How about we call them quantumaggressions?
It’s not actually either an aggression or not an aggression (or its both) until the observer decides one way or another…
Buried under the resentment and simple substantive disagreement with the goals of the modern left that account for most of the OP’s rhetoric, there is a sliver of truth there. There really is a growing trend among young leftists to favor shunning or ostracizing over open-minded engagement, and to look to concepts like harassment and threats to police speech that previously would have been considered stupid or controversial but not worthy of official notice. Yes, the trend is mostly limited to some college campuses and online spaces, and even there it is not the dominant mode. But I don’t think that makes it not a problem. Those are places where speech should be most free.
Not that long ago on liberal college campuses, a white guy opining that affirmative action was racist would be certainly be met with people judging him to be ignorant or offensive. But the predominant belief was that this kind of guy needed to be engaged and educated. And that both sides might come out ahead for having engaged in good faith even if no one was persuaded in the end. As should be obvious, not everyone who now agrees with anti-racism, or third wave feminism, or gay rights was persuaded of those ideas in high school. A lot of people came to be persuaded of those ideas in college. But a substantial part of the modern campus left wants to treat anyone outside leftist orthodoxy with contempt and shunning instead of open-minded engagement.
I have some theories about why this happened, but this post is already too long. Mostly I wanted to say that if you haven’t spent significant time on a college campus or with college academics in the last decade, you might not be aware of where things have moved. And you shouldn’t take the musings of folks like the OP to mean that there’s nothing wrong. Stopped clocks and all that.
That’s offensive to the feline community.
Chronometer-Americans are also offended…
Agreed. As much as the OP is riddled with exaggerations and logical fallacies (including an unnecessarily well-poising in the thread title), the current flap over Bill Maher speaking at Berkeley is good example of what you’re talking about. That is not to so that we can expect Bill Maher to be speaking at Liberty University anytime soon, but 2 wrongs don’t make aright.
The proper, and usual, term for him is “asshole.” Have they never had a job?
Having been a single cis-male once, I have often been very interested in a woman’s marital status. Maybe that’s micro-aggressive. What I know can be micro-aggressive is when a woman does it, but I thought The Mary Tyler Moore Show cured us of being judgmental about single women in the workforce.
Define “surprise.” Are we talking raised eyebrows, or “I’d’ve never figured you for a dyke?”
What’s the current number of categories of Facebook, fourteen? Seems like an awkward number to manage, and for most things I don’t know why it’s asked.
The doctor, male, female, or whatever, should wear some MD flair. I spend a lot of time in hospitals and can usually peg them, but if everybody is wearing hospital-supplied scrubs I need to look for an attitude of superiority. 
ETA: And better, possibly inappropriate, shoes.
[del]Funny[/del] story: Wife (micro-aggressive?)/POSSLQ (not entirely accurate)/spousal unit worked with a doctor born in India. The doctor complained that a clerk followed her around the store and thought the clerk didn’t like Indians. “Nope,” said Wife, “He probably thought you were a Gypsy.” Her word, not mine. Of course, I would have said “Roma.”
I don’t know what that list has to do with students. I expect better of them. Their parents and grandparents, though, say that shit because they are clueless idiots.
Fuckin’ A!
Agreed, and it goes a step further. Suppose this kid who disagreed with affirmative action was otherwise accepting of other races. His KKK grandfather told him growing up that blacks needed to be kept in their place or white people would be marginalized and be placed in the same position.
This kid who has overcome his racist upbringing is now marginalized and shunned by his peers for having a reasonable political position that simply doesn’t fall in line with the far left at his school.
In a perverse way, he may feel that his grandfather has been proven correct and that equality was never the goal, but the silencing of anyone who dares stand in the way of the latest racial policy to be adopted.
Except that “white people” aren’t being marginalized and silenced. Only white people who happen to be bigots and racists. It’s kind of odd how you get confused on the distinction between the two.
And this is where nonsense takes you.
Affirmative action by it’s very definition is racist. It can’t be otherwise. It is discrimination whichever way you slice it but both those statements are utterly neutral.
The knee-jerk reaction to having that fact merely stated does the debate no good at all and allowing such statements to be punished as “micro-aggressions” is idiotic.
Ah, so you draw the line at white people being discriminated against, black people, you dont care
Does Robert163 use a straw man app? I ask because the form is so consistent and anytime his post leads with some form of “So, what you’re saying is…,” what will follow “translates” the original post into bigoted nonsense.
It’s a pretty tired schtick at this point…
Well, if your USA ‘free’ speech protection system actually works, then you have nothing to worry about. If not, why don’t you change the legal system?
People have a right to talk about micro aggression. Do you want to stop them talking about it? What happened to their free speech?
And what about his statement makes you think he cares even 1% about the problems that AA is trying to fix?
This is not fair. His statement is definitional, and he claims that it’s neutral. You might dispute that characterization, but he nowhere states taht he doesn’t care even 1% about the problems that AA is trying to fix. If you’re curious about whether he cares, the correct thing to do is to ask, not to make a declaration of your own.
Where in my statement did I say that AA was a bad thing?
This is a semantic quibble, though, of the sort that gets worked out when two people engage each other openly and in good faith. AA is racial discrimination, surely. But American leftists generally reserve the term “racist” for policies that further white supremacy. Thus, to offer a trivial example, choosing a black actor to play Malcolm X is not racist. Increasingly, it seems that people on the right and the left aren’t even aware of this longstanding and fundamental divide between how each side thinks about racism.
This is the first time I have heard this. I’d be interested in hearing whether other posters here who self-identify as American Leftists agree.
It’s more than semantics. It impacts fundamental understanding of the entire concept of racism. The position you are espousing seems to condone some type of racist practices and condemn others. Do you have an issue with the lack of consistency? If not, I think that’s fine. There are perfectly valid reasons to feel that way. But it’s absurd to deny that AA is racist. I think the people who are okay with AA need to come to terms with the idea they are okay supporting racist practices against certain groups.
It’s more than semantics - it’s a philisopgical difference.
I think you’re conflating two issues. One issue is whether AA is definitionally racist. That turns on how you define racism. It is a semantic question. The other issue is whether AA is good policy or not, turning in part on whether it is ever appropriate to discriminate on the basis of race. That is, of course, not just a question of semantics.
As for the fact that I “condone some type of racist practices and condemn others,” I would just suggest that everyone does that when you define “racist” as any differential treatment on the basis of race. You, presumably, are OK with selecting a black actor to play Malcolm X. Or having a doctor put sickle-cell anemia higher in the differential diagnosis on the basis of race (an even better example because there race is just an imperfect proxy). That should point you to the problem with using the term in that way.
For the sake of clarity I’d be happy instead to say that “AA is racially discriminatory” but I suspect those wanting to be offended will find reason enough in whatever term is used.