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Originally Posted by OldDog
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It's so interesting you bring this up- I happened to go to a lecture on Monday about micro aggressions, and one of the things the lecturer, Dr. Wing Sue, talked about was that it's a very challenging thing to explain out of context. For example, this video, taken out of context, does seem like a student getting upset over nothing. However, you're seeing 80 seconds of reaction to a situation that's been building for a long time. It's not just about the email. Here's a piece written by a senior at Yale, which helps frame what you see in the video:
https://medium.com/@aaronzlewis/what...e-6bdbbeeb57a6
Dr. Sue talked about how television and mass media is one of the worst places to discuss it because everything has to be in 30 second soundbites, and he, for example, needs a good half hour to really be able to explain micro aggression. When you see a person really lose their sh*t like that, it's usually a case of the straw finally breaking the camel's back, not that they suddenly get upset out of nowhere. Him disagreeing with her was not what got her upset. The Yale administration repeatedly ignoring a culture of racism on campus is what got her upset. The guy in the video interrupting her (repeatedly) to tell her he disagreed (an example of gender based micro aggression, by the way) is just what finally pushed to her shout about it.
This gives great examples of micro aggressions experienced daily by people of color:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/raci...sis#.nfbrqJa0D
And that's the thing; it's death by a thousand cuts. One taken out of context doesn't seem like anything, especially to white Americans, but for those who experience it every day, it's cumulative.