I have written columns and blogs through the years about the disturbing trend on U.S. campuses toward free regulation and controls. In the name of diversities and tolerance, college administrators and professors are enforcing greater and greater controls on speech –declaring certain views or terms to be forms of racism or more commonly “microaggressions.” The latter term is gaining support to expand the range of controls over speech and conduct to include things that are indirect or minor forms of perceived intolerance. The crackdown seems most prevalent in California where lists of “micro aggressions” seems to be mounting as a macroaggression on free speech. The new list of verboten terms out of University of California (Berkeley), headed by Janet Napolitano, captures the insatiable appetite for speech regulation. The school has asked faculty to stop using terms like “melting pot” or statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” They are now all microaggressions. Not only are school buying into the concept of microaggressions and speech regulation, but they are shaping a generation of students who seem to look for any possible interpretation of terms to take offensive at.
Ironically, while using the term “melting pot” is now viewed as an unacceptable microaggression, actual aggression in the form of assault by a faculty member on people for using free speech is not considered an offense worthy of termination — indeed it was an act deemed understandable if not heroic by some students and faculty in the case of California Professor Miller-Young.
Napolitano asked UC deans and department chairs to attend seminars “to foster informed conversation about the best way to build and nurture a productive academic climate.” The seminars includes handouts with these terms as part of the program called “Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.” The manuals were reportedly adapted from a book by Columbia University Psychology Professor Derald Wing Sue. For civil libertarians, the handouts should be entitled “Recognizing Speech Codes and The Speech They Curtail.”
Some points have been previously discussed on this blog. For example, now discouraged is the statement “There is only one race, the human race.” We saw recently how the President of Smith College was forced into a mea culpa for saying “all lives matter.” Such collective valuations of live and humanity is now considered offensive because it denies “the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience and history.” A microaggression.
Likewise, “America is the land of opportunity” somehow suggests that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder” while asking an Asian, Latino, or Native American “why are you so quiet?” is trying to force him to “assimilate to dominant culture.” Finding such microaggressions has become a virtual cottage industry (if I can say that without degrading any cultures that do not use — or use — cottages). Even some of the most important social and political debates are now considered racist if one side is spoken directly. For example, the Supreme Court and the nation has continued to debate affirmative action and whether it is a form of racism. However, saying “Affirmative action is racist,” is now deemed a microaggression by default. Thus, you can have the debate — just do not state your position on the ultimate question. Academics supporting such views seem wholly unconcerned that the barring of the expression depends on your first accepting the opposing premise on the issue of affirmative action. Consider the defense of OiYan Poon, an assistant professor of higher education at Loyola University in Chicago: “The statement that ‘affirmative action is racist’ completely ignores the history and purpose of affirmative action, which is to address inequalities resulting from the many ways our government and society have prevented people of color from accessing economic, educational and political opportunities and rights.” That is of course the opposing position in favor of affirmative action. It is worth noting that the Supreme Court has declared affirmative action to be unconstitutional for universities admissions. Recent opinions explore the limited range in which race may be considered for purposes of diversity, not affirmative action. However, the main problem is that the barring of this expression as a microaggression assumes that affirmative action is not racist — the very point under debate. In this sense, one side controls the debate by declaring the opposing view as simply racist to express.
The expanding efforts to curtail speech on college campuses shows how the taste for speech controls can become insatiable for many. Ironically, liberal faculty once rallied whole campuses to fight for free speech. Now, many are leading the fight against the speech of opposing groups as essential to a “tolerant” society. It is a dangerous trend that we are seeing throughout the West. However, the campaign of faculty to deny speech on campuses presents an existential threat to the entire academic mission. We are education a new generation that free speech is a danger to rather than the definition of a free society.
Source: Daily Beast
Tony Sidaway: ” the concept of affirmative consent an impossibly high standard”
OK, detail for me the method of unassailable proof of consent that would completely prevent a young man from being prosecuted for ‘college rape’, or ensure his exoneration if charged anyway.
“but to claim that voluntary seminars educating people on offensive speech are themselves censorship is simply inaccurate.”
Horse hockey.
Of course it’s censorship.
They’re telling people they disagree with not to say certain words.
After that, other words will also be forbidden.
Forbidden speech is censorship.
Forbidden speech is thought control, to denounce heresy from liberal-socialist-progressive dogma, to literally call certain words and phrases ‘thoughtcrimes’.
Forbidden speech enacts Orwell’s 1984 as if it were a how-to manual.
We’re not stupid.
Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
https://birtherthinktank.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/warning-sign.gif
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I’m somewhat surprised that at least one commentator finds the concept of affirmative consent an impossibly high standard; I’m pretty sure [I]I[/I] would expect my own body to be immune from sexual contact unless I explicitly requested otherwise, but perhaps the commenter cannot imagine that to be achievable.
Likewise, I suspect that many of the other suggestions coming from Berkeley only appear narrow and restrictive to those whose views are untrammeled by concern for the toxic racism that suffuses most social interactions in a nominally integrated society.
As usual, out of tune dog whistle for the extremist on the right….
Salivating and fury from the concerned…
Correction of facts offered…(fiver)
“If this is true” is offered as caveat so as to continue the self-victimization…
Resuming of the fury building, attacks on the left/liberals…
Rinse and repeat!
The prof fed his pack, the pack fed its rage, the prof gets his illusion of popularity though the maintaining of his pack by feeding them a poor diet of highly addictive nothing…
The dogs who want a more suitable diet start roaming away from the pack, looking for more substantial fare to feed their higher needs.
The remaining pack is more diseased, more rabid, start causing their master more and more trouble…the barking, the biting…he becomes an hostage to their vehemence… they now own him… and he must feed them their lesser fare daily for they now demand it, causing more diseased strays to show up daily.
He, the master, will have no choice but to run away from his own compound to escape this pack. Wonder when.
Wonder when!
@ JT
“Some points have been previously discussed on this blog. For example, now discourages is the statement. ‘There is only one race, the human race.’ ”
Will you please clarify the above? Is “discourages” supposed to be “discouraged”? If so, do you mean that “There is only one race, the human race” is actually on UCB’s list of microaggressions?
In other more important news:
Did the Senate vote, this morning\afternoon, on Fast Track for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)? ‘While no complete version of TPP has been released to the public, language in the recently passed Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015, which authorizes the Fast Track, declares that GMO labeling is an unjustified trade restriction. This means that local and state governments, as well as other countries can be sued by corporations should their regulations of law interfere with corporate profits. Even worse, coporate lobbyists that used to work for Monsanto, DuPont, and Big Tobacco are currently writing the language for the secret trade deal on behalf of the Obama Administration’
‘The trade agreement is so secret that no drafts have been published anywhere, and even Senators and their staffers who read the bill are not allowed to take notes on the trade agreement out of the room. No public input is being allowed. Why the secrecy?’
‘The real point of these free trade agreements is to allow for a free flow of commodities, drugs, pesticides and GMOs around the world, not protect the American people.’
‘Under deceptive rules like The Monsanto Clause-Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) Provision, coporations would be allowed to sue govermnents over laws that may negatively impact their expected future profits. The House has already passed the measure.’
This article Just goes to show that the liberal left and racists in this country are spoiling for a blood bath, Take away the guns, and free speech, raise taxes along with a health plan that insures that the elite in Washington can be held to a diff. standard and we are in bondage to the government. We see in the recent destruction of a city, then the war the country now has on the police and apparently now on a flag that evidently because a deranged misdirected drugged out kid committed a horrific horrendous evil crime that now suddenly it is half of the South’s fault. This is just another excuse the race-baiters have to blame people they do not like and incite discord. Can we say or do anything that would not be considered racist in this day and time?
The jihadist are killing people because of their religion and the desire for one religion to rule the world, but here you only have to have a pale face or be of a diff. race or hail from a certain part of the country or have worked hard and achieved much to be hated. Thanks to our liberal colleges and schools, race baiters, and the many dropout minions who will listen to anything and believe what they are told rather than use their own brains and live in peace, this country is facing evil square on. We can thank the radicals in this country for trying to put all those that do not have the same thoughts and beliefs that they do into literal bondage. Can we now be attacked for just looking at someone the perceived wrong way?
Apparently half of the dictionary is now considered racist and half of the finest colleges in this country are buying the bull crap. Where is this country going? Are we to stand by and watch certain groups destroy the progress this wonderful country has made in the last 100 years?
There is a solution. Jail the race baiters for inciting riots, put everyone to work earning a living for themselves, as many of us have done for years, even holding several jobs at one time to achieve our goals, and cut out the handouts and freebies that we and our ancestors did not have and had to work for. When a person is busy trying to make a living and put food on his/her own plate and a roof overhead or study for the new job and working to pay the bills, there is less time for discord. If a person has nothing but free time, never pays his own way, never owns anything except the pleasures of life which have been handed to them by an over generous government, then it is understandable that there can never be any respect for the person who has worked hard to own and to keep what has been so hard to achieve. This country needs a new direction and it is not discord between races it is jobs for everyone and no handouts!
After a hard day’s work, maybe the trouble makers might obtain a little respect for themselves and try to live side by side with others who have had to do so for years. This is the best country in the world, women are not chattel, nor concubines, All can be free and not be indentured to others. All are free to work to achieve their goals. If this was not so, then we would not have Mr Obama as President today Just a thought.
Is anybody reminded of Orwell’s ‘newspeak’ in all of this? “…a controlled language created by the totalitarian state Oceania as a tool to limit freedom of thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, and peace.”
Once again, “1984” is serving as a playbook.
If this is true, it is RIDICULOUS…
Maybe the reason why so many people are getting fed up on the conversation of race relations
is because there seems to be more and more words that people take offense to.
(by the way, I doubt it was a person of color who came up with this ridiculous idea.)
ANYBODY who thinks Melting Pot is a negative term, also most likely believes that animals
should have the same rights as people… (they are just CRAZY, and should not be taken seriously)
I am sorry, BUT, the FAR left has been gaining too much traction lately, and in my opinion
will poison these young minds. Where are the moderate people in all of this?
I am getting quite sick of the crazy far left. They are going to end up turning a LOT of people
OFF, just as the crazy far right does.
We need to stop coming up with MORE ways for people to be offended.
What next? TRIGGER warning… America is a Melting Pot.
Their hate of our freedom of speech disgusts me. Its times like these that I think saying provocative, offensive things is *good* in and of itself, just to show that the right is still strong and to keep the norm from moving toward censorship.
doglover said …
Making people more aware of linguistics as propaganda might be a good thing.
True. Lately we seem to have a penchant for spurious re-defining words and phrase terms that otherwise have simple clear meaning in conman parlance. Professors S I Hayakawa [“Language in Thought & Action”] and Wendell Johnson [“People in Quandaries”] are good sources for semantics discussion, if someone is inclined to learn fundamental semantics, although they both wrote long ago in simpler times, without all the political inferences other than those simpler un-nuanced definitions, intended originally in word meanings. I’m pretty sure today both are spinning like dervishes in the resting places. Good Lord, if we accept “micro-aggressions” as a term that modifies many other simple terms or phrases, literally by edict, what is next? Outright political banning of a wide range of words? Or outright aggression? Sounds like a few large dictatorial nations I could mention…where “thought crime” is a subject for prosecution.
Perhaps it is odd that I first read Hayakwa as required reading in an advanced math class in high school [1959] and subsequently was introduced to Johnson [ mid-1960’s] by an adjunct professor of linguistics and semantics at Columbia…when his day job was in the heavy equipment business that we both were involved in at the time…and had many great conversation over dinner in NYC when I traveled there and met with him. One of his interests was how words can be used as propaganda in advertising…which today has morphed in to general political memes…something neither of us anticipated, although we both knew of the potential. I retained contact with him over the years, until he passed away, when we’d both moved on to different businesses or the military…he was always illuminating on the use of language per se and some one I admired for his ability to join teaching with business nearly seamlessly. He’d have gagged at the revelation by SCOTUS that “tax” and “penalty” were synonymous in modern think. I know I certainly found it very odd….more influenced by politics than linguistics or semantics in any form of common parlance.
The very notion of “microaggressions” is ridiculous.
Voluntary my ass. If you don’t buy into political correctness your opportunities for advancement get cut off at the knees.
http://www.reversespins.com/pcmarx.html
The University of California (no, not just Berkeley) responded to these allegations of censorship stating:
Criticizing speech and identifying offensive speech is not censorship. There may be a weak, highly attenuated, “this is a slippery-slope-on-a-path-to-censorship” argument to make (as Professor Volokh has attempted), but to claim that voluntary seminars educating people on offensive speech are themselves censorship is simply inaccurate.
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Great points from Professor Turley. Here’s just one.
“Ironically, while using the term “melting pot” is now viewed as an unacceptable microaggression, actual aggression in the form of assault by a faculty member on people for using free speech is not considered an offense worthy of termination — indeed it was an act deemed understandable if not heroic by some students and faculty in the case of California Professor Miller-Young.”
Janet Napolitano is a mainstream progressive, she was Governor of Arizona and the Homeland Security Secretary under Obama. We’d like to think the extreme circumstances we see in campus life are driven by a few radicals, but that clearly is not the case. Either the mainstream left supports the radicals or there are so many radicals the mainstreamers cannot mitigate their actions.
California is the canary in the coal mine. These ridiculous conclusions come shortly after California passed regulations requiring California Universities to adjudicate campus sexual assault using so called “affirmative consent” rules. Despite the benign title effectively all sex fails to meet the standards in the regulation and so effectively any complaint proves responsibility.
Making people more aware of linguistics as propaganda might be a good thing. Far more destructive than “melting pot” etc. however, is the use of words like “terrorist”, “militant,” “Islamist gunmen”, to demonize people based on where they live and their culture.
Only in a liberal utopia like UC Berkeley would the statement, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” be considered a “microaggression.”
Reblogged this on Scoop Feed.
Tortfeasors Unite!