Germans are every bit as enthusiastic at accent snobbery as the Brits.
“My wife can speak High German, but prefers to speak Swabish. She says Germans are every bit as enthusiastic at accent snobbery as the Brits.”
the Swiss also. The Zürcher think the Bernese sound like mountain peasants. The Bernese think that the Zürcher sound almost like Germans. It’s (mostly) meant in jest though. And if you’ve got your ear into one dialect, the perception of the other is exactly that… (I started with ZH dialect then moved to Bernese).
But there’s a reflex amongst the older generation if they hear a foreign accent to switch into High German. My generation hate speaking high german, so it’s normally easier 🙂 (I have a shooting friend who prefers French to high german, and I’ve certainly exchanged more spoken words with him in French than in high german).
“Pugnacitism” -the practice of inventing accusatory words and phrases to describe inoffensive acts,thereby avoiding the need to demonstrate the blameworthy nature of said acts. Example: micro aggression.
Pugnacitism is conjectured to be a compensatory mechanism in environments where traditional moral values, such as truthfulness, charity and humility have all but disappeared.
@Ironman
‘Microagression? Or does telling Bloke on Germany to “fuck off you hypersensitive crybaby” just count as plain stupid?’
Here is again, on his trusty old Scooter of Justice.
Not content with taking up arms on behalf of people who believe God will smite them for eating a bacon sandwich, or being gay, now he’s charging around the internet defending Bloke in Germany against remarks that don’t appear to have been made towards Bloke in Germany, a man in any case more than capable of defending himself (and who in this instance appears to have been amused – ‘you owe me a new keyboard’ being internet slang for ‘that’s amusing’.).
It must be hard work being you, my old china. Take a day off?
Steve – “Except that saucy little minx Kelly Macdonald.”
I rather fancy Sharleen Spiteri.
But what about the #transpregnant?
“A person asking an Asian American or Latino
American to teach them words in their native
language.”
I always found that worked well as a chat-up device. Closely followed by:
“… You’re so interesting looking!”
I am coming to the belief that rather than putting ‘Jihadi John’ on a wanted poster, we need to be bringing him to ‘higher education’ institutions here and In the U.S. And setting him loose with a butchers knife and instructions to go after people who use the term ‘micro aggression’ or ‘safe space’ with no sense of irony- the real world seems to be wholly absent from this discourse……
Microaggressions seem dedicated to the proposition that there is no significant racism left in the West, and so to keep the wheels of perpetual aggravation turning, people have to find smaller and smaller things to get aggrieved about.
And today’s example – commenting positively on a woman’s tattoos:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420689/tat-calling-harrassment-women-tattoos-everyday-feminism
So don’t do that guys!
In other Scooter of Justice news, I would if I could get a comment from the audience. I need some ideologically sound guidance. A researcher has just found a gene that influences the degree to which we feel empathy:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150507135919.htm
The gene in question is ADRA2b, which influences the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Previous research by Todd found that carriers of a deletion variant of this gene showed greater attention to negative words. Her latest research is the first to use brain imaging to find out how the gene affects how vividly people perceive the world around them, and the results were startling, even to Todd.
Admittedly the research is utter garbage:
“We thought, from our previous research, that people with the deletion variant would probably show this emotionally enhanced vividness, and they did more than we would even have predicted,” says Todd, who scanned the brains of 39 participants, 21 of whom were carriers of the genetic variation.
21? In depth! Oh wait, Todd is a woman. Is that a micro-aggression? Never mind. That is not my point. This is:
The ADRA2b deletion variant appears in varying degrees across different ethnicities. Although roughly 50 per cent of the Caucasian population studied by these researchers in Canada carry the genetic variation, it has been found to be prevalent in other ethnicities. For example, one study found that just 10 per cent of Rwandans carried the ADRA2b gene variant.
So my question is, is pointing out that Rwandans and White Canadians are genetically different in a way that appears to have a major impact on their behaviour, a microaggression or a macroaggression?
Which inevitably leads to the follow up question, what should we do with researchers who produce these hate facts, throw them off a building with a noose tied around their necks or fire them first, shame them in a national newspaper and then throw them off a building with a noose tied around their necks?
Rusty? Biggie? Anyone?
Dave
If “fuck off you hypersensitive crybaby” wasn’t aimed at BiG then why did he respond?
And my question still stands: how is “fuck off you hypersensitive crybaby” not just plain stupid?
As for “take a day off” you get the same answer Johnydub gets: people like you don’t get to tell people that. Not you, not Johnydub and not ‘it would be great if a terrorist murdered your children’ Interested.
SMFS
Can you give us your source material for a couple of other statements you have made:
1. Egypt Ian society draws no distinction between him sexual and heterosexual relationships so apprentices are likely to be raped by their bosses.
2. Greeks are basically Ottomans and so are bound to be corrupt.and incompetent.
3. Hollywood is run by Jews and so makes films.about nerdy geeks who got beat up at school but then…
Without evidence he’s contentions would appear debatable. So you see our need for evidence. And coukd it be something a bit more than a piece you yourself call utter garbage.
@Steve – at least four Liverpudlians are middle class or Cilla Black. thats five, though John and George are sadly gone.
nobody would hire a quantum physicist from Dudley.– Dudley is Black Country you ignorant southern/northern/welsh/whatever twat. And Lenny Henry and Sue Lawley come from Dudley so there.
Asking Nicola Sturgeon where the other Krankie is. – absolutely fucking brilliant 🙂
Thinking that Ramadan is a music festival in Derbyshire. – thats a good un, will have to copy it.
@ironman Nicolas Sturgeon is in fact the lost 6th Bay City Roller; Ironman beats Steve (today).
Ironman
So I take it that is a no? You cannot give an answer?
“Can you give us your source material for a couple of other statements you have made:”
You quote something I actually said, as opposed to you making up, and I will be happy to respond.
““Even if you think you’re just paying her a compliment . . . you’re actually reminding her that men, on the whole, feel entitled to her space, time, and especially her body,” she continues. … http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420689/tat-calling-harrassment-women-tattoos-everyday-feminism“
@Ironman, I’ve no idea if it was aimed at me. It was worthy of a chuckle either way.
@SMFS, as I said earlier, it’s really more to do with good manners than anything else. Sure, the perpetually oppressed will bang on about oppression, but it’s just not appropriate to “ask someone to teach you words in their native language”.
Unless you know them well enough, that is. However, when directed at an English native who happens not to look like the majority of English natives, by someone who has just met you it is inappropriate at least, and can be offensive. And just because you have a right to cause offence doesn’t make it sensible to go around exercising that right at every possible opportunity, Just because it’s the only thing you excel at doesn’t make it sensible.
Why shouldn’t Geordies marry Scousers?
Because their kids would be too lazy to steal.
I’m feeling pumped-up today!
OK, the tat-calling thing is hilarious. And, I believe, big news to pretty much everyone on the planet with a tattoo. She’s listing the details of every tattoo conversation I’ve ever had, about my own or others’, with men or women, and claiming it’s wrong. It won’t catch on.
BIG,
> it’s just not appropriate to “ask someone to teach you words in their native language”.
Well, there go school exchanges.
Gamecock – Sharleen Spiteri was cute in the 90’s. Like a slightly awkward, slightly tomboyish girl-next-door who doesn’t realise she’s pretty.
Would wear only a Batman mask and a smile, lurk on top of a wardrobe, then pounce.
johnny bonk – Black Country, shmack country. This is like Sunderlanders claiming they’re not Geordies, or people from Essex claiming they’re not cunts.
And Sue Lawley is the poor man’s Sue Cook.
Asking Nicola Sturgeon where the other Krankie is. – absolutely fucking brilliant
🙂 Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
And maybe this explains Nicola Sturgeon’s meteoric rise to sort-of power. The Scots are wallowing in 80’s nostalgia like Pat Sharp in a waterbed with the twins from Fun House.
The only man who halt her inevitable rise to Chancellor-and-President is Timmy Mallett.
Ironman beats Steve (today).
Ironman Made Me Believe in Magic.
Edward Lud – Because their kids would be too lazy to steal.
Bloke in Germany – “Just because it’s the only thing you excel at doesn’t make it sensible.”
I have no idea what that little trite rant was aimed at me. I have never commented on the sense of asking people for words in their own language.
However I would say that as crude as “Yeah but where are you really from” is, it reflects a genuine effort to avoid giving offense. We need to know something about the back ground of the people around us if we are to avoid offending. You need to know if the guy in your office lost a son in a car crash or not. You need to know if Amy is in fact a mother-in-law. Otherwise comments and jokes will be made that should not be made.
So we still have an idea that being English has something to do with race. That makes the phrasing awkward. But it is important to know if someone is likely to be offended by serving pork products, or a joke about Indira Gandhi or whatever.
We need to know a lot about other people to get on with them. The question is crudely asked but it is important.
Since London is full of immigrants, I find people like to ask each other where they’re from because it’s interesting. Where people come from, if it’s not “Well, my family have lived right here for ten generations,” always involves a story. And most people like telling their stories. The offencemongers are destroying that.
Ironman – “And coukd it be something a bit more than a piece you yourself call utter garbage.”
By the way, don’t change the subject. You were not asked to comment on the truth or not of the claim. No one has been. Micro-aggressions are not about truth. You were asked to comment on what should happen to someone who mentions a Hate Fact.
Given your extreme and oft-expressed dislike of people who express facts you do not like.
“And my question still stands: how is “fuck off you hypersensitive crybaby” not just plain stupid?”
FFS, it was amusing rather than stupid. So SOH was never on your charge sheet, we get it.
@Ironman
‘‘it would be great if a terrorist murdered your children’ Interested.’
The problem (or one problem) with you is that you are a liar.
I didn’t say that.
I said it would be terrible if any child is murdered, but that if a child *has* to be murdered it ought to be yours, since you are helping to create the conditions in which terrorism flourishes.
@Ironman
REe this, I can’t answer for Dave but
‘If “fuck off you hypersensitive crybaby” wasn’t aimed at BiG then why did he respond?’
Well, if it wasn’t aimed at *you*, why did *you* respond?
How these threads work is, they’re a free-for-all. You don’t like it? Not your blog, fuck off. No-one would miss you.
Or don’t fuck off. No-one cares about that either.
And then this from BiG:
‘@Ironman, I’ve no idea if it was aimed at me. It was worthy of a chuckle either way.’
Game set and match to Dave (and everyone else who is growing in creasingly tired of your juvenile drivel).
PS Who is Egypt Ian?
@SMBS,
The answer “Britain” or “Germany” is adequate for someone I am unlikely to have further dealings with. Their questioning it is, pace Squander2, tantamount to calling me a liar. They aren’t expecting the exchange of fascinating stories, they’re expecting me to say something like “no, actually I’m bullshitting you and I’m really from Iran”.
Those I will have further dealings with, get on well with, or am simply interested in exchanging backstory with, on can certainly have the detailed explanation including the bits about India and East Africa, and the Aga Khan and the second Boer war. And the bit about Germany and Britain I didn’t mention in the first answer. Everyone else _should_ have the good grace to accept the short version at face value. There literally isn’t time for the rest of it.
Interested, I think he means me.
Apparently I ” draws no distinction between him sexual and heterosexual relationships”
I’m not sure if me (ian Egypt) is him sexual or hetero, or maybe her sexual. Either way i’ll p[robably get the police going him sexual on something.
I will ask my colleagues to call me ian Egypt from now on, and I will sweep the arabs to victory
Steve,
I appreciate it is massively less important for you than for me, but Eric Joyce is, joyously, wonderfully, no longer entitled to the suffix “MP”*. John, (who was my barber until he got himself a less useful job), now is.
About the only regrettable thing was that he didn’t run as an independent to lose his deposit in a humiliating and televised manner (it wouldn’t have got the universal cheer Balls’ ballsup did, but that’s only because the response of so many people would have been “Eric who?”)
* And we aren’t yet in the USian position of people hanging on to honorifics until their funeral march is played.
BIG,
There’s a whole world of difference between “Where are you from?” and “No, but where are you really from?”
Interested,
> I said it would be terrible if any child is murdered, but that if a child *has* to be murdered it ought to be yours, since you are helping to create the conditions in which terrorism flourishes.
Ah, what Michael Moore said about New York on 9/11. Classy.
@S2
If you help to create the conditions in which something bad inevitably happens to innocent people, then I have to say I don’t think it unfair that the innocent people who suffer are you and people who are dear to you.
The logical alternative is that the innocent people who die had no part in creating the conditions, which seems even less ‘classy’.
Both are bad things, the latter is worse. The difference between this view and that of Moore is that he thought 9/11 was basically a good thing.
You might have got more mileage out of arguing that Ironman doesn’t help really help to create the conditions in which Islamicist nutters feel able to cut around the place with virtual impunity. I would disagree with you – he helps to salt the sea in which they swim (as, ironically, does Moore). But you’d have had more of a point.
It’s maybe a bit OT biblical, but I’m like that. For instance, I also don’t think it would be a bad thing to insist that judges and politicians and chief constables and Frances Crook live on rough council estates and get to enjoy the conditions endured by the people who live there and which they help to create, rather than in big houses in leafy villages.
Like Tam Dalyell?
@SQ2,
The “but where are you really from” is frequently the second question I get from taxi drivers or Americans. Most of the former are trying to work out if they should have said “salaam alekum” rather than “schoenabend”. It’s simply not a well-mannered second question from someone you will never meet again. In the same way that, when you get into a taxi in Belfast, you don’t want the driver asking what school you went to. You just want to get home.
BiG
I had always assumed you were just another white bloke – from either the UK or Germany; frankly it’s all a bit of a shock…
[…] Worstall took a look at a document produced by the University of California: “Recognizing Microaggressions and the […]
Bloke in Germany – “The answer “Britain” or “Germany” is adequate for someone I am unlikely to have further dealings with. Their questioning it is, pace Squander2, tantamount to calling me a liar. They aren’t expecting the exchange of fascinating stories, they’re expecting me to say something like “no, actually I’m bullshitting you and I’m really from Iran”.”
This is an interesting piece of hypersensitivity. They may just be really interested. This is how people learn about the world. They ask questions.
And no, they are not calling you a liar. They are expressing it crudely, but what they mean is that they need to place you in order to have a proper conversation. There is no point slagging off feckless Liverpudlians if in fact your mother comes from there. They need to know. So what they want is a simple “I am British, but my Mother is a Ugandan Indian” or the like. That enables the polite social conventions suitable for the occasion to be used correctly.
It really isn’t the rest of the world out to get you.
How about not making bigoted remarks to strangers, regardless of where they might be from?
Social Justice Warrior – “How about not making bigoted remarks to strangers, regardless of where they might be from?”
Because it would mean letting c*nts like you define what is or is not a micro-aggression and so police every single interaction between every single human being on the planet.
Regardless of whether anyone plans to make bigoted comments or not, we all need to place someone before we can have meaningful conversations with them. The fact that we usually live with the same people from the same place, who went to the same school, obscures this fact. Try working in a large multinational corporation with a large multicultural work force and a very high staff turnover. It is amazing what is implicit in every day conversations – and what you have to negotiate quickly and without offense when in fact we don’t all come from the same village.
@PF,
I’m white too. 100% Caucasian in fact. When people see the non-white bits that obscures the white, and for some reason becomes remarkable. It should no longer be remarkable.
Oh, and your assuming I was a white guy rather demolishes SMBS’ contention that we need to know every aspect of someone’s heritage in order to deal with them. SMBS wants to know if he’s talking to a chink or a nigga because he thinks he knows just what chinks and niggas are like and can adjust accordingly.
BiG
It was slightly tic as I’m sure you appreciated!
Re SMFS’s comment, I would suggest the issue he is making is more nuanced than black & white, and no puns intended.
In that, for example, if I was talking to someone who was Asian (subcontinent), it might be of some value in advance of getting into a conversation, on Islam for example (or Christianity, Scientology or whatever?) and that I might not in fact have started, to know whether the person I was talking to was say Hindu, Muslim, Christian or other?
Ie, take SMFS’s concept, but simply apply it more generally and more loosely? And no, not necessarily anything to do with bigoted comments and the like, but just potentially useful in a constructive way?
Or to put it differently – when does information, all of a sudden, become of no value…