"Where are you from?" and other unspeakable acts of bigotry

The University of California, one of the most progressive in the nation, had to bring together faculty to codify what unseemly lingo needed to be jettisoned from the English language. In Psychology Today, Dr. Derald Wing Sue, author of “Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation,” lays out three major types of offensive action.

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Microassaults: These constitute conscious and intentional discrimination, like using racial epithets, displaying White supremacist symbols like the Confederate flag, or suggesting to “people” that the entire system isn’t rigged to keep them destitute.

Microinsults: These are verbal, nonverbal, and environmental communications “that subtly convey rudeness and insensitivity” to demean a person’s heritage. So, for instance, the Irish flag outside a pub intimates that the Irish are a bunch of alcoholic hoodlums.

Microinvalidations: These are “communications that subtly exclude negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings or experiential reality of a person of color.” Watching the Dukes of Hazzard in a non-ironic way. Asking a Mexican if he celebrates the Day of the Dead or a Jewish person if he keeps kosher, etc…

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