Member-only story
Microaggressions: When a Genuine Compliment Becomes an Offense
How can society function like this?
I recently read an article on Medium that shed some light on how people are using the word microaggression.
According to all-knowing, all-powerful Wikipedia, microaggressions are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups.”
Do I believe that acts like this go on today? Hell, yeah, I do.
Do I think as a white male I don’t know the half of it, quarter of it, tenth of it? Probably I do not.
Still, a couple of things about the concept of microaggressions are concerning to me.
First, they can be unintentional. True, you can still insult someone by being oblivious. I’ve regretfully done this to numerous friends and partners over the years. And that’s not good. However, it seems wrong to label unintentional and intentional acts like these the same thing — it’s signaling that they are both equally immoral and worthy of outrage. Also, microaggressions are being called acts of violence, which seems at odds with the unintentional nature of many of these acts.
