Criminy, we’ve seen snipers shooting cops protecting protesters who are protesting cops shooting blacks, we’ve seen extremists pledging allegiance to terrorist organizations shooting up gay nightclubs and office parties, and here is what NC State faculty are to worry about as “microaggression”: saying common platitudes.
They include such verbal grenades as (brace yourselves) “America is a land of opportunity” and “Gender plays no part in who we hire.”
On the plus side, if this nonsense takes hold outside the empty wind chambers of today’s daintified, safe-spaces academe, then maybe future psychopaths will attempts to spread terror just by shouting such weaponized words as “Nice shoes!” or “Santa Claus!” at public gatherings.
As it is, I’m ashamed of my alma mater for so infantilizing its students to act as if they don’t have and never will develop the ability to withstand, handle, deal with, ignore, laugh off, or — in any other way a confident, thinking adult (let alone a future graduate from a major research university) would do it — treat a phrase, or going further a concept, that doesn’t mesh 100 percent with their worldview.
