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by camelite
3754 days ago
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> I think that you're failing to see the context of these things. You're looking at them as isolated incidents when they are not. No, what you're doing is inventing a context (bad man hurt woman, bad white man hurting good minority etc), and arguing for a lexicon that implicitly nurtures the contextual penumbra and emanations of left-wing culture warriors. And you're singing a soothing melody of how this tool (it is a tool) will be used to fight injustice. But that's not how it goes. That's never how it goes. |
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You can't just ignore the larger life experiences that people have. You can't treat every social interaction in some kind of hermetic isolation. Because that's not how social interactions happen. There's the context of the interpersonal relationship(s) of the people involved in an interaction, their history, their previous interactions. And, as I said, there's the context of each person's life experience that they bring to any social interaction.
Obviously, we don't think about this sort of thing on a deep level all the time. It'd short out every social interaction if we constantly tried to puzzle out every nuance of this context.
But we don't have to, we have short-hands, and we have "models" that we follow that work well most of the time. But when some large portion of a group of people says, "Hey, this part of the social interaction model is broken, and it's hurtful," there's no good reason to not at least reevaluate it and think about it. It's good to spend some time considering the nuances sometimes, even if it's not good to do it all the time.
If you really don't like the academic term "microaggression", then just think about it as "mild rudeness". Mild rudeness isn't the worst thing ever. But it's still not a way you should behave toward colleagues. You should endeavor to be polite, professional, and courteous towards those you work with. Personally, I'd want to know if I was accidentally doing something rude. I'd be a bit mortified a first, but I'd rather know so that I can curtail that behavior.
I think it's kind of absurd how negative the reaction is to, "Hey, can you please stop saying that; it's honestly a bit rude." It's not like it costs people anything. Courtesy is free, and it's no great imposition. And even when the courteousness involves more delicate matters of race, gender, marginalization, etc. it remains free.