• DOI:10.1007/S12129-016-9613-5
• Corpus ID: 151587438

The Pseudo-Science of Microaggressions

@article{Nagai2017ThePO,
  title={The Pseudo-Science of Microaggressions},
  author={Althea K. Nagai},
  journal={Academic Questions},
  year={2017},
  volume={30},
  pages={47-57}
}

• Althea K. Nagai
• Published 9 February 2017
• Education
• Academic Questions

A tsunami of microaggressions has swamped the country from east to west, with students posting their tales on social media and university websites. There are so many, many cruel statements, wrong words, routine insensitivities, and degrading silences—those “brief and everyday slights, insults, indignities and denigrating messages” sent by well-intentioned members of the dominant culture. Whites are “unaware of the hidden messages being communicated,” while overtly denying that they are racists. Themicroaggressions spectacle differs from that of a previous politically correct era, wherewell-known conservatives were widely picketed and speaker invitations revoked. Hostile actions toward conservative public figures continue, but today the microaggression targets include liberal and progressive faculty and administrators who have fostered their growth and capitulated to them. “Microaggressions” now cover race, gender, disability, LGBTQ, religion, class, and every other category of “social justice.” But in this essay, I focus on “racial microaggressions” (where the concept and theory originated) and the quality of the research behind it. Acad. Quest. (2017) 30:47–57 DOI 10.1007/s12129-016-9613-5