The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

Those microaggression girls are powerful! Did you... gif them, Scott?

that was a nice letter scott -- i wonder if/how it will be understood -- i'm curious to hear updates.

been reluctant to chime in because this is one of those things where it's best to listen but what is the deal w the WMUA thing and/because...

"Student managers also hold what sociologists call "reward power" and "coercive power". The General Body has been reminded repeatedly of this power, with statements such as "failing to properly refile CDs can be grounds for loss of membership"."

...being encouraged to wipe your own ass is a sign of a power imbalance?

also learning a lot from this thred so ty

Wait, scott, did people at your wife's radio station really invoke "fighting institutional racism" as a justification for firing totally nonracist yet old and white senior citizens from their long held positions as volunteer dj's at a publicly funded radio station? That's what I inferred from your wife's letter. If so, that's vile.

Vile and also bonkers.

If this thread has taught me anything, it is that there are (at least) 2 sides to every story.

We have heard only one side here, and given the reporting of the other side is from a guy who has repeatedly stated that he thinks microaggressions are bullshit (and in fact makes jokes about making "calendar girls" out of women complaining about microaggressions) I am really not sure how much weight I give his judgements on how racist the old guys holding all the financial and cultural Capital are.

I have no idea (and don't actually care) what the details of this beef are. But the words that people choose and the poses they strike always say a lot to me about how qualified they are to judge the existence or non-existence of biases they have never experienced!

Beef week for the multiplex, I see.

"Racism" isn't always "what they say", it's more often "what they do, or don't do"

Sometimes saying is doing though (arguably)

Sure it is, but often the things get "done/not done" without any explicitness.

Anyway, I'm not au fait with what happened, so..

Google "WMUA", look for information over the last year or so. Lots of stuff out there that might help you get a fuller picture.

We have heard only one side here, and given the reporting of the other side is from a guy who has repeatedly stated that he thinks microaggressions are bullshit

I suppose what some feel about 'microaggressions' is a kind of instant, probably kneejerk resistance to taking the idea seriously because we've all met people (and we've all been people) who do over-react to things which are just meant as a joke. And have met or been people who use this to claw a bit of power over other people (which isn't justifiable as 'punching up'). This doesn't invalidate the idea but does make it a hard sell

Not a lot from the point of view of the students - this partly explains why

http://www.gazettenet.com/news/townbytown/amherst/17751656-95/student-leaders-shed-little-light-on-wmua-shake-up

Naturally the story with "Station manager explains" has only one photo, of one of the geezers.

As I understand it, the point of microaggressions is not that any of them are a big deal (it's right there in the name, like), any of them can be dismissed as a joke on a good day - the point is noting that a constant murmur of tiny shit builds up to something larger than any individual issue.

It's not an arcane concept in itself, I'm sure it's something that anyone reading this is familiar with the pattern of, though it's more frequently "My co-worker annoys the shit out of me" rather than "This person, consciously or otherwise, doesn't think people like me have the right to exist in the same context as them".

the name is kind of oxymoronic tbh

Non-paywall (free account, but the man is always looking for ways to make you pay, dig?) version of the article Andrew posted: http://www.amherstbulletin.com/home/17761692-95/story.html

Must admit it's the name that gives me discomfort more so than the idea, as andrew says "My co-worker annoys the shit out of me" is instantly agreeable where "microagressions" isn't

So nobody actually knows the details of the incident that led to the djs being shitcanned?

x-post

Dunno -- I think microaggression is a good word for what I see as an immigrant in an anti-foreigner country. No clear stories of "Schleich Di, schass Tschusch", lots of little conversational hiccups, funny impolitenesses, social conventions quickly ignored. There's aggression; it's just little and blink and you might miss it unless you're the target.

Googled it and it seemed one of them violated the harrassment policy but it's not clear how. Not saying the charges weren't trumped up or whatever but that seems different from firing people just to make way for student djs under the guise of pursuing more diverse programming.

I just think the gifs are funny (and quite ambiguous), didn't realize "microaggression" was a tainted concept

Huh, I don't see a paywall on mine, sorry about that.

Microagressions is definitely a casting of the phenomenon in a particular type of context.

In November, Shea made a comment during a discussion about "rape culture" that others in the station were having in the studio while they were preparing for various programs.

Students at the student-run station were upset by his comment, he said, and he never had the chance to explain what he meant until a subsequent meeting a few days later, when he apologized.

But on April 21, police escorted him from the station and off campus, and issued a no trespassing order in effect for two years, requiring that he stay off campus for that time. His program was canceled.

I'm sure he said something gross but being escorted from campus and banned in this way seems possibly overkill. Need to know the actual statement/context to fully pass judgment on the students. However I sort of feel like someone with gross opinions but a wealth of knowledge on experimental music should still be allowed to have a show as long as the gross opinions aren't part of the programming.... If that is in fact the issue. It's still unclear

i don't think microaggressions are bullshit. did i say that anywhere on here? people have said horrible racist and sexist shit to me my whole life. either because they didn't think i would care or they thought i would agree with them. and it has given me a healthy distrust/fear of men in general and men in power particularly. i know exactly what men are capable of doing and saying. and how even supposed "good men" are capable of doing and saying horrible shit.

i do think generic internet gifs are funny though. when people boil down complex issues into catchphrases and slogans i tend to make fun of them. i think they provides an easy way to not think and talk about things.

i also didn't start this thread as a joke and i've read a lot of interesting posts from a lot of people. so, thank you all!

(also, i asked maria to contribute here. maybe she will. she can't remember her login password.)

Must admit it's the name that gives me discomfort more so than the idea

Yes! It's all about people not liking jargon/neologisms/slang - once there is a word for something people try to apply strict categorisation to the idea, which just won't work. How many times have you seen terms within feminism, marxism, critical theory etc. misused because once it becomes a term it can be misunderstood and misapplied.

Yes. Let's please not give people a language to express what's ailing them. How horrible!

(See? We're perfectly capable of misunderstanding each other without fancy words.)

this is impactful to Frederik

I wasn't complaining about the terms - the opposite really - and I'm only being half serious. But I see lots of people who think, for example, that 'patriarchy' means that men literally get together to arrange the oppression of women. The internet has allowed large numbers of people who have no training to wander into professional fields and read (and misunderstand) ideas. The idea of 'cultural marxism' is a good example. But mostly it's an internet culture that will sum up a field with 4 or 5 cherry picked out of context quotes and pretend that is what people are talking about.

(Just ignore my posts, actually. I'm not well at the moment and I can't even tell what they mean myself)

Pop culture is responsible for a lot of this imo, personally growing up the only thing I knew about feminism and other social movements was what reached me through pop culture -- mostly sitcom jokes and right wing talk radio. This is largely how most Americans encounter feminism, environmentalism, etc., through the distorted and cynical lens of pop culture, which often has a vested interest in belittling such movements and portraying them as radical and dangerous.

the other night i was playing rocket league and one of my opponents kept popping up on voice chat to sarcastically say "check your privilege, you need to check your privilege/you're triggering me". weird to think of kids encountering the term for the first time this way

Yes! It's all about people not liking jargon/neologisms/slang - once there is a word for something people try to apply strict categorisation to the idea, which just won't work. How many times have you seen terms within feminism, marxism, critical theory etc. misused because once it becomes a term it can be misunderstood and misapplied.

Your posts are fine, dowd! And I also think there's just a natural reaction to make jokes about terms that are overused or become trite to the point of catchphrases, especially when there is a disconnect between the seriousness of the initial referent and the prevalence/misuse to the point of banality. And sometimes we just make jokes about things that are fucked up and horrific because it's a human coping mechanism ... a form of gallows humor.

here's some coddling: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/tennessee-school-wins-right-to-ban-gays-and-women-whove-had-sex-this-is-who-we-are

From Gawker:

The demands of student activists at Lebanon Valley College include changing the name of the campus’s Lynch Hall because of its racial connotations, even though it is named for a former school president who had nothing to do with lynchings.

Shld be changed to Blue Velvet Hall

students gathering at Jeffrey Beaumont Theater

Repeating myself here but re that last link it must be to do with having no power to change all kinds of everyday crap that gets thrown at you and then you get this one chance to make a symbolic change and it's ...

Can't wait for Conor Friedersdorf and FIRE to pound on this: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article49686940.html

Or perhaps it's more that I won't wait. We all know it's not gonna happen.

Or this: http://www.baltimorecityschools.org/cms/lib/MD01001351/Centricity/Domain/8052/Family-Community%20Letter.pdf

I heard about that Baltimore letter on NPR tonight. Simultaneously overreaching AND ineffectual. Everbody's gonna love that.

this is from a right-wing college news website but i read through the minutes that they're discussing and there is some truly fascinating discussion about 'wellness' and geopolitical student body initiatives: http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25500/

The new bylaw restricts the current Undergraduate Students Association Council to only weighing and voting on “matters directly and substantially pertaining to student welfare issues,” defined as “issues pertaining to student (health), resources, education, safety.”

[...]

The vice president of Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, called the resolution “petty bullshit.” His sister, also of SJP, defended the 2014 boycott measure as related to student-health: “You are in a place of privilege and we don’t have the power and this resolution is just really frustrating that we have to constantly reaffirm and what student wellness affects us. If we tell you something is our student wellness you have to believe us you cant pick and choose [sic].”

I was really irritated by a fb comment on a friend's post a couple weeks ago when someone attempted to use "what's going on with college campuses" as a balance to complaints about regressive shit being said by republican politicians in the US. That's not even wrong. Not even in the same realm!

college campuses are, at least for those that have large undergraduate populations, populated by young people who are still figuring out who they are. which is kind of a complete headfuck because thousands of them are all crammed into one area, with interactions with people not their own age being mostly limited to instructors and the administration, especially in towns where every store and resource is staffed by their peers

so many weird behaviors, attitudes brought from home, new ideas they pick up and cling to as identity-defining. i met a woman who lived in the same residence hall i did my freshman year of college who just had to get out, to go back home and maybe go to a community college or smaller school because there were more people living in our building than there were in her entire hometown and she couldn't deal. i wasn't really dealing well with anything, myself.

on one hand you have people who notice the inherent fucked-up pieces of the system in play who are looking for safe spaces, for places where they can concentrate on parts of their identity that are important that the student body (and administration) might not even care about. on the other hand, you have the administration, the obvious other party, who wants to keep things going and struggles to react, and overreacts, with impunity because absent student trust (which they are ridiculously bad at cultivating) they flail around.

what does an environment that treats you with respect, regardless of your sexuality, gender, race, or health look like? what about all the things you'd never really questioned before encountering all these people who have had much different experiences from your own but now live feet away from you? how do you deal with that without having any real tools to do so, and when you find the tools you don't know how to use them?

the more i think about this the more it seems like it all boils down to saying "what's with kids these days?" college is largely a time of identity politics, whether you join a movement or are just figuring out who you are. college kids caring about identity politics is not new. what IS new is the 24 hour news cycle + internet-enabled instant communication. now instead of grandma bitching about her liberal arts grandson at lunch at the country club she can register her complains in the comments of an Atlantic article.

yup

Or by writing an atlantic article

social media has also kind of standardized the language and tactics of the protests

the students got what they wanted. they can now have the CMJ station of their dreams. 65 years of community involvement....maria is completely out of it too. at least there is an ending. they are "re-branding" now.

in a way, it makes sense. it's easier to deal with any university entity if outsiders are not an issue. but the station charter as originally written was all about community involvement. (plus, the old timers had the best and most professional shows by far. and played awesome stuff. i'll miss that for sure...)

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/12/umass_radio_statio_to_refocus.html

http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/umass-amherst-announces-restructuring-wmua

that's a shame. is there a way to relaunch the now lost shows as podcasts in someone's garage?

there is Valley Free Radio in Northampton. low power fm station. some people might move over there if they can.