The New York Times has published an article titled Students See Many Slights as Racial 'Microaggressions'

The article quotes University of Columbia linguistics professor John McWhorter, who has written his own commentary on the subject, which can be read by clicking here.

Here is an excerpt from Dr. McWhorter's commentary.




Dr. John McWhorter


That's right. An African-American university professor is criticizing false claims of racism aimed at white Americans. He is challenging the bullying that is disguised as progressive thought.

By the way, an infamous case of racial micro-aggression took place before the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, when then-Senator Joe Biden referred to then-Senator Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." (Quote Source)

Another example of racial micro-aggression is the claim that a white American is privileged just because that person is white. That claim, too, is bullying that is disguised as progressive thought.

Racial micro-aggression was on display during the 1980s, when magazines reported cases of African-American children being harassed for "acting White". The ones doing the harassing were other African-American children.

Yeah, racial micro-aggression exists, and it works both ways.

***


Your thoughts on the subject of racial micro-aggression?

It sounds like they're repackaging racism (something that already exists) for a smoke screen (a "Let's focus in on this problem so we can drown out real problems with it" report). It seems to be pointing out something with a "race related spin" and isn't at all citing influences or anything in society telling certain mentalities that this is "okay to do". (Sort of the same way we have it with guns... Nobody's identifying a causality source in our social mentalities for the violence or things contributing to that source. In fact that's getting ignored.)
This article is also putting things into a perspective where you have racism being skewed. It seems to put an identity to race more than it puts an identity to an individual which is usually the 1st sign of racism. So there's some deal where if you don't acknowledge race enough you're a racist just as much as if you acknowledge it too much before the individual?
"Progressive thought"? Honestly, the way we measure progress in this nation is "something that's done that'll make money" NOT "this is for growth of one or a society as beings". Politically speaking "progressive" = "Always say voter friendly rhetoric you or your party will never act on + keep up your social appearances + cater to lobbyists, keep reaganomics and vote pro corporate, pro rights losses and pro warfare/meddling for resources" (which is the same as GOP thought really). This thought is not only not progress (Upward growth of a beings up to upward growth of a society in general), it's seemingly creating a loop hole to have people angrier for not properly identifying race (which in itself leads to more racism). It also seems like we're looking to expand the term for racist till we're divided to a preferential societal social apartheid of some kind.
This makes no sense considering that the basic deal for humility is to see people as people (with the same basic needs and to a certain extent the same wants)before anything else. Given the way it's written, it's going to put people who catch onto key words and ideas (Like "progressive" and "racist against whites") in a reactive state. Let's also not forget the spotlight of having to feel like they need to choose a side on this issue. So the writing is polarizing to voter mentalities as well as putting things into a perspective to cater to preexisting fears and potential stereotypes based off of how much someone may fall into specific personal affiliations amongst groups they associate with.

Our basic problem is inhumanity and dehumanization. We're selective on our humanity in general which means we selectively dehumanize too. It's a societal problem as a whole here. We up dehumanization on even social levels and largely it's based on money now more than it is on anything else (Wealth = worth). We also don't have a society that's looking for equality outside of a H.S. level on majority level either.
It's also not "whitey" anymore either. Quite honestly any race, creed, gender or color seems to be able to fall into the deal of "Power and wealth" and will carry it on as "the only way" if it works for them. What people are directing anger at is actually those in power and are misappropriating it at the wrong people entirely. Anyone who's willing to keep things as they are (basically enabling a wealth based aristocracy system of entitlement)
This article is also deflecting for people who are suffering from how our system work/dysfunctions, particularly in it's consistent adapting to the wants of the wealthy instead of becoming realistically conducive to the needs of the people. With a 50% on or below poverty level & a cumulative 20% unemployment rate (that nobody in power is looking to stop, change or reallocate funds for since they all run reaganomically at our expense) our problem isn't race, it's enabling a government to keep on running for profit at our expense. That whole deal is not only affecting everyone (and even other nations unfortunately) but the majority of our nation has been enabling it to work like that so that's also a matter of "everyone's affected here too".
Otherwise the lashing out here is a basic deal of being unable to grow past a certain point emotionally or mentality wise. That's beyond race because you'll get that response form anyone who stops growing as a being (I'd say somewhere between the ages of 10-16yrs given the lash out levels). Those responses are also learned and that too is beyond race because it's a nurture factor (that's not only parents but the society around being a weigh in on the person too.). All of this does affect a whole society as well so that really does bring everyone into the mix.

I believe its real. I believe its life. I believe it exists individually. I believe individual prejudices and bigotry is a separate miniscule issue to demographic prejudice and bigotry.

As in, there are adolescents who are quite capable of independence and self sufficiency, but as a DEMOGRAPHIC, adolescents tend to be less capable of those things.

similarly, to see a female and recognize she is a female is just honesty of the fact of what you see biologically, to see a female and suggest how she should act 'as a female' is subjective opinion based upon ones own ideals and opinions of how women 'are'

I likewise think its passively racist to IGNORE race altogether, and blatantly racist to view an individuals RACE as an indicator of anything about their character or abilities as an individual,,,


I am several things, I am a certain height, I am a certain race, I am a certain gender,, I wouldn't understand someone feeling they need to disregard I have a different height than others, so I don't understand the need to disregard my race or my gender

but just like my height doesn't tell you what my character or values or ability is as an INDIVIDUAL, neither do my race or gender

its just dishonest, to me, to claim we don't see race, especially when we make note of the race of people agreeing with our racial opinions,,,,lol

its insulting to my intelligence when one makes that claim, its as if they choose to disregard me rather than aknowledge the DIFFERENT things that I am,,,ITs as if they don't want to risk acknowledging the ancestral history I am likely to have.

Politics places greater emphasis upon maintenance of public order than it does accuracy.
In current times maintenance of public order in the western democracies involves using popular terminology among a majority population with unfinished high school educations and megalomanic attitude towards authority.

ie. racial slurs have nothing whatsoever to do with racism. They are offensive behaviour, the perpetrator does not seek to minoritize subcultural groupings but simply wishes to express an offensive regard for cosmetic difference. The same people saying ****** to blacks also say retard to people with downs syndrome and poofter to bully victims. It is about an offensive person, not about a racial issue.

Racism is literally the institutionalization of racial minoritization through legislation. Racism is when blacks aren't allowed in a white shop, not about someone saying something someone else doesn't like. That's mundane offensive behaviour.

Unfortunately politicians are also legislators, so in public (individual majority vote market) appeasement, they'll happily call mundane, generic offensive behaviour "racism" and stay in office longer to pilfer more taxpayer money into their personal accounts.
That's how it works.

It's really up to individuals in the general population to get a clue and say, racism is when it is law, offensive behaviour is when it is a person, and neither is acceptable but one is the far greater concern and the other has nothing to do with race, but more to do with aggressive parenting/upbringing and an abrasive personality who'd offend anyone of any race because that's what they enjoy. That's just a sad person, not a racist.
Congress or the Senate lobbying different legislation between races for any purpose, that's racism.

Remember that even Apartheid's purpose wasn't to offend the indigenous population, but to maintain a superiority of the colonial establishment beyond them. According to the legislators they thought they were preserving the rights of the colonial population, not attacking those of the indigenous one. In their twisted minds.

But the singular purpose of people who make racial slurs is to offend. That's not racism, they're just using racial terminology for that particular victim, if they were disabled instead they'd call them other names. The purpose is purely to offend, not to causally achieve political and personal aims. That's offensive behaviour, a misdemeanor, not racism, which is indictable (since it involves legislation by definition).


ie. if "racism" doesn't involve racist legislation, it isn't racism. It's just horrible people being themselves to anyone, being about race in that instance is incidental.

I agree with you but would add to this

Racism is literally the institutionalization of racial minoritization through legislation OR SYSTEMIC PRACTICE

there are practices which are not necessarily written as 'laws' , which constitute racism

(sexism, religionism, nationalism and plenty of others too)

I didn't mention that because it walks a fine line with conspiracy theory.

But I did consider that, for example indigenous populations are ridiculously under-represented among the legislative bodies of colonial *** democracies like your nation and mine. That in itself I do consider a travesty, but I'm hesitant to label racism from a podium.

However I do feel extremely confident shouting any legislative minoritization is absolutely purist Racism, from the very rooftops.

It is one thing to acknowledge a person's physical description. It is another thing to see a person's physical description as being anything other than that - a physical description.

Being color-blind means treating all people equally no matter what their physical description is. It is the opposite of racism. I consider it non sequitur to clam that one's non-racism is racist.

I'll quote Dr. McWhorter again:


Dr. McWhorter is correct. It is bullying to claim white people are racists because they refuse to judge others by race.

The late Dr. King dreamed of a time when people would be judged according to the content of their character, not according to the color of their skin. In short, Dr. King dreamed of a color-blind society. Yet, when white Americans act out that dream, they are still accused of racism.

In response to the Buzzfeed article about this topic, one commentator wrote the following:



That person's comment illustrates what Dr. McWhorter means when he says, "That particular aspect of the microaggression notion seems fixed so that whites can't do anything right."

To add to my last, you know what upsets me about my country, parliament's version of representing the well being of indigenous population is a pack of old white conservatives passing legislation that they consider on behalf of and for the betterment of the indigenous population.

Not ensuring there are indigenous members among the parliamentary council itself.

That seems a lot like racism, but it's almost entirely conspiratorial in practise. They're quite sincere, they just feel most aborigines are drunkards who need looking after in spite of themselves, so there's different laws for them in some circumstances than anyone else.
But by anyone else, that means any other immigrants from anywhere of any race. So to parliament's mind it's not about race, it's about inferior jungle bunnies locally. And they do treat immigrant destitutes from europe or wherever no better or sometimes even worse, so it's doubly not about race.
It's about stuffy old conservatives who think they're god.

its not white specific, for me

for me, anyone who makes the insane claim that they don't 'see race' is being deceptive and I cant help to wonder what motivates them to be so

of course we 'see' physical attributes, we assign the combination of certain attributes to a racial category

since when does it mean we 'arent' racist because we suddenly refuse to admit the truth ?


like I said, I would find it equally odd and intellectually insulting for someone to claim to be 'gender blind' or to not 'see' gender


let them witness a crime and see how quickly they would recall race/gender,,,,etc,,,

to me, its simpily a copout to avoid having to participate in honest discussion

dodo, I can tell from a photo I saw if you are a white male,, so what?

that's only a physical description of what I see,, its not an assessment of how you 'act' or 'speak',, so seeing race and gender is totally different than judging by race or gender,,,

it always seems like a way of saying
'if I don't SEE it, I cant possibly be passing judgment on it'

I will re-quote what that other person said in response to the Buzzfeed article:



Again, it is one thing to acknowledge a person's physical features. It is another thing to judge a person's personality, talents and knowledge according to that person's physical physical features.

The Arquillian thrift shop that I bought my used mechanical "Human" suit from only had "white male" suits in stock. Had I shopped at the Men In Black's WearHouse, then I could have selected a "Human" suit having a darker shade.

I want to be seen as a female , 5 foot 8, African American, dark hair, and any other ASTHETICALLY Determined feature one is capable of viewing with their eyes

I don't want anyone to assume they know my individual character or capability or values because of my gender, or my height, or my race, or my hair color, or any other ASTHETICALLY determined feature one is capable of viewing with their eyes

they are really not mutually exclusive requests at all,,,

Well you know, the very assertion "race" is anything more than a wholly subjective, cosmetic differentiation is soundly falsified by published findings in the field of genetics.
In tens of thousands of samples worldwide, some as part of a specific study to assert racial groupings (the chinese study for example, sought this conclusion), it was shown as much genetic variation existed within any regional/cultural grouping as there existed outside the grouping, and MtDNA was common among all samples (all from the same ancestral body of people as descendants, numbering originally no more than a few thousand humans from an area no greater than a few hundred square kilometres, from which all people today are evolved).

This is proven science, it's simple observation of physical samples taken from actual people, from all over the globe.

There are transient adaptations by region, but it goes like this: asians have almond eyes? (actually about half don't). It's a regional adaptation from the migratory path of human expansion in ancient times, from the group that was in siberia for tens of thousands of years before heading over to china, etc. (others that settled came through a more southerly route, so there's diversity long since established for millennia).
Well all this genetic stuff means take the same group of people and put them in the Sahara for tens of thousands of years, and they'll lose the almond eyes and start looking like every other semitic.

So how can they be racial differences when one changes to another depending where you put him, and the genetics prove both are actually the same just a bit slightly adapted, but not enough to become a speciation?

You can't, it means the only difference is 100% cosmetic.

Exactly. Scientifically speaking, the concept of "race" is purely subjective.

For example, actress Zoe Yadira Salda�a Nazario is thoroughly Latina, but because of her "cosmetic" features, plenty of people mistakenly assume that she is African-American. That there is a form of the racial micro-aggression described in the NYT article.

Another form of racial micro-aggression takes place whenever a white person is accused of being "empowered" or "privileged" just because that person is white. Such anti-White code words are racially offensive.

as far as I know, Zoe is a black latina

her parents NATIONALITIES are Dominican republican and Puerto rican,,, I would be surprised if her parents ancestry were not at least partially from AFica,, but its unknown

although Zoe even identifies herself as black(race), latina(ethnicity)

“I can only rely on that and maintain as much humility as possible, so that when I have to face the world and we have to then give the movie to the world to see, and share it with them, that if it comes back in . . . a negative fashion or positive, I’m gonna keep my chin up. And Nina was like that too. I did it all out of love for my people and my pride of being a black woman and a Latina woman and an American woman, and that’s my truth.”


http://thegrio.com/2013/05/21/the-curious-case-of-zoe-saldana-nina-simone-and-the-erasure-of-black-women-in-film/#s:zoe-saldana-nina-simone-16x9-2-2



but I will agree there is 'asthetic/cultural' (assumed)race and there is biological(ancestral) race

we have long been a culture that discriminates mostly upon the asthetic,,,,, which is how some with African ancestry were able to 'pass' as white and others were not,,,

But as to my earlier point, when the veil of "race" is deleted from offensive behaviour for sake of itself, as it should be, and the assertion of conspiracy left unto itself, as it should be, one is left with simply offensive behaviour and the question of what constitutes offensive behaviour.

ie. if you feel offended that someone calls you privelaged when you are not, perhaps a nice glass of milk will make you feel better. I see no need to tie up the legal system and taxpayers dollars with tantrums that really serve no purpose other than to stamp feet and go, "waaaaa", whilst pretending to fight apartheid that really isn't actually present in the instance.
edit add, on either side of that equation. Don't answer an irrelevent individual's tantrum with another one just the same in reverse.

Our governments may claim "might makes right in all things" and assert the best defence is attack but these are blatant, infantile falsehoods for adults. Invulnerability is the best defence, and right either involves demonstrable correctness or else is just opinion without any power but that you provide by choice.

Well stated msharmony.. I am a tad jealous that you are taller than me, but that's neither here nor there

That is what being "color blind" means.

that's the claim, but its making too much ado about nothing, which is always suspicious

as stated before, people generally don't announce they are, for instance 'weight blind',,,,,

and the overweight are stigmatized and demonized for their weight,,

yet, I rarely hear people feel the need to deny they see a persons weight just to prove that they don't beittle people for their weight

Suspicious to you doesn't necessarily equal being wrong.

Since when is it "making too much ado about nothing" to declare that one doesn't use another person's cosmetic appearance to judge that person's character or capability or values?

To declare one's self "color blind" is to declare that one is pursuing the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream.