Jun 21, 2023·edited Jun 21, 2023Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
I can't endorse this post more.
A few years ago (perhaps notably pre-2020) I read "So You Want to Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo. In it, she has a metaphor about how, if random people are constantly coming up and punching you as you walk down the street, pretty soon you are going to get defensive any time you see someone walking towards you. I think this does a good job of explaining why people might be offended by otherwise innocuous or well-meaning microaggressions. At the same time, the book contained examples of microaggressions, the categorization of which I found kind of horrifying and demoralizing. Notably, she told a story about a white boss talking to a black female employee about something like how much he liked her hair (maybe it was how much he liked a piece of African jewelry she was wearing, either way, this book was definitely the first time I heard that white people shouldn't comment on a Black woman's hair). Either way, the point of her story was how the boss was committing an unacceptable microaggression by noting her "otherness." My main takeaways were 1) he was clearly just trying to engage in routine small talk, 2) oh my god, if she is using this boss's efforts to engage in normal small talk as an example of racist microaggressions, what seemingly benign things might I be doing that are seen that way!
After reading that book, I became very self-conscious when talking to POC, out of fear that I might step on some racist landmine about which I am not aware. I can avoid asking black women about their hair now that I know that I shouldn't but what else might I be missing? Is asking about the weather OK? How about the latest Marvel movie? Both seem fine, but so did asking about an interesting hairstyle, so what do I know? Now she might say "good, you should be self-conscious about this," lest you commit a microaggression, but at least for me, this self-consciousness makes it basically impossible for me to engage in small talk with POC, which can't possibly be a good thing.
The same is true of the "where are you from?" question that you mentioned. I can see how this question could be used as a racist actual aggression, but it is also just a reasonable question for someone whom you just met. Last year, I was hanging out with the father of one of my then-7 year old's friends and asked him this, only to find out he was from the same town my parents grew up, and where I had spent a good deal of time as a kid, and it gave us a way to connect over some shared experiences. When this question blew up on Twitter recently, there was a video going around supposedly showing a white guy being a jerk asking an Asian-American woman where she was from. If you haven't seen it, the video is here: https://youtu.be/crAv5ttax2I . While the white guy is clearly supposed to be the "bad guy" in the video, he merely comes off as friendly but awkward. Meanwhile, the woman comes off as defensive and, at the end, intentionally rude.
Recently, the US Surgeon General announced that we are living through a loneliness epidemic. While I wouldn't lay the blame for this on everyone being on edge over micro-aggressions, I can't imagine that it helps.
Jesse Singal (and probably others) also make a good point that seeing these things as microaggressions also isn't a healthy way to live. While there are definitely jerks out there, engaging in actual aggressions based upon race/sex/sexuality/whatever, thinking that everyone who asks you "where you are from" or comments on how they like your hair is actually a racist trying to hurt you is only exacerbating the problem. I once saw a study about how Black people who report more microaggressions have worse health outcomes. The intended takeaway was that microaggressions are physically hurting Black people, but I wondered whether Black people who are more inclined to see things as microaggressions are more high-strung people and that is what is (at least in part) causing their bad health outcomes. I understand Oluo's point and metaphor that a lot of Black people (and other POC) are essentially walking around with PTSD from facing racism their whole life and, in the same way as a shell-shocked veteran might dive for cover when a firecracker goes off or a car backfires, someone who has PTSD from racism might assume even an innocent comment is intended as a racist attack. I also wholly agree with your statement that, if someone is bothered by something, you shouldn't argue with them about whether they were right to be bothered. But at the same time, just as we wouldn't go around encouraging a shell-shocked veteran to think of every loud noise as a possible attack, but rather help them get over their PTSD so they can live a health life, we shouldn't be encouraging POC to look for microaggressions in every interaction. It's just not a healthy way to live.
Great post! I have had a colleague really tear themselves to pieces because they thought they were committing a microagression against me. They spent all day ruminating about something awful they believed they’d said (assuming when I talked about being married that my spouse was a man), then delivered the most anguished apology when they couldn’t take it any more. And I felt so bad for them!
The worst was, they convinced themselves that when I said “Oh my gosh, it’s fine, you had no way of knowing and I’m not offended, please don’t feel bad” that they had pressured me into forgiving them instead of speaking my truth, or whatever - another microaggression.
What an awful way to move through the world! Luckily that colleague chilled out once we got to know each other well enough that they could be sure I’m not that easily offended, but what a way to create anxiety where none needs to exist.
I loved your example of the scene from Enchanted. I always read that scene as an example of how Gisele’s sweetness overcomes all of our stuffy social rules — the audience sees that and might cringe a little bit inside, the same way her love interest cringes when she starts singing in the park. Doesn’t she know you can’t just *do* that?? But that’s the Disney princess magic: her sincerity is so powerful, it makes us let our guard down and accept her good intentions.
I think it's part of a tendency to frame harmful encounters wholly in terms of the victim's experience of them rather than the intentionality of the perpetrator - from serious crimes to clumsy moments of thoughtlessness. I believe it's part and parcel of a therapeutic culture that also encourages us to label those who have harmed us as narcissists.
Not coincindentally, the above chimes in perfect accord with social media feedback loops and an individualised culture that actively discourses self-reflection and humility!
(Maybe a bit of an Adam Curtis-y reading of the situation... but also probably testimony to the impact reading Kristin Dombek's 'The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism' had on me a couple of years back - it's really stayed with me!)
My surname Rathke is constantly mispronounced and people often ask how to say it, which I think is sort of funny because it's pronounced almost exactly like it's spelled: wrath-key (my supervillain identity).
Because my family left Germany before Bismarck's standardizations, it's spelled differently than people who may have had the same surname (Radke, for example--a famous MN Twins pitcher when I was growing up who people often asked me if I was related to, despite our last names being spelled differently), but people in Europe also consistently pronounced it as Rat-kuh or Rote-kuh. Telemarketers called us something like Rashkee, Ratchkee, Rathek, and so on, which is kind of inexplicable to me!
I also learned in Ireland that my mother's family has mispronounced their name for at least my mother's entire lifetime (and probably her parents' lifetime too). Mulcahy in America has always been Mull-kay-hee, but in Ireland it's Mull-cah-hee.
Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
1. There's such a thing as passive aggression: a little bit of meanness that is just overt enough to land, but still subtle enough to prevent you from calling the person on it.
2. There's such a thing as unintentional passive aggression, which isn't nearly as obnoxious as the intentional kind but can still be upsetting if you're on the receiving end.
3. How upsetting (1) and (2) are is directly proportional to the amount of power the aggressee feels the aggressor has over them.
4. If you're, say, black in America, you might feel white people have enough power over you that a sufficient number of minor slights could pile up over time to become frustrating, even if you're not a particularly sensitive person and naturally give others the benefit of the doubt. This frustration is understandable and legitimate.
4 (a). Here I'm going to express things in terms of American black/not-black racial hierarchies, but the same principles apply more broadly.
4 (b). There are a minority of people of all races and social strata who are unusually sensitive, assume bad faith on everyone's part, and make themselves and everyone around them miserable. They deserve no special accommodation from anyone but professional therapists and are excluded from this discussion.
5. If we want a word for the cause of the frustration in (4) I suppose "microaggression" is as good as any.
6. The problem in (4) comes from the power differential inherent in America's racial stratification, not the particular slights. Drain the stratification of its power, and the slights will no longer sting. If the stratification remains in place, even the most innocuous slights will still have the power to exasperate reasonable people.
6 (a). All of this "draining stratification of its power" talk should be thought of as a gradual, continuous process. There will never be a point where the anti-racist brigades storm the barricades and end this misery once and for all. There will only be a point where the pain caused by a particular social inequity drops beneath the background level of basic human pain.
7. The good news is that until such a point is reached, the skills to prevent microaggressions are just the basic human decency skills that we all practice every day: listen, be empathetic, be kind, do unto others, accept that not all hostility directed at you is about you, have the courage to tell people when they're wrong, the humility to admit when you're wrong, and the wisdom to know when to shut up.
8. The bad news is that if you are a well-meaning white person who lacks social skills, your attempts to do (7) for the benefit of black people whom you wish to support will come off as self-serving, patronizing and insincere. This is not due to the perniciousness of racism, but because you tend to come across as self-serving, patronizing and insincere. There is no White Ally checklist that can help you here. You simply have to learn how to be around people.
I feel like a lot of times this whole world of microagressions comes down to good faith vs bad faith interpretations of people talking to you.
If you take everyone you meet in bad faith as if they are trying to “get one over” on you or as secretly nefarious then, yes, you’re going to view everything and everyone as out to get you.
There’s also an element of that old 1980s stranger danger going on too. Assuming the worst in people because “hey, you don’t know them!”
And third there is also good old fashioned projecting. If you’re the kind of person that would say some snide comments or you have those thoughts in your head you just start seeing it everywhere. The old “well I know what I would have meant by that. So jimmy must have meant the exact same thing”. The old ‘a guilty conscience needs no accuser’ platitude.
Also.
ENGLISH. My god is English a complicated language. Microagressions are such an English thing that seems to have seeped into the world. Maybe I’m talking out of school but English is awash in words that have double, triple, or quadruple meanings. It’s a language almost designed to obfuscate. How many euphemisms for dying does English have? “Moved on, passed away, no longer with us, etc etc.”.
As always as much as some people might hate it. Context is and always will be king for any kind of a linguistic debate.
Jun 21, 2023·edited Jun 21, 2023Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
I believe the last consonant of Herzog's name would be either a k or a ch, right? I think mainstream German and Dutch de-voice the last sound. "Und" sounds like "oont".
Side note, but I once saw an ad in Germany. It had a Turkish guy saying "Isch bin...", Obviously making fun of foreigners' propensity to pronounce the "ch" sound as [ʃ]. On one hand, rude. I can't be offended though, because they're not wrong.
Anyway, those were all "k" sounds in Proto-Germanic. They changed, not us!
Microaggression must be an academia thing or a liberal upper class thing. I don't find it in my world, but then again, I'm old and shy away from people like that. Many people like to go around looking for insult, but this is ridiculous.
It seems to me that people who get so excited by mistakes in language are very uncomfortable within themselves. I saw such things in the adoption community, especially around interracial adoption. Of course you're going to get questions about "real" mother/sister or real son/brother. You're going to get situations where people don't realize you are a family. If you're comfortable with it, you laugh and give them the right words. Why should I care if they don't get that the Asian kid is my son or daughter?
I think the "micro aggression" stuff makes everyone far more uncomfortable. I totally agree when you distinguished between micro aggression and aggression. Don't you feel like laughing at them and saying "What's your problem? So what?"
One disadvantage of suppressing racist words. The attitudes behind them didn't go away, just repressed. You see that when some public figure accidentally lets loose, now and then. But, racism has to come out somehow...can't be seen to respect those [insert slur]. So you get bad-faith dialogues, vexatious and loaded questions, passive-aggressive behavior, and code words. And so there arise a number of crypto-racist behaviors, which the public might or might not even know. (How many people even know the alternate meaning of 88?) And since minorities are more aware of racism, they start noticing these. But white people have no idea, and so when someone says "I don't like the city" that obviously means they're an anti-Semite, cause that's a "dog-whistle."
Anyway, speaking of du/Sie distinction, I feel like we need that in English. I feel weird saying "you" at work. If we add one, though, let's not make it the same word as "she" or "they"
I once read an article lamenting how people "purposefully" mispronounce baseball players' names, with a specific example of Luis Robert Jr.'s name (he's Cuban and plays for the White Sox). The writer said it should be pronounced more like roh-bear.
Well, joke's on that writer. The White Sox have a pronunciation guide on their website that features recordings of *the players themselves pronouncing their own names.* If anything, Luis pronounces his last name more like "robber," which I'd argue is very close to how we say Robert in English anyway.
This is kind of a sideways comment to your main point, but I really like that you say that some actions are straight out aggressions. It's important to call out direct attacks on women, Black Americans, members of the LGBTQ community, etc. For so long, overt racism, sexism and homophobia characterized "normal" conversation. That's probably still true for a lot of people, but calling out really bad things that people say, as you urge, is a great place to start. And, yes, give those mere mortals who are doing their best, and may fumble and flail with good intentions, the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
A tiny quibble from an almost-native Czech speaker: I’m pretty sure that for Paulina Pořízková, the first syllable is accented in both her first and last names. I think the rule in Czech is that the first syllable is always accented. Where it gets a little hard to hear/say is when that first syllable is short and the subsequent syllable long, as is the case here. It seems like the “říz” is accented but it’s just long. Similarly, the most famous Czech composer’s name is pronounced “DVO-rzhahk” rather than “Dvor-ZHAK.”
With that out of the way, what a wonderful article. I couldn’t agree more that most things that are called micro-aggressions are either innocent mis-steps OR actual aggressions. Of course, if one of those mis-steps is deliberately/maliciously repeated after having it pointed out, it would become a full-on aggression. But wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t automatically assume the worst about others? Not to mention that more often than not it seems like the aggrieved party is some virtue-signaling third-party observer, not the person directly experiencing the alleged micro-aggression.
I can't endorse this post more.
A few years ago (perhaps notably pre-2020) I read "So You Want to Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo. In it, she has a metaphor about how, if random people are constantly coming up and punching you as you walk down the street, pretty soon you are going to get defensive any time you see someone walking towards you. I think this does a good job of explaining why people might be offended by otherwise innocuous or well-meaning microaggressions. At the same time, the book contained examples of microaggressions, the categorization of which I found kind of horrifying and demoralizing. Notably, she told a story about a white boss talking to a black female employee about something like how much he liked her hair (maybe it was how much he liked a piece of African jewelry she was wearing, either way, this book was definitely the first time I heard that white people shouldn't comment on a Black woman's hair). Either way, the point of her story was how the boss was committing an unacceptable microaggression by noting her "otherness." My main takeaways were 1) he was clearly just trying to engage in routine small talk, 2) oh my god, if she is using this boss's efforts to engage in normal small talk as an example of racist microaggressions, what seemingly benign things might I be doing that are seen that way!
After reading that book, I became very self-conscious when talking to POC, out of fear that I might step on some racist landmine about which I am not aware. I can avoid asking black women about their hair now that I know that I shouldn't but what else might I be missing? Is asking about the weather OK? How about the latest Marvel movie? Both seem fine, but so did asking about an interesting hairstyle, so what do I know? Now she might say "good, you should be self-conscious about this," lest you commit a microaggression, but at least for me, this self-consciousness makes it basically impossible for me to engage in small talk with POC, which can't possibly be a good thing.
The same is true of the "where are you from?" question that you mentioned. I can see how this question could be used as a racist actual aggression, but it is also just a reasonable question for someone whom you just met. Last year, I was hanging out with the father of one of my then-7 year old's friends and asked him this, only to find out he was from the same town my parents grew up, and where I had spent a good deal of time as a kid, and it gave us a way to connect over some shared experiences. When this question blew up on Twitter recently, there was a video going around supposedly showing a white guy being a jerk asking an Asian-American woman where she was from. If you haven't seen it, the video is here: https://youtu.be/crAv5ttax2I . While the white guy is clearly supposed to be the "bad guy" in the video, he merely comes off as friendly but awkward. Meanwhile, the woman comes off as defensive and, at the end, intentionally rude.
Recently, the US Surgeon General announced that we are living through a loneliness epidemic. While I wouldn't lay the blame for this on everyone being on edge over micro-aggressions, I can't imagine that it helps.
Jesse Singal (and probably others) also make a good point that seeing these things as microaggressions also isn't a healthy way to live. While there are definitely jerks out there, engaging in actual aggressions based upon race/sex/sexuality/whatever, thinking that everyone who asks you "where you are from" or comments on how they like your hair is actually a racist trying to hurt you is only exacerbating the problem. I once saw a study about how Black people who report more microaggressions have worse health outcomes. The intended takeaway was that microaggressions are physically hurting Black people, but I wondered whether Black people who are more inclined to see things as microaggressions are more high-strung people and that is what is (at least in part) causing their bad health outcomes. I understand Oluo's point and metaphor that a lot of Black people (and other POC) are essentially walking around with PTSD from facing racism their whole life and, in the same way as a shell-shocked veteran might dive for cover when a firecracker goes off or a car backfires, someone who has PTSD from racism might assume even an innocent comment is intended as a racist attack. I also wholly agree with your statement that, if someone is bothered by something, you shouldn't argue with them about whether they were right to be bothered. But at the same time, just as we wouldn't go around encouraging a shell-shocked veteran to think of every loud noise as a possible attack, but rather help them get over their PTSD so they can live a health life, we shouldn't be encouraging POC to look for microaggressions in every interaction. It's just not a healthy way to live.
Great post! I have had a colleague really tear themselves to pieces because they thought they were committing a microagression against me. They spent all day ruminating about something awful they believed they’d said (assuming when I talked about being married that my spouse was a man), then delivered the most anguished apology when they couldn’t take it any more. And I felt so bad for them!
The worst was, they convinced themselves that when I said “Oh my gosh, it’s fine, you had no way of knowing and I’m not offended, please don’t feel bad” that they had pressured me into forgiving them instead of speaking my truth, or whatever - another microaggression.
What an awful way to move through the world! Luckily that colleague chilled out once we got to know each other well enough that they could be sure I’m not that easily offended, but what a way to create anxiety where none needs to exist.
I loved your example of the scene from Enchanted. I always read that scene as an example of how Gisele’s sweetness overcomes all of our stuffy social rules — the audience sees that and might cringe a little bit inside, the same way her love interest cringes when she starts singing in the park. Doesn’t she know you can’t just *do* that?? But that’s the Disney princess magic: her sincerity is so powerful, it makes us let our guard down and accept her good intentions.
I think it's part of a tendency to frame harmful encounters wholly in terms of the victim's experience of them rather than the intentionality of the perpetrator - from serious crimes to clumsy moments of thoughtlessness. I believe it's part and parcel of a therapeutic culture that also encourages us to label those who have harmed us as narcissists.
Not coincindentally, the above chimes in perfect accord with social media feedback loops and an individualised culture that actively discourses self-reflection and humility!
(Maybe a bit of an Adam Curtis-y reading of the situation... but also probably testimony to the impact reading Kristin Dombek's 'The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism' had on me a couple of years back - it's really stayed with me!)
My surname Rathke is constantly mispronounced and people often ask how to say it, which I think is sort of funny because it's pronounced almost exactly like it's spelled: wrath-key (my supervillain identity).
Because my family left Germany before Bismarck's standardizations, it's spelled differently than people who may have had the same surname (Radke, for example--a famous MN Twins pitcher when I was growing up who people often asked me if I was related to, despite our last names being spelled differently), but people in Europe also consistently pronounced it as Rat-kuh or Rote-kuh. Telemarketers called us something like Rashkee, Ratchkee, Rathek, and so on, which is kind of inexplicable to me!
I also learned in Ireland that my mother's family has mispronounced their name for at least my mother's entire lifetime (and probably her parents' lifetime too). Mulcahy in America has always been Mull-kay-hee, but in Ireland it's Mull-cah-hee.
1. There's such a thing as passive aggression: a little bit of meanness that is just overt enough to land, but still subtle enough to prevent you from calling the person on it.
2. There's such a thing as unintentional passive aggression, which isn't nearly as obnoxious as the intentional kind but can still be upsetting if you're on the receiving end.
3. How upsetting (1) and (2) are is directly proportional to the amount of power the aggressee feels the aggressor has over them.
4. If you're, say, black in America, you might feel white people have enough power over you that a sufficient number of minor slights could pile up over time to become frustrating, even if you're not a particularly sensitive person and naturally give others the benefit of the doubt. This frustration is understandable and legitimate.
4 (a). Here I'm going to express things in terms of American black/not-black racial hierarchies, but the same principles apply more broadly.
4 (b). There are a minority of people of all races and social strata who are unusually sensitive, assume bad faith on everyone's part, and make themselves and everyone around them miserable. They deserve no special accommodation from anyone but professional therapists and are excluded from this discussion.
5. If we want a word for the cause of the frustration in (4) I suppose "microaggression" is as good as any.
6. The problem in (4) comes from the power differential inherent in America's racial stratification, not the particular slights. Drain the stratification of its power, and the slights will no longer sting. If the stratification remains in place, even the most innocuous slights will still have the power to exasperate reasonable people.
6 (a). All of this "draining stratification of its power" talk should be thought of as a gradual, continuous process. There will never be a point where the anti-racist brigades storm the barricades and end this misery once and for all. There will only be a point where the pain caused by a particular social inequity drops beneath the background level of basic human pain.
7. The good news is that until such a point is reached, the skills to prevent microaggressions are just the basic human decency skills that we all practice every day: listen, be empathetic, be kind, do unto others, accept that not all hostility directed at you is about you, have the courage to tell people when they're wrong, the humility to admit when you're wrong, and the wisdom to know when to shut up.
8. The bad news is that if you are a well-meaning white person who lacks social skills, your attempts to do (7) for the benefit of black people whom you wish to support will come off as self-serving, patronizing and insincere. This is not due to the perniciousness of racism, but because you tend to come across as self-serving, patronizing and insincere. There is no White Ally checklist that can help you here. You simply have to learn how to be around people.
I agree with most of that. However someone assuming you are Irish is a macro aggression.
I feel like a lot of times this whole world of microagressions comes down to good faith vs bad faith interpretations of people talking to you.
If you take everyone you meet in bad faith as if they are trying to “get one over” on you or as secretly nefarious then, yes, you’re going to view everything and everyone as out to get you.
There’s also an element of that old 1980s stranger danger going on too. Assuming the worst in people because “hey, you don’t know them!”
And third there is also good old fashioned projecting. If you’re the kind of person that would say some snide comments or you have those thoughts in your head you just start seeing it everywhere. The old “well I know what I would have meant by that. So jimmy must have meant the exact same thing”. The old ‘a guilty conscience needs no accuser’ platitude.
Also.
ENGLISH. My god is English a complicated language. Microagressions are such an English thing that seems to have seeped into the world. Maybe I’m talking out of school but English is awash in words that have double, triple, or quadruple meanings. It’s a language almost designed to obfuscate. How many euphemisms for dying does English have? “Moved on, passed away, no longer with us, etc etc.”.
As always as much as some people might hate it. Context is and always will be king for any kind of a linguistic debate.
I believe the last consonant of Herzog's name would be either a k or a ch, right? I think mainstream German and Dutch de-voice the last sound. "Und" sounds like "oont".
Side note, but I once saw an ad in Germany. It had a Turkish guy saying "Isch bin...", Obviously making fun of foreigners' propensity to pronounce the "ch" sound as [ʃ]. On one hand, rude. I can't be offended though, because they're not wrong.
Anyway, those were all "k" sounds in Proto-Germanic. They changed, not us!
Microaggression must be an academia thing or a liberal upper class thing. I don't find it in my world, but then again, I'm old and shy away from people like that. Many people like to go around looking for insult, but this is ridiculous.
It seems to me that people who get so excited by mistakes in language are very uncomfortable within themselves. I saw such things in the adoption community, especially around interracial adoption. Of course you're going to get questions about "real" mother/sister or real son/brother. You're going to get situations where people don't realize you are a family. If you're comfortable with it, you laugh and give them the right words. Why should I care if they don't get that the Asian kid is my son or daughter?
I think the "micro aggression" stuff makes everyone far more uncomfortable. I totally agree when you distinguished between micro aggression and aggression. Don't you feel like laughing at them and saying "What's your problem? So what?"
One disadvantage of suppressing racist words. The attitudes behind them didn't go away, just repressed. You see that when some public figure accidentally lets loose, now and then. But, racism has to come out somehow...can't be seen to respect those [insert slur]. So you get bad-faith dialogues, vexatious and loaded questions, passive-aggressive behavior, and code words. And so there arise a number of crypto-racist behaviors, which the public might or might not even know. (How many people even know the alternate meaning of 88?) And since minorities are more aware of racism, they start noticing these. But white people have no idea, and so when someone says "I don't like the city" that obviously means they're an anti-Semite, cause that's a "dog-whistle."
Anyway, speaking of du/Sie distinction, I feel like we need that in English. I feel weird saying "you" at work. If we add one, though, let's not make it the same word as "she" or "they"
I once read an article lamenting how people "purposefully" mispronounce baseball players' names, with a specific example of Luis Robert Jr.'s name (he's Cuban and plays for the White Sox). The writer said it should be pronounced more like roh-bear.
Well, joke's on that writer. The White Sox have a pronunciation guide on their website that features recordings of *the players themselves pronouncing their own names.* If anything, Luis pronounces his last name more like "robber," which I'd argue is very close to how we say Robert in English anyway.
This is kind of a sideways comment to your main point, but I really like that you say that some actions are straight out aggressions. It's important to call out direct attacks on women, Black Americans, members of the LGBTQ community, etc. For so long, overt racism, sexism and homophobia characterized "normal" conversation. That's probably still true for a lot of people, but calling out really bad things that people say, as you urge, is a great place to start. And, yes, give those mere mortals who are doing their best, and may fumble and flail with good intentions, the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
A tiny quibble from an almost-native Czech speaker: I’m pretty sure that for Paulina Pořízková, the first syllable is accented in both her first and last names. I think the rule in Czech is that the first syllable is always accented. Where it gets a little hard to hear/say is when that first syllable is short and the subsequent syllable long, as is the case here. It seems like the “říz” is accented but it’s just long. Similarly, the most famous Czech composer’s name is pronounced “DVO-rzhahk” rather than “Dvor-ZHAK.”
With that out of the way, what a wonderful article. I couldn’t agree more that most things that are called micro-aggressions are either innocent mis-steps OR actual aggressions. Of course, if one of those mis-steps is deliberately/maliciously repeated after having it pointed out, it would become a full-on aggression. But wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t automatically assume the worst about others? Not to mention that more often than not it seems like the aggrieved party is some virtue-signaling third-party observer, not the person directly experiencing the alleged micro-aggression.