The ‘Wait, What?!’ of the Week, June 26, 2015

Here are a few phrases you’ve probably heard before: “America is the land of opportunity,” “America is a melting pot,” and, “There is only one race, the human race.” These phrases are fairly innocuous, right? They express ideas that have been held by many folks for many years. But according to the people who run the University of California higher education system, these phrases are actually “micro-aggressions” that could leave students feeling discriminated against, and therefore should never be uttered by professors, according to a new faculty training guide.

Wait. What?! Yes, you heard right. The University of California has warned all professors to avoid these and other equally benign phrases, because the phrases can be interpreted by some students as “denying the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience,” and even worse, can be interpreted as a demand that certain students “assimilate to the dominant culture.”

Tim Groseclose used to be a professor at UCLA, but now teaches at George Mason University in Virginia. Groseclose says, “I don’t think the University of California realizes how crazy it’s become.” Noting that one of the forbidden phrases is, “When I look at you, I don’t see color,” Groseclose observes, “According to that document, Martin Luther King, Jr. would be guilty of micro-aggressions.”

I was going to try to come up with some smart-aleck comments, but this situation is so pathetic, I’m just not in the mood. So instead I’ll cite one of my favorite authors, Dr. Peter Kreeft, who said that no idea is too ridiculous that some Ph.D. somewhere won’t embrace it. Looks like a whole slew of Ph.D.’s on the Left Coast have embraced this ridiculous idea. Can I claim that political correctness run amuck is a micro-agression towards me? I mean, honestly, this idiocy truly offends me. No, unfortunately I’m not a member of an approved gender, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, political party, or socio-economic class, so my feeling don’t count. 

At this rate, the phrase, “America is the land of opportunity,” soon will not be allowed—not because it’s offensive, but because it no longer will be true.