Universities in recent years have embraced teachings on “micro-aggressions,” alerting students that many phrases they may consider innocuous actually bear harmful racist undertones. Through trainings and orientations and classroom lectures, students are taught to avoid repeating sentiments such as, “You speak good English,” “When I look at you I don’t see color,” and “America is a melting pot” so as not to “communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons.”
Over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf compared one popular educational sheet on micro-aggressions circulated by several major universities (and referenced above) to a recent Cato/YouGov poll that gauged how minorities actually feel about sentiments many academics would deem offensive.
From his analysis:
Telling a recent immigrant, “you speak good English” was deemed “not offensive” by 77 percent of Latinos; saying “I don’t notice people’s race” was deemed “not offensive” by 71 percent of African Americans and 80 percent of Latinos; saying “America is a melting pot” was deemed not offensive by 77 percent of African Americans and 70 percent of Latinos; saying “America is the land of opportunity” was deemed “not offensive” by 93 percent of African Americans and 89 percent of Latinos; and saying “everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough” was deemed “not offensive” by 89 percent of Latinos and 77 percent of African Americans.
I can’t help but think back to the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad, which was overwhelmingly derided by the chattering class but received very warmly by minorities in polling.
It’s more than a little ironic to see how the very people who have taken upon themselves the task of determining what constitutes offensive speech are apparently out of touch with what most minorities perceive as offensive speech. Again referencing the aforementioned and widely-circulated literature on micro-aggressions, Friedersdorf wrote, “The effect was to misinform any young people who accepted its assertions in two ways: they would have left college falsely confident that they understand what others find offensive and demeaning; and falsely perceiving folks who use the aforementioned phrases as offending others.”
That is entirely accurate, and should be considered by every administrator or professor who has ever confronted students with similar literature or teachings.
We’ve written extensively about the Left’s push to expand the definition of racism and white supremacy in a way that implicates most well-meaning people who believe in fundamental racial equality. Academia’s embrace of micro-aggressions has been an important part of those efforts, intentionally or otherwise. The unfortunate effect of that strategy, however, is more racial tension and less understanding between people of different backgrounds.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
