Fifty years after the birth of the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley, officials across the UC system are encouraging faculty and students to purge mundane, potentially offensive words and phrases from their vocabularies.
Administrators want members of campus to avoid the use of racist and sexist statements, though their notions about what kinds of statements qualify are completely bonkers. “America is a melting pot,” “Why are you so quiet?” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” are all phrases that should raise red flags, according to the UC speech police.
Requests for faculty to quit perpetrating these teensiest of microaggressions are thankfully just that—requests—although the fact that they come straight from the desk of UC President Janet Napolitano lends them some muscle. On January 5, Napolitano dispatched letters to UC deans and department chairs inviting them to attend seminars “to foster informed conversation about the best way to build and nurture a productive academic climate.” That’s bureaucrat-speak for learn to keep your mouths shut.
Seminars were held on nine of the 10 UC campuses throughout the school year. A professor who opted not to attend recently shared some details with The College Fix, and educational materials from the seminar are available online. Of particular interest is this handout, “Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send,” which is adapted from a book by Columbia University Psychology Professor Derald Wing Sue. It lists dozens of examples of mundane statements and then explains why each could be racist.
Saying, “There is only one race, the human race,” is offensive because it denies “the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience and history.”
“America is the land of opportunity,” implies that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.”
Asking an Asian, Latino, or Native American “why are you so quiet?” is tantamount to giving the order “assimilate to dominant culture.”
And stating the opinion, “Affirmative action is racist,” is a microaggression by default.
OiYan Poon, an assistant professor of higher education at Loyola University in Chicago, explained the rationale for that last example in an interview with Fox News.
“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,” he said.
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