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About to compliment a co-worker on her new haircut? Think again, that’s microaggressive behaviour that implies all you see is her looks, devaluing her professional accomplishments.

Introducing Microaggression

In a discussion about candidates for a position at your workplace, you say, “I think the most qualified person should get the job.”

Don’t say THAT!

You are implying that there are people who are more qualified than others, which means you are labelling some candidates as less qualified.

You claim, patriotically, “America is a land of opportunity!”

OOPS, you are implying that there’s a level “playing field” so that if someone hasn’t been able to “make it,” it’s his or her fault.

Don’t get it?

It’s obvious among the politically correct: Inequality is pervasive in the U.S. and certain people groups are doomed to failure from birth.

On a flight, you politely engage your obviously Asian seatmate in conversation, asking where he is from. The Microaggression Theory interpretation? You are implying that the person is not a true American.

The History of the Concept

Microaggression Theory began at least as early as 1970 with creeping political correctness about racial issues. Should we say “Black Americans” or “African-Americans?”

Shortly afterwards, women began being oversensitive about labels, attitudes, biases related to gender. Not so gradually, any marginalised group – whether disabled, minority or religious – became aggrieved by casual conversation deemed to be derogatory.

Today, it’s risky to carry on a conversation with anyone lest you run into someone’s sensitivity and unintentionally cause emotional trauma!

Everyone is a victim and has been emotionally wounded . . . so beware.

No wonder Americans are, increasingly, more lonely and isolated. It’s dangerous to talk to anyone. We are now a society of pervasive witch-hunts living in a culture of victimhood.

In short, Americans have become overly sensitive and even paranoid lest they offend someone and inadvertently provoke someone to anger.

Judgementalism and Bullying

While early microaggressions were primarily racial or gender-based, now anybody can take offence at anything. “Bullying” now rivals judgmentalism as the ultimate sin, and that includes using the wrong pronoun in referring to someone who is obviously male or female if they self-identify as the opposite gender or even “something” else.

Words like “rude,” “insensitive,” or “demeaning” are passé; those are all encompassed with one word, “microaggression.” Tort law now calls cases based on such fragile complaints, “eggshell plaintiffs.”

The secularists have pushed true religion from the public square and replaced it with political correctness – a false religion with their own commandments.

Despising the God-breathed truths and commandments, they’ve created their own rules and regulations.

There is an ever-evolving new set of standards that, lacking any authority, we have to guess at what those standards might be. Woe to anyone who is not up to speed as to the latest version of the theology spawned by their ideology.

The secularist left rejects any faith based on revelation or authority; instead, we have a self-identified elite explaining what is acceptable and what is not acceptable conversation and comment . . . and what will get you excommunicated from polite society if you miscue.

The New Commandments

Ironically, Microaggression Theory inadvertently illustrates that it is an integral part of our human nature to have a religion. To that point, Pascal is often quoted,

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.”

Actually, the exact quote in its full context is even better:

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself” [Blaise Pascal, Pensees, Penquin, 1966, 75.]

Leftists, denying God’s authority, have been compelled to create their own set of rules and regulations. Rejecting divine revelation, they rely on subtle and ambiguous interpretations to reveal the real “truth” of feelings beliefs and attitudes.

Replacing scriptural teachings about inherent God-given equality, they construct long charts of forbidden language and the corresponding “hate-filled” interpretations.

These new Pharisees devise longer and longer lists of “microaggressable themes” and try to document every possible sensitivity that might be affronted by words, deeds or attitudes.

A Generation of Victims

Although there is no documentation of psychological or physical harm to the offended persons’ health or well-being, there is significant speculation about loss of self-confidence and such problems as depression, anger and increased anxiety.

With the expansion of microaggressions to include issues of sexuality, it’s not surprising that the fad –– the “hottest concept” on today’s college and university campuses –– has “created a whole new generation of permanent victims.”

Phrases like “white privilege” and “institutional racism” are thrown around to explain supposedly “hostile” campus environments.

Diversity initiatives are de rigueur as a means of assuring “cross-cultural competency.” So-called “safe spaces” are now required to “protect” the sensibilities of students who will soon be out in the workforce, with ramifications that will affect all of us for years to come.

Let’s hope we all live long enough to see this modern Tower of Babble crumble beneath the ever-growing weight of its insanity and see our youth liberated from trivial problems to enjoy a new maturity and learn to deal with real problems.

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Originally published on AmericanThinker.com. Image by Vera Arsic on Pexels.