[wpietri]

I agree that at one point maybe being oblivious to systemic problems could go along with being decent. But these days I don't see how being a decent human is compatible with either, "I don't want to learn whether you're getting the short end of the stick" or "I know you're getting the short end of the stick but I'll never do anything about it": neither seem decent to me.

I'll also note that although those particular theoretical frameworks were originally popular ways to understand certain problems, there are plenty of other ways to understanding.

As an example, let's take the microagression where white people want to touch black hair. This is a common problem [1][2][3], and one certainly can situate it within a whole host of racist microaggressions and a broader theoretical framework. But one can also just say, "Dude, black people are not pets. Keep your hands to yourself." Or in the middle, the handsy person can listen to black voices on this and get a personal understanding of why it's a demeaning thing to ask/do. That doesn't require any theory, just the sort of empathy and respect that is at the core of human decency.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/01/08/stop-as...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/b5c3fa4e-e6c0-11e9-9743-db5a37048...

[3] http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/07/25/touching.natural.black....

[garfieldnate]

I hate that you've called this "aggression", like it's a kind of morally reprehensible violence. People like to feel puffy hair, black person or not. Ask a white person with dreds if anyone has ever felt their hair. In Japan, people like to feel my arm hair, which is blonde and almost invisible and completely foreign to East Asians. It's harmless. It's completely natural that humans are interested in the physical variety of other humans. Now, you can obviously say or do something racist or mean while touching that hair, but the act of touching hair cannot itself be deemed aggressive without knowing the context. You would have to understand the social context of black people (apparently) being tired of being touched all the time in order to know that you should avoid doing this specific thing, which makes this a "faux pas".

[wpietri]

I'm sure you do hate it. Many people hate recognizing that their own behavior has been harmful to others.

> the act of touching hair cannot itself be deemed aggressive without knowing the context

I have never in my life had random people walk up and start petting me. Be honest. If I walked down the street feeling the hair of each man I passed, how long do you think it would be before I got punched?

So white people already know perfectly well you don't just go around touching strangers. It's just that some will make an exception for black people because they are seen as other/lesser.

I would add that your notion that a microaggression is ok due to white ignorance of the experience of black people at the hands of white people is itself a racist notion.

And giving an example in Japan doesn't change much for me, as as Japan is a notoriously racist place. (For those unsure, a quick Google of "racism in Japan" will help. And I think you could understand that what's harmless to you as a high-status foreigner is not always going to be harmless for other people. Especially, say, a marginalized group whose inferior status was established America's founding and persists to this day.

[garfieldnate]

When reading your original post, I thought there was an implicit assumption that any case of a white person feeling a black person's hair was automatically classified as a racist "micro-aggression". Re-reading your original post, I think I probably misunderstood you, but I'll explain my thoughts a bit here since we have a thread started.

>Many people hate recognizing that their own behavior has been harmful to others.

I've never felt a black person's hair. I'm generally not a touchy person.

>I have never in my life had random people walk up and start petting me.

I actually think we're talking about different things. In my mind I was seeing a friend ask another, "hey, sorry, I know it's weird, but can I feel your hair? I'm curious what it feels like." The friend says "yes" or "no" and the interaction goes on from there. There are countries/cultures where strangers will touch others, but it's a pretty foreign concept to me.

>your notion that a micro-aggression is ok due to white ignorance

The word "aggression" implies willing injury or intimidation of another person. Hurting someone's feelings on accident is also bad, but it doesn't make sense to label them the same way. You're absolutely right to say that the context was completely different in Japan, and that's exactly the point. You can't unilaterally label an action like touching hair as aggressive in all contexts. If someone thinks fuzzy hair is neat and they don't have any sense of a racial divide, then they would feel curly caucasian red hair or African dreadlocks and not think anything was different about the two actions.

If you classify all interactions between all white people and all black people in terms of their racial differences, then how do we properly get rid of racism? If in the US a white and black person have to keep slavery in the back of their minds during every interaction, how are they ever supposed to act normally or integrate? How do we ever expect to overcome our differences if we have to constantly remind ourselves of them?

I really like concrete initiatives for helping those that have been historically and presently disadvantaged: paying meaningful reparations, fixing police and the justice system, UBI, etc. But I dislike social notions that impede communication and drive wedges between people. After all of the actions that we take to help everyone in our society to thrive, the end goal has to be social harmony, and I think we need to be careful not to attribute all unpleasant interactions to voluntary aggression or racism.

[wpietri]

> I've never felt a black person's hair. I'm generally not a touchy person.

My point is not about hair. It's that it's the white people who have done very little reflection on this topic that have strong enough feelings that they have to argue endlessly about when it's ok to point out America's endemic racism. DiAngelo's paper on this covers the topic well: https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116

> The word "aggression" implies willing injury or intimidation of another person.

No. People often do things without making choices fully conscious of roots of their feelings and the broader implications. Indeed, that's the human default. See Kahneman's System 1 vs System 2 work.

> How do we ever expect to overcome our differences if we have to constantly remind ourselves of them?

You already know the answer to this. Imagine a junior developer asking, "How can we ever get anything done if we have to be worrying about all the possible ways something would break?!?" Is that a problem while learning? Yes. Does it prevent progress? No, just the opposite.

America has always been a racist place. For a long time it was carefully and consciously structured that way. We have been making spotty, two-steps-forward-one-step-back progress since Reconstruction, where we removed many of the formal, legal supports. But that's just the most visible surface of the problem. What drove the laws was white attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors handed down over generations. Those still persist. (For more on this, see Kendi, Oluo, Mills, and Loewen.)

To truly end that, white people are going to have to step up, pay attention, and root those things out. It's a multi-generation project. One that, given the US Right's self-generated panic about teaching white kids about America's realities around race, we are backsliding on.

I get that this makes you uncomfortable. I also spent years avoiding the necessity to face it. Social harmony is a good long term goal, but we cannot measure progress toward that by looking at white comfort.

[ygjb]

> People like to feel puffy hair, black person or not. > ... > In Japan, people like to feel my arm hair, which is blonde and almost invisible and completely foreign to East Asians. It's harmless.

Do you extend this perspective on unwanted touching to other parts of the body without consent? People like to do things to and with other people. The thing that makes doing that a form of aggression is doing those things without consent.

> Ask a white person with dreds if anyone has ever felt their hair.

Please point to the cultural and historical legacy of white people being stripped of their freedom, dignity and agency when comparing the experiences of white folks to Black folks. That sets aside the entire discussion of cultural appropriation related dreadlocks which is related to, but not at the core of the point I am trying to make.

> Now, you can obviously say or do something racist or mean while touching that hair, but the act of touching hair cannot itself be deemed aggressive without knowing the context. You would have to understand the social context of black people (apparently) being tired of being touched all the time in order to know that you should avoid doing this specific thing, which makes this a "faux pas".

The fact that you dismiss the documented experience of Black people as "apparently" being tired of being touched all the time says pretty much everything anyone in the audience needs to know about whether you are arguing in good or bad faith. The point is further driven home by the fact that you are contrasting your own anecdotal experience with an awareness of the social context of why this is an issue.

[knorker]

To address what parent post asked in the first sentence though: Is it "aggression"? Isn't that like calling "a dirty look" a "microrape"?

I'm not saying I don't understand how it can be an unwelcome experience to be touched and prodded, but "microaggression" is a term out there like "silence is violence" and "words are violence" in the possibly most literal real-life version of Orwell's writings, even (in its overtness) possibly outweighing the real life society he was describing at the time.

[ygjb]

First, touching someone without permission isn't a micro-aggression. Depending on the jurisdiction, the location of the unwanted touching, and the age or power disparity between the two, it can range from harassment to assault.

The fact that this discussion is even happening in the context of Black people and their hair is frustrating because the implicit bias is that somehow individual curiosity overrides another persons expectation of freedom from interference or right to not be fondled. If we were talking about a casual grope of a woman's breast because people are naturally curious, I would expect that most people would be moderately outraged.

Also, while a "dirty look" is subjective, "leering" is a form of sexual harassment in many jurisdictions.

While I appreciate that your perspective that microagressions, silence is violence, and words are violence are Orwellian, your perspective also reveals a pretty clear ignorance of the nuance and impact that these slogans capture. I don't know if it's an ignorance that stems from a lack of knowledge and experience, or a more insidious and willful ignorance that stems from the type of thinking that allows for or encourages "marketplaces of ideas" that tolerate and debate some of the most awful and toxic values, but it doesn't really matter. Up in the thread I stated, and I stand by it, workplace inclusiveness and diversity training is intended to reach those who can be taught, and inform those who can't of the consequences of failing to at least act in a baseline socially acceptable fashion for the duration of the work day.

It would be a better world if more people cared about the impact of what they do and say, but in the absence of that, most of us will settle for people who can at least act like they care.

[knorker]

> First, touching someone without permission isn't a micro-aggression.

Now you're changing the subject. You and I both know that "oooh, nice hair, can I touch it?" is also counted as "microaggression".

A misunderstood social signal (e.g. a raised eyebrow) can be called a micro-aggression.

Most migroaggressions involve nothing physical, nor any ill intent. That doesn't make them right. They can still be hurtful. E.g. "you're the whitest black person I know" sure is a stupid thing to say.

"Hey, nice hair" is also a thing banned in these trainings. Because the receiver can infer that their hair is unique, exotic, and that they are different and maybe don't belong here.

So "hey, nice haircut" is banned from workplaces under all circumstanses. Ok, fine. Nobody needs to comment on appearance in the workplace, why would they?

But it's not "aggression". It's nothing like it.

And this is what "microaggression" is. This is what's being stamped out.

> individual curiosity overrides another persons expectation of freedom from interference or right to not be fondled

It does not, I agree.

> If we were talking about a casual grope of a woman's breast because people are naturally curious,

Jesus christ you're going way overboard in changing the subject. I got it already: You want to change the subject.

> Also, while a "dirty look" is subjective, "leering" is a form of sexual harassment in many jurisdictions.

But is it a "microrape"? The difference here is a controlling use of language.

If someone walks down the street and get checked out by a passer by, they were not "almost raped". To say that they were is insulting to rape victims, a perfectly normal person who just looked at their surroundings, and language itself.

> workplace inclusiveness and diversity training is intended to reach those who can be taught, and inform those who can't of the consequences of failing to at least act in a baseline socially acceptable fashion for the duration of the work day.

Yup. But I think it's failing at it. There's plenty of bad behavior to stamp out. But it's also being replaced by other bad behavior. Like telling people that being white means that you as an individual have these attributes, and shutting down a colleague saying "you are a man, and therefore can't be a part of this conversation or decision".

I don't know if you bought into the "intent doesn't matter" crowd, but if you have, then the fact that inclusivity and diversity training has good intentions doesn't matter.

> It would be a better world if more people cared about the impact of what they do and say

Diversity & inclusiveness activists at companies don't have a monopoly on these values. And I wish they would stop pretending that they did. Because they sure don't actually live their stated gospel.

[ygjb]

I want to say that based on your response, I don't believe that you are arguing in good faith, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

I didn't change the subject. I rejected your claim that touching someone without permission is a microagression. It's not, it falls on a spectrum of harassment to assault, depending on who you touch, where you touch them, and where you are when you do it. That's not a microagression.

> "microrape"

Unless we are talking about moths, please provide a serious academic or published document that actually proposes this as a generally accepted term. I confess that the first time I saw it, I thought you being flippant, but it appears that you actually think this is a commonly used or generally accepted term.

I spent some time reading about the term, and asking about it among the D&I folks that I know, and based on that, it's not really a thing that people are concerned with, and aside from some fringe groups on the edges of D&I activism. Most references are related to some shitty humour on reddit and other sites meant to mock folks rather than engage in actual discourse.

Aside from your use of the term, I think the question you are really asking is "Does a 'dirty look' count as sexual harassment?", and the answer is, yes, depending on the jurisdiction. I already said that.

> "intent doesn't matter"

Yeah, intent doesn't matter. This isn't a new concept - look up the etymology of the phrase "The Road to hell is paved with good intentions."; it's a well understood concept and proverb that dates back at least 500 years, farther if you torture some of the translations and transliterations. This isn't to say that intent doesn't actually matter, its a slogan that illustrates that even well intentioned actions that have a negative outcome are still the responsibility of the person who took the action, and that positive intent doesn't balance out negative outcomes.

That said, it doesn't really matter what your opinion is on D&I activism, or your thoughts on the role they play in business. I fall back to my original statement that the vast majority of D&I training and related activities are risk mitigation activities.

If you don't want to change your beliefs, that's fine. Just act like a decent human being, and treat others with respect while you are operating in a professional context.

As for the rest of your claims, it is obvious to me that you are more concerned with your perceived harms to your own freedoms than you are with considering the perspectives of others - unless you have something more meaningful and evidence based to add to the conversation, there isn't much point to continuing it.

[wpietri]

If I come up to you, violate your personal space, and start running my hands over your body, you will absolutely see it as aggressive.

If you think that's not the case, go out and try doing that to the first 10 men you see on the street. Heck, try it with a couple of cops.

So yes, calling more modest unwanted touching a microaggression is perfectly appropriate.

[wpietri]

One other way to look at this it through the broader system. Since America's founding, black people have been treated as inferior. How have they been kept in what white people saw as their place?

Some of it has been open violence, of course, with lynching and race massacres being the most obvious. There was also plenty of more quiet violence, the unmarked graves and the vicious but survivable beatings.

But that's relatively rare because it is backed up by a host of more subtle things. Things that might lead to violence, especially if an uppity person persisted in acting like an equal. Threats, of course, but also menacing looks, harsh words, bad attitudes, etc.

This is summed up in ADL's pyramid of hate. The top layer is built on the layers beneath: https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of...

So we talk about microaggressions because the societal system of white supremacy uses both macroaggressions and migroaggresions as a continuum of actions that maintain the racist status quo, continuously informing both black and white people of their assigned place.

[knorker]

"oooh, nice hair, can I touch it?" is also counted as "microaggression". Just the words.

A misunderstood social signal (e.g. a raised eyebrow) can be called a micro-aggression.

I don't think you actually know what "microaggression" means. You should educate yourself on its definition.

The main source of microaggressions are in fact words, and words that while rooted in ignorance (and people, like you, should educate themselves), are not in fact in any shape or form "aggressive" or even have any form of negativity associated with them.

Take the "you're the whitest black person I know", from the "I, Too, Am Harvard". Well, that's sure a stupid thing to say. But is it "aggression"? Obviously not.

[wpietri]

Ah, condescension from an anonymous goof who's sure his knowledge is superior. Sorry, but I don't have enough time or energy to talk you out of your willful ignorance. This is one you'll have to figure out for yourself.

[beaconstudios]

Given he was writing about a mix of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, I don't think the tendency for social justice people to assign overly provocative words to their ideas is worse than those places.

[knorker]

I don't think you're familiar with Orwell, and the meaning of Orwellian.

Did my comment read to you like I didn't know what real life societies he was writing about? I explicitly described how they fit into my point exactly in order to make people not reply with comments like yours.

[beaconstudios]

Maybe you are just bad at writing clearly.

[garfieldnate]

I wrote more thoughts above in response to wpietri, but I just wanted to clarify that my usage of the word "apparently" was meant with the opposite intention: someone on the internet said something about black people, and I can't claim it through personal experience to be the truth. From wpietri's reply above, I believe they are also basing their thoughts on hearsay, which makes it double hearsay.

[beaconstudios]

> But these days I don't see how being a decent human is compatible with either, "I don't want to learn whether you're getting the short end of the stick" or "I know you're getting the short end of the stick but I'll never do anything about it": neither seem decent to me.

The novel part isn't the interpersonal part like "don't try to touch black people's hair" - that's just basic common sense, and it's extremely cringey that there are people who do that and think it's OK. The novel part is the systemic aspects of progressive thinking; my primary academic (hobby) interest is in systems theory and cybernetics, so through experience I can say for a fact that most people find systems thinking to be unnatural or alien. It's a different way of looking at the world to thinking in terms of intent and individual actions, which is the norm in the West.

[wpietri]

For sure, which is why I said there were other ways to understanding.

A lot of my education here has come from people just talking about their daily lives on social media and in person. Many years ago I ended up going from having a pony tail to shaving my head. I was telling a group of friends that it was weird how differently people treated me. E.g., seeing people cross the street rather than walk near me. A black member of the group said, "Well now you know."

The systems-thinking aspect of it came to me later, as I was looking for explanations for all of the little bits of data that I kept coming across. It was only then that I found the more academic takes useful.

But I think these days it's very, very hard for a white person to credibly and honestly have no understanding that there are big problems with race in the US. Which I think is why we're seeing the right-wing moral panic around "Critical Race Theory", which few can define but many are sure is such a problem that we need laws to prevent white children from learning about actual white history.