Micro-aggressions
This has been a week - nay, a season - for micro-aggressions, both personal and in the news. First the personal one. While the three of us were sitting and sipping our beers last Sunday evening, Tiger noticed that some of the patrons were eating popcorn. He wondered aloud whether it had been freshly popped on the premises (unlikely) or whether "I'm going to have to worry about getting AIDS from it." Michael and I, who are both gay, looked at each other in puzzlement as the conversation froze in its tracks. Tiger, realizing he had said something stupid, hunkered down and prepared to be reprimanded. But, Michael decided to let him explain himself. "What did you mean by that?", he said, assuming a pastoral tone. "It means, I'm afraid of getting AIDS.", Tiger countered.
It was a nonsensical answer. You can't be infected by HIV from eating popcorn. To me, it was the leading edge of what could perhaps be some unconscious homophobia. Tiger's decision to double down on his stupidity was a big clue. It was wrapped in shame and embarrassment masquerading as bravado. Moreover, he's still in his late twenties; is probably still testing out his body. We know that he is constantly being mistaken for a gay man. It would be very surprising were he not to have some feelings around the subject of sexuality.
It was a micro-aggression. To me, a micro-aggression is just that: a stupid error of judgment, sort of on the same level as dropping the "F-bomb" or picking your nose in public. People can call attention to it and risk losing a friend. Or, you can take your friend's background and experience into consideration and move on. Michael and I, who have both lost close friends to AIDS, chose to move on.
In the wider world, there is a raging controversy going on at my alma mater concerning an op-ed piece written for the student paper. It was penned by a 30 year old Iraq war veteran - one of about forty who have been sought out and recruited by Wesleyan - on the subject of Black Lives Matter. He is white.
His biographical details reveal that he was an intelligence officer while in the army. Unfortunately, writing well doesn't appear to have been one of the requirements for his training. He still writes like a college sophomore - which is what he is. He managed within the opening sentences of his article to link BLM with the murder of two white television journalists by a deranged -BLACK - ex-employee and kind of meandered from there, collecting anti-white and anti-police transgressions for a thousand more words. It was as if he'd sat in front of a cable news channel for an entire weekend and just jotted down his impressions.
Another college sophomore of equal experience should have been able to counter his arguments fairly easily. But, instead of doing so, the local BLM movement decided to make him and the paper he wrote for a test case for treating micro-aggression with maximum fire power.
I'm afraid it backfired.
The moment the BLM advocates (primarily students of color and their faculty supporters) laid the blame for the article's shortcomings on the newspaper itself and started calling for a boycott of the paper - as well as defunding it - they brought down all the power and punditry of the Liberal Establishment upon their heads. The issue became one of First Amendment freedom versus a movement composed of black kids in hoodies marching across sketchy sections of run-down, tertiary cities across America.
Suddenly, the original article didn't look so bad after all. Isn't crime going up in the aftermath of Ferguson? Look at Mayor DiBlasio's popularity plummet in the wake of New York's police abandoning the widely condemned tactic of "stop and frisk". White liberals have been waiting for a crypto-conservative take on BLM they could adopt as their own and Wesleyan's black students delivered it to them on a silver platter.
It was a nonsensical answer. You can't be infected by HIV from eating popcorn. To me, it was the leading edge of what could perhaps be some unconscious homophobia. Tiger's decision to double down on his stupidity was a big clue. It was wrapped in shame and embarrassment masquerading as bravado. Moreover, he's still in his late twenties; is probably still testing out his body. We know that he is constantly being mistaken for a gay man. It would be very surprising were he not to have some feelings around the subject of sexuality.
It was a micro-aggression. To me, a micro-aggression is just that: a stupid error of judgment, sort of on the same level as dropping the "F-bomb" or picking your nose in public. People can call attention to it and risk losing a friend. Or, you can take your friend's background and experience into consideration and move on. Michael and I, who have both lost close friends to AIDS, chose to move on.
In the wider world, there is a raging controversy going on at my alma mater concerning an op-ed piece written for the student paper. It was penned by a 30 year old Iraq war veteran - one of about forty who have been sought out and recruited by Wesleyan - on the subject of Black Lives Matter. He is white.
His biographical details reveal that he was an intelligence officer while in the army. Unfortunately, writing well doesn't appear to have been one of the requirements for his training. He still writes like a college sophomore - which is what he is. He managed within the opening sentences of his article to link BLM with the murder of two white television journalists by a deranged -BLACK - ex-employee and kind of meandered from there, collecting anti-white and anti-police transgressions for a thousand more words. It was as if he'd sat in front of a cable news channel for an entire weekend and just jotted down his impressions.
Another college sophomore of equal experience should have been able to counter his arguments fairly easily. But, instead of doing so, the local BLM movement decided to make him and the paper he wrote for a test case for treating micro-aggression with maximum fire power.
I'm afraid it backfired.
The moment the BLM advocates (primarily students of color and their faculty supporters) laid the blame for the article's shortcomings on the newspaper itself and started calling for a boycott of the paper - as well as defunding it - they brought down all the power and punditry of the Liberal Establishment upon their heads. The issue became one of First Amendment freedom versus a movement composed of black kids in hoodies marching across sketchy sections of run-down, tertiary cities across America.
Suddenly, the original article didn't look so bad after all. Isn't crime going up in the aftermath of Ferguson? Look at Mayor DiBlasio's popularity plummet in the wake of New York's police abandoning the widely condemned tactic of "stop and frisk". White liberals have been waiting for a crypto-conservative take on BLM they could adopt as their own and Wesleyan's black students delivered it to them on a silver platter.