UNC Employee Forum include Christmas vacation in ‘microaggression’ guidelines

Every day speech and behavior is being taken and twisted until it sounds offensive


According to a story by Campus Reform, extensive guidelines with a list of examples regarding so called “microaggressions” were posted on the UNC Employee Forum in order to help staff avoid being offensive. Asking someone “Where are you from?” and having the two sexes as the only options under gender on forms are just two of the examples presented.

As a North Carolinian raised in the Research Triangle that encompasses Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, I am wholly unsurprised by this.  Our oldest public university is well known to be left leaning.

“Microaggressions” as defined by the University of North Carolina are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation and religious slights and insults to the target person or group.”

The list is divided by social identity, in other words, race, sexual orientation, and so on. An example of a specific “microaggression” is then given and then followed by a “what it means” section.  A few more examples from it include referring to someone as boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife, telling a woman “I love your shoes,” and “Please stand and be recognized.”

According the list, when you refer to someone as boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife, what it really means is “I set the expectation that people do not identify as LGBTQ until they say otherwise or disclose their sexual orientation.” When you say “I love your shoes” to a woman in leadership during a Q and A, what you really mean is “I notice how you look and dress more than I value your intellectual contributions. How you look is really important.” And then finally, when you say “Please stand and be recognized,” what you really mean is that you “assume that everyone is able in this way and ignores the diversity of ability in the space.”

See what’s going on here? Simple, every day speech and behavior is being taken and twisted until it sounds offensive. The fact is, you will always run the risk of coming across someone who will take your words and actions the wrong way. It’s a part of socializing—it happens.

In reality, the only thing which Microaggression Theory serves to accomplish is the erosion of one’s personal freedom. It works to remove an individual’s linguistic autonomy, gone are the days where you get to decide the meaning behind your own words! That’s academia’s job now.

This ideology also exacerbates the toxic Political Correctness that exists on college campuses, i.e. “Safe Space” culture and emotional coddling. There’s a reason certain comedians will no longer perform on college campuses.

Now, let me be clear, the Employee Forum post in question isn’t the official policy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But it isn’t too farfetched to imagine it could become that someday for both the employees and the students. After all, we’re talking about the school that advised its students against using words with “man” in them in their writing.

Also, the guidelines like to focus on how we shouldn’t assume an individual identifies with societal norms. Yet it implies that we should fit to their  ideological norm. By your definition, UNC-Chapel Hill, aren’t these guidelines in of themselves a “microaggression?” You set the expectation that people do not identify as conservative until they say or disclose their political leanings.

See? Two can play at that game.