The whole thing about a "microaggression reporting form" and how it's all worded is that it seems to go overboard into *encouraging* a "reporting culture."
And one doesn't want that kind of thing going too far. Taken to extremes, that's actually socialism and communism. That's how things are in North Korea -- someone says one wrong thing out of line with the State, and they get reported. Could be the coworker next to them, a neighbor, a stranger -- even family, or a husband and wife.
Not to go too far out with an analogy, but I'm just sayin'.
In the context of academia -- I think administrators and educators are losing some common sense that a parent would have. Think of it in that context, say you've got two kids -- does a parent ENCOURAGE them to tattle on each other and constantly report on the other? I suppose some do, but is that really good parenting? And what does that sort of thing lead to, a lot of bogus / revenge reporting, no?
I remember growing up. My sis was horrible to our brother. She just made things up, just to get him trouble, for the fun of it. She'd trick him into doing things she could then tattle on him for
.
So anyhow, that's kids and kids are kids. But the point is that in good parenting / teaching there should be a line between knowing what's going on and that kids aren't bullied, but you also can't be running a Communist Reporting State either. Because the latter is unnatural.
In the context of the workplace -- if management overly ENCOURAGES employees reporting on each other, then it's the same thing as with raising kids. We all know how office politics is and how petty people can be; if this kind of "complaint culture" / "I'm offended culture" / "reporting culture" is encouraged, then people could just report things out of sheer boredom.
If there's a big flashing shiny form there saying "report all the microaggressions against you," then people will sit there and start thinking up microaggressions to report, right? (how many times have we seen from some on this forum in the past, "I've reported you to the mods!!!!!"
).
My issue with microagressions is that, from what I can understand of it, it includes things that are honestly unintentional / unknowing. A student just having a make america great again ballcap, or a Trump bumper sticker on their laptop or a Trump tshirt -- could all be deemed microaggressions.
To the person with the Trump shirt on, most likely they're just honestly a Republican. But to someone else looking at that shirt, they could interpret it some other way and then are offended and it's deemed a microaggression -- unintentional causing of offense.
I'm surprised that serious people in academia and education, don't see that point.
People being nice and acting civilized and humane is one thing, just being decent and having manners, but a socialist police state rooting out offenses that the offender doesn't even understand -- that's another thing, entirely.
So in essence, an OVERLY SENSITIVE person can actually be the abusive one, to the person sitting next to them that's just walking on eggshells not even knowing what they did to offend.
P.S. I didn't need to write a long post. Long story short -- the very word "microaggression" is just ridiculous. It's a new madeup word that didn't exist before. What is that word really, just simple passive aggressive? Well, wouldn't it be silly to have a passive aggressive reporting form?
