The latest buzzword connoting victimhood is microaggression. No, it isn't in the dictionary...yet, but it notes a very important social phenomenon, especially on college campuses, actually the locations of the origination of the new class of the abused, misused or whatever.
Its most recent high-profile representation was at the University of Missouri a few weeks ago, where some students alleged that other people (maybe students, maybe not) had traumatized them by referring to them in unflattering terms. In fact, some insensitive soul had apparently fashioned a swastika on a bathroom wall, using—of course—feces as the substance of the moment.
This was just too much although no one seemed to know what the Gestapo symbol referenced...could have been the Girl Scouts or even the Red Cross. The perpetrator was not caught either in the act or after for some elucidation on the matter. Even worse, an officer in some African-American campus organization felt he had been the object of verbal slander, an absolute no-no in the era of political correctness. His sensibilities had been traumatized, case closed.
The uproar was so...well...uproarious and intimidating that 32 football players threatened to strike if the president did not resign as early as the day before. He acquiesced, as did the chancellor, all in good spirits and acknowledging that being insulted was tantamount to death by debasement, something no one should undergo. Later, the coach, who sided with the players, gave up the ghost as well (and $2.7 million per year), proving that in Missouri the good guys sacrifice although losing seven conference games might have signified.
The microaggression movement has spread to other campuses, with speech police-persons hard at work to put the finger on verbal abusers. The movement has branched out into the world of lectures, speeches, pep-talks, class assignments, test questions, etc., i.e., any area in which a person—especially a super-sensitive student—can have his/her feelings hurt or be subjected to any proposition/interpretation concerning anything counter to his/her own.
The issue, of course, is racism, real or imagined, with the potential perpetrators being anyone who is not black. Okay, the blacks have included the American-Indians in suffering microaggression but that's it. The Indians don't seem to care that much but they have to be educated in victimhoodness. Actually, some whites have included themselves in this new victim class, noting, for instance, that having “under God” in the pledge or on coins causes them a bothersome rash due to the stress of being inordinately affected every time they pay for a whopper.
Into the mix constantly occurs the “educational achievement gap,” sort of like the “income inequality gap,” to wit, that the playing field has not been leveled for everyone to feel properly accommodated or referenced politely. So...what's a society to do to make everyone happy again?
CAVEAT ALERT! Dare one say it...re-segregation? How better to curtail microaggression on any campus than to guarantee it won't happen because the perpetrators have been banished to their own kind and the victims banished to their own kind, with all things being equal, of course? After all, Doctor James Coleman, University of Chicago distinguished professor who introduced school-busing, stated some 10 years after its inculcation that it didn't work, even though the buses and schools were equal.
Most states can divide their education establishments into black and white institutions in which no derogatory remarks will be encountered. This should already be done on a gender basis anyway, thus terminating the ceaseless cries of rape by sober coeds after being falling-down-drunk at frat parties and getting what they came for. The same stuff can be done in most public school systems (regarding education, not frat parties), especially in sizable towns/cities. Schools can be all-black or all-white or all-girl or all-boy. This would engender much greater learning.
What's to lose? Under current conditions, the education gap grows wider every year. Also, achievement across the board for both blacks and whites diminishes every year. Asians improve every year. If the racism and other education problems are being exacerbated daily now, why not defy political correctness (at the root of all this evil) and do something sensible? Top education experts (and most men) will attest to the fact that some types of segregation help. At this sorry point, they can't hurt.
Microaggression...what nonsense! This is only partly tongue-in-cheek.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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