CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A tone-deaf inquiry into an
Asian-American’s ethnic origin. Cringe-inducing praise for how articulate a
black student is. An unwanted conversation about a Latino’s ability to speak
English without an accent.
This is not exactly the language of traditional racism, but
in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers,
they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour —
microaggressions — used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender
and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse
culture.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
The Lede: Students and Readers Share Their Experiences of
Race on CampusMARCH 21, 2014
Motherlode Blog: Casual Remarks That Hurt: Microaggression
and Adoptive FamiliesMARCH 21, 2014
On a Facebook page called “Brown University
Micro/Aggressions” a “dark-skinned black person” describes feeling alienated
from conversations about racism on campus. A digital photo project run by a
Fordham University student about “racial microaggressions” features minority
students holding up signs with comments like “You’re really pretty ... for a
dark-skin girl.” The “St. Olaf Microaggressions” blog includes a letter asking
David R. Anderson, the college’s president, to address “all of the incidents
and microaggressions that go unreported on a daily basis.”
Photo
Audience members at the performance. Credit Gretchen Ertl
for The New York Times
What is less clear is how much is truly aggressive and how
much is pretty micro — whether the issues raised are a useful way of bringing
to light often elusive slights in a world where overt prejudice is seldom
tolerated, or a new form of divisive hypersensitivity, in which casual remarks
are blown out of proportion.
The word itself is not new — it was first used by Dr.
Chester M. Pierce, a professor of education and psychiatry at Harvard
University, in the 1970s. Until recently it was considered academic talk for
race theorists and sociologists.
The recent surge in popularity for the term can be
attributed, in part, to an academic article Derald W. Sue, a psychology
professor at Columbia University, published in 2007 in which he broke down
microaggressions into microassaults, microinsults and microinvalidations. Dr.
Sue, who has literally written the book on the subject, called
“Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation,”
attributed the increased use of the term to the rapidly changing demographics
in which minorities are expected to outnumber whites in the United States by
2042. “As more and more of us are around, we talk to each other and we know
we’re not crazy,” Dr. Sue said. Once, he said, minorities kept silent about
perceived slights. “I feel like people of color are less inclined to do that
now,” he said.
Some say challenges to affirmative action in recent years
have worked to stir racial tensions and resentments on college campuses. At
least in part as a result of a blog started by two Columbia University students
four years ago called The Microaggressions Project, the word made the leap from
the academic world to the free-for-all on the web. Vivian Lu, the co-creator of
the site, said she has received more than 15,000 submissions since she began
the project.
To date, the site has had 2.5 million page views from 40
countries. Ms. Lu attributed the growing popularity of the term to its value in
helping to give people a way to name something that may not be so obvious. “It
gives people the vocabulary to talk about these everyday incidents that are
quite difficult to put your finger on,” she said.
Continue reading the main story
Williamsburg: Mostly true grit
Every dog has its daybed
Not big-city types but still sophisticated
Continue reading the main story
Advertisement
To Serena Rabie, 22, a paralegal who graduated from the
University of Michigan in 2013, “This is racism 2.0.” She added: “It comes with
undertones, it comes with preconceived notions. You hire the Asian computer
programmer because you think he’s going to be a good programmer because he’s
Asian.” Drawing attention to microaggressions, whether they are intentional or
not, is part of eliminating such stereotypes, Ms. Rabie said.
On the other hand, John McWhorter, a linguistics professor
at Columbia University, said many of his students casually use the word when
they talk about race, but he cautioned against lumping all types of off-key
language together. Assuming a black student was accepted to an elite university
purely because of affirmative action? “That’s abuse,” Dr. McWhorter said.
“That’s a slur.” Being offended when a white person claims to be colorblind — a
claim often derided by minorities who say it willfully ignores the reality of
race? Not so fast.
“I think that’s taking it too far,” he said. Whites do not
have the same freedom to talk about race that nonwhites do, Dr. McWhorter said.
If it is socially unacceptable for whites to consider blacks as “different in
any way” then it is unfair to force whites to acknowledge racial differences,
he said.
Continue reading the main storyVideo
PLAY VIDEO
VIDEO|3:40Credit Gretchen Ertl for The New York
TimesMicroaggressions: Comments That Sting Across college campuses and social
media, younger generations have started to challenge those fleeting comments
that seem innocent but leave uneasy feelings behind.
Even when young people do not use the term overtly, examples
of perceived microaggressions abound.
When students at Harvard performed a play this month based
on a multimedia project, “I, Too, Am Harvard,” that grew out of interviews with
minority students, an entire segment highlighted microaggressions.
In one scene, students recite phrases they have been told,
presumably by nonblack students, including “You only got in because you’re
black” and “The government feels bad for you.” In another scene, a black
student dressed in a tuxedo and a red bow tie describes being at a formal
university function and being confused for a waiter.
Continue reading the main story
RECENT COMMENTS
SC 2 days ago
So what is the recourse for those perceived as
microaggressors? "This is racism 2.0.” She added: “It comes with
undertones, it comes with...
Tom Goldberg 2 days ago
“Where are you from?” and “I hear an accent!” are what this
first-generation immigrant (from northern Europe) hears on a daily basis —
from...
Jeff 2 days ago
I teach ESL to students from all over the world, but with a
majority from either the Dominican Republic or China. I am constantly asked
by...
SEE ALL COMMENTS
Tsega Tamene, 20, a history and science major, and a
producer for the play, said microaggressions were an everyday part of student
life. “It’s almost scary the way that this disguised racism can affect you,
hindering your success and the very psyche of going to class,” she said.
Outside of college campuses, microaggressions have been
picked apart in popular Web videos including a two-part video poking fun at
things white girls say to black girls (“It’s almost like you’re not black”) and
another video called “What Kind of Asian Are You?” (“Where are you from? Your
English is perfect”).
But the trend has its critics. A skeptical article in the
conservative National Review carried the arch headline “You Could Be a Racist
and Not Even Know It.”
Harry Stein, a contributing editor to City Journal, said in
an email that while most people feel unjustly treated at times, “most such
supposed insults are slight or inadvertent, and even most of those that aren’t
might be readily shrugged off.” Mr. Stein took issue with the term
“microaggressions,” saying that its use “suggests a more serious problem: the
impulse to exaggerate the meaning of such encounters in the interest of
perpetually seeing oneself as a victim.”
The comments on recent articles about microaggressions have
been a mix of empathetic and critical. One commenter on a BuzzFeed article on
the “I, Too, Am Harvard” project wrote: “Make up your mind, do you want to be
seen the same as everyone because you’re a human being, or do you want to be
seen as a ‘colored’ girl, since not being seen as a ‘colored’ person is
obviously offensive?” Another wrote, “I don’t get bent out of shape if a white
person asks me are you, like, Hindu or something? I just correct them.”
Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor and author,
said the public airing of racial microaggressions should not be limited to
minorities, but should be open to whites as well. “That’s the only way that you
can produce a multicultural, ethnically diverse environment,” he said.
“We’re talking about people in close contact who are
experiencing the painful intersections of intimacy,” he said. “The next part of
that is communication, and this is a new form of communication.
No comments:
Post a Comment