Posted on 07/03/2015 7:19:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
Editor's note: This piece was co-authored by Tim Graham.
To look at virtually anything produced by Hollywood is to register confirmation that the libertine left cherishes clogging our popular culture with vulgarities. The messaging in movies, television and particularly music is punctuated deliberately and unnecessarily with all manner of language designed to offend.
But when it comes to perfectly decent speech -- spoken innocently with no bad intention -- those same liberals need smelling salts. Welcome to the wacky world of "micro-aggressions," where conversation becomes a minefield of political correctness.
It's all the rage on campuses. Both the University of California and the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point have circulated lists of "microaggressions" to faculty for allegedly instructional purposes. The list of unacceptable words and phrases just gets longer and longer. And funnier.
To be sure, there are a couple of phrases we can agree are unacceptable. "I jewed him down" is one. "You are a credit to your race" is another. As to the rest, you decide.
In California, it included statements like "America is the land of opportunity" and "everyone in this society can succeed, if they work hard enough." We bet you didn't know these are statements of aggression. But what if we flipped that phrase? What if we were to state that "America is the land of oppression for the working man?" That wouldn't be aggression, that would be something these professors teach.
In Wisconsin, there are similar warning phrases -- "I believe the most qualified person should get the job" and "everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough" -- but there's so much more.
Do you believe that "America is a melting pot"? Do you subscribe to the beliefs that "When I look at you, I don't see race," and "there is only one race, the human race"?
If so, how very rude of you. Apparently, these statements are not acknowledging a common humanity. You are denying a "person of color's racial/ethnic experiences." If you believe "there is only one race, the human race," you are "denying the individual as a racial, cultural being." If you are a "store owner following a customer of color around a store," presumably because you believe he might be shoplifting, you believe he is "going to steal," and he is "dangerous." And that is wrong.
Now what if the suspicious person you're following is white? That's OK.
There's more. If you've ever asked a Black person -- "Black" and "White" are capitalized by these racially sensitive folks who don't see the irony -- "Why do you have to be so loud?" or an Asian or Latino person, "Why are you so quiet?" you are really demanding they assimilate to the dominant culture.
"Where are you from?" or "Where were you born?" signifies you believe that person to be a foreigner and that's insensitive.
Asking an Asian person to help with a math or science problem means you believe Asians to be intelligent and good in math and science, and that's wrong, too.
If we were to say to Justice Clarence Thomas, "You are so articulate" we would be signaling that we believe "people of color are generally not as intelligent as Whites," not that Justice Clarence Thomas is so articulate.
There are also "environmental macroaggressions" on the Wisconsin list, such as too many white characters on TV shows, or a "college or university with buildings that are all named after White heterosexual upper-class males."
The other crazy phrase of the campus censors is "trigger warnings," meaning you have to warn these college-age marshmallows before reading fusty old classic by the likes of Shakespeare or Plato. Those troublesome authors might provoke memories of past trauma on subjects like rape or death. But then one feminist from the collective insisted the phrase "trigger warning" is inappropriate since it could evoke "violent weaponry imagery." So there you have it: They're now warning about warnings.
This whole regime of speech-policing is a transparent attempt to keep white racial guilt churning at warp speed. This is indoctrination, not education.
Why, oh, why do parents send their children to these colleges taught by these nutty professors?
Do your children a favor. DON'T PAY FOR THEIR COLLEGE!
Make them work their way through school. If they get it for free it will be worth nothing.
I have a couple of “micro-agressions” for the Left: “Oh,shut up”, and “get a life”.
Liberals need smelling salts indeed they need to get out of their chimp cages asap.
I'm offended and outraged!
So Hillary no longer has the smartest cankles in the Milky Way?
How about a MACRO-aggression? “Come at me with that PC crap and I’ll bust you in the mouth.”
Bozell seems to have missed the fact that the “Wisconsin list” of “microaggressions” was not something promulgated by “nutty professors”, but something inflicted on the professoriate of a minor branch campus by professional university administrators in the Provost’s office. The same goes for the lists of “microaggressions” circulating in California, which came out of the Chancellor’s office.
Most professors, even the most committed leftists, like intellectual give-and-take. The attempts to quash free speech in academe come principally from people who gave up being professors and became administrators because intellectual give-and-take didn’t satisfy their desire to run other peoples’ lives, or from “student governments” full of the sort of brave feminists who need to be issued fainting couches and smelling salts against the possibility of hearing something that offends them.
Rush Limbaugh had a segment that shows just how far into La-La-Sensitivity-Land the Left is going. CNN’s Don Lemon was interviewing Donald Trump about his comment that the Mexican immigrants were rapists. Trump then cited articles in the New York Times and the Huffington Post.
Lemon refuted, “Those stories were about Mexican women being raped while getting smuggled across the border.”
Trump replied, “Then who’s doing the raping?”
The Left can get all teary-eyed about Mexican women being raped (while breaking our laws incidentally) but they can’t make the logical connection that it is Mexican smugglers who must be raping them because (gasp) that would be racist!
If they want to be sheep, let them be sheep... so long as I am a wolf.
Little would please me more than to have the opportunity to show these weak-minded, ungrateful heathens an example or two of real "microaggression". They'll think they've walked into a propeller!
Bump.
They must have
Well, it’s obviously a bunch of white ranchers down there at the border rapin’ them women as they sneak across...
/s
Excellent suggestion
PC speech enforcement IS both micro AND macro-aggression.
I live in the South. I don’t have enough opportunity to practice MY aggression against the idiot PCers, although we ridicule the stupidity of these people among ourselves all the time.
I don’t want to prey on the pathetic fools. I just won’t tolerate them preying on me.
“Most professors, even the most committed leftists, like intellectual give-and-take.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. They do love ferreting out people who do not follow leftist orthodoxy, but this is followed by a myriad of grade and career punishments. They do no respect the concept of free debate and of opponents not being evil.
There are far too many examples and it indicates a pervasive cultural reality.
May not be a choice
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.