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Comment by pixel_fcker | Hacker News Reader

From Wikipedia:

> Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioural indignities, whether intentional or unintentional

It’s the unintentional part that I take issue with, which means that it’s not on you to understand the context of my statement, it’s on me to imagine the infinite variety of ways you might interpret my statement and vet them for possible insensitivity before making it, which is obviously impossible.

I agree that your definition makes perfect sense but I don’t think the sort of people who spend a lot of time worrying about micro-aggressions agree that the intention of the “aggressor” matters, as is perfectly evinced by this situation:

> “We would rather not take his course than to endure the emotional exhaustion of carrying on with an instructor that disregards cultural diversity and sensitivities and by extension creates an unwelcome environment for us Black students.”

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I think at some level this comes down to the age old argument of Ignorance vs the Common Good.

An extreme but relevant example: If a person is ignorant of the harmfulness of bleach, and injects their children with it with intent to cure an ailment, are they guilty of a crime? If so, is it the crime of being ignorant?

So from that lens, can a person act aggressively without intending to? In a technical sense, I think not. Aggression is, by definition, a state of intent. When we say "act aggressively", we likely mean "act in a way that suggests an aggressive intent". It's our interpretation of intent based on action.

An important note here is that it's our interpretation of someone else's intent.

I don't think emotional offence should be treated exactly like physical harm. Different people may take offence from different actions, and it's not fair to require everyone to judge accurately what is and what is not offensive to all the other people they're going to interact with, especially in a society that is aiming for diversity. In East Asia, where most people think alike, it's easier to guess people's reaction, but it's definitely not so in other parts of the world.

For physical harm, however, ignorance should not be an excuse. It may reduce the responsibility, but it should not completely remove it. Not knowing something can kill doesn't change the fact that one had actually killed.

I don't know where you get the impression that in East Asia most people think alike, though I won't call it microaggression but rather self-centered cluelessness. Agree with your other points though.

You’re right and that’s the crux of it really: intent. That’s why framing someone as being in the wrong regardless of intent is dangerous.

If you don't understand micro-agressions, then you don't understand bullying. Because that's all micro-agressions are. Unintentional bullying.

Intentionality is not relevant with micro-agressions. Parse the nomenclature all you like, but people unintentionally cause harm all the time.

The issue is when as a society, those things are so commonplace that they repeat over and over in a constant loop.

For example, if someone accidentally bumps into you while passing you on the sidewalk, it's no big deal, they apologize and both people move on. Now imagine that everywhere you go, people keep bumping into you and apologizing all day long, multiple times a day.

You know no one means anything by it, but the aggregate of all that bumping is terribly frustrating and you can't even take it out on any individual person because you know they didn't mean it.

That's what many minorities deal with. And white people are completely clueless to what they are doing.

No one is talking about punishing the micro-agressors. Just educating them so we can minimize the distributed bullying campaign that we have been subjecting people to and give them some breathing room.

That’s worth thinking about, thank you.

> It’s the unintentional part that I take issue with, which means that it’s not on you to understand the context of my statement, it’s on me to imagine the infinite variety of ways you might interpret my statement and vet them for possible insensitivity before making it, which is obviously impossible.

I don't know that that is the only way to interpret how to behave.

Another way to think about it is simply to be aware that a colleague or friend from the non-dominant group (e.g. a woman, a Romani person in Germany, a Spanish speaker in the USA) experience many things every day that makes them feel less worthy, less welcome, on the outs so to speak, not because of the content of their mind and heart, but because of the group they were born into (I can give countless examples I've heard from friends & colleagues, if you're curious).

Now that you and I have that awareness, we can decide whether and how we can be supportive and add to that load. It could even be as simple as acknowledging when I see it.

Maybe if you can imagine that this is your significant other or child - what would you want for them?

>I agree that your definition makes perfect sense but I don’t think the sort of people who spend a lot of time worrying about micro-aggressions agree that the intention of the “aggressor” matters, as is perfectly evinced by this situation:

Let's not paint everyone with the same brush.

Lots of people are going to be upset by a lifetime of daily microaggressions - and rightfully so! - that are not going to be upset that a different language that has a word that sounds vaguely like a slur.

Some people will. I won't say they're wrong to have a gut reaction to hearing a word and misunderstanding it as something else. But I do think that they do need to understand that the word they heard isn't the word they thought they heard, and work from there.

But I don't think it's fair to say that everyone concerned with microaggressions in general will also fail to understand that 那个 is not the slur that it somewhat sounds like.

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