NYT reporter @jwpetersNYT :
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) March 8, 2018
"That term microaggression ... I think made wusses out of our college kids." pic.twitter.com/Br0l7shdiw
Some of his coworkers were complaining about microaggressions at work.
Person B: here at the times, some people are allowed to make mistakes and offend. others are not ever afforded one chance.
i will no longer remain silent about our hostile work environment just so that it will be pleasant for others
Person F: i don’t know, man. it’s really painful when you feel your colleagues are disrespecting you. i don’t know if i agree that fending off people on twitter is more important than hearing people in the building
and it happens pretty often
Person B: and frankly microaggressions and people being obtuse cut the deepest. and this is DAILY.
Person G: i wasn’t here when we had a public editor, but i understand how it worked. it was clear. what i don’t understand now and now what’s unclear is what’s supposed to happen when the same mistakes keep getting made again and again. at what point is the company willing to take the responsibility off the public for calling this stuff out? will the reader center step in? is that even what the reader center is for? i genuinely don’t know!
They didn't feel comfortable doing so publicly (presumably, in part) due to work policies about social media and similar. But, hey, smug white guy goes on national teevee and mocks the whole concept.
Anyway, one example of a "microaggression": when you're an Asian-American and people refer to you as an immigrant regularly, or call you Chinese (even though you're American and your ancestors aren't even from China). It's a microaggression because, as the name suggests, it isn't a big deal once. Or twice. It's a big deal because it happens repeatedly. It's a word which was brought into use to be able to talk about things like this without saying the taboo, "you're racist," because calling someone a racist is the worst thing ever. So "microaggressions." But then, hahahaha, your dumb word for racist/sexist/etc things which aren't that big a deal in isolation proves you're a wuss!!!!!