Generation Snowflake - safe spaces, microaggression, and Social Justice Warriors
In October that year, 13 administrators at Yale issued a guideline on Halloween costumes for undergraduates to prevent insulting the sensitivities of their fellow students - advising against turbans or face paints, for example. Erika Christakis, a lecturer, responded with an email in which she argued that it could be left to the students to decide in these matters themselves. Some of the students vehemently disagreed and took Christakis's husband, a fellow academic, to task for the suggestion. Or rather screamed at him for 10 minutes at the top of their lungs, demanding "safe space".
To which demand Richard Dawkins replied on Twitter: "A university is not a "safe space". If you need a safe space, leave, go home, hug your teddy & suck your thumb until ready for university."
After the incident, both Nicholas and Erica Christakis resigned from Yale.
In 2016, Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, publicly refused to accept government-imposed rules on the use of gender pronouns. As a charismatic and extremely articulate person, he divided starkly students and the public alike. Some protests against him got particularly ugly. At one surreal event, he sits on a chair and delivers a speech in a low and calm voice while students around him are chanting "Transphobic piece of shit" in endless repetition.
In March 2017 Evergreen State College was preparing for its annual Day of Absence. Traditionally, that day the minority students and staff absent themselves from the campus to demonstrate what the effect on society would be if those people withheld their contribution. This year, however, a spin was proposed, such as to ask white people instead to stay away. Bret Weinstein, a professor of evolutionary biology, sent a letter to the faculty, in which he heavily criticized the idea. He argued that there is a fundamental difference between a group voluntarily staying away from a community and encouraging another group to do so. The response was even more furious than in Christakis' case and eventually Weinstein needed police protection. Later both he and his wife left Evergreen.
In March 2017 the middle-aged social scientist Charles Murray, whose work on IQ and some very cautious remarks on its relation to race 20 years ago made him radioactive, tried to give a lecture at Middlebury College. A protest erupted and Murray had to be escorted out by the security, but not before the moderator, a female professor, was injured (and later hospitalized).
In September 2017 Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, held a speech at UC Berkely. Shapiro is not even a Trump supporter, he is an as mainstream Republican as it gets - or rather what mainstream meant before 2016. There is a lot to disagree with him, but he is a fairly decent and very rational guy, even if intimidatingly sharp. Before the speech, the university announced that counsel is offered to those students who would feel uncomfortable by what Shapiro has to say. The event also cost an estimated $600k for security.
In July 2017 (yes, that was a tumultuous year) Google Engineer James Damore authored an internal memo in which he argued that in contrast with what Google's diversity and inclusion training advocate, the underrepresentation of women in tech probably has more to do with women's different preferences than with discrimination. Although Google had earlier encouraged dialogue and expressing different opinions, Damore was summarily fired. The outrage this time erupted on Twitter (not over the firing). More than anything, the affair proved that for the highly intelligent and educated people of today 10 minutes of continuous reading has become too much.
In 2016, Douglas Crockford, the world's number one Javascript guy, was removed as a keynote speaker from a technological conference. The reason for this step was that he "slut-shamed" the... Web! In an earlier a speech he made a lame joke about "weak maps" - a technical term -, then called the web "promiscuous" in the technical sense of the word. His, at worst off-color, remarks were taken as sexist jokes.
The common theme running through these incidents is the outrage at acts or the lack of them that just very recently used to be shrugged off as trifles. The fury is not triggered by active threats or bullying, but by perceived cultural insensitivity which is interpreted as an act of real violence. More worryingly, in the case of Shapiro, merely by a different opinion.
There are two concepts that have emerged in tandem in the last half-decade, "safe space" and "microaggressions". Safe space is basically the idea that one has the right not to be offended - and the definition of offense is determined by the subject. Microaggressions are verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities. According to the microaggression-list of the University of California, asking "Where are you from" or failing to learn the proper pronunciation of a non-English based name are forms of violence. Students are encouraged to report them.
Why is it happening now?
Where does the hypersensitivity come from? At least three plausible explanations have emerged. Our growing distaste for violence, the big swing in childraising behavior in the last three decades, and the old anti-West sentiment of the Left.
Michael Shermer jokingly remarked that the phenomenon may be the testament of progress. Where previous generations had to face racial segregation and criminal persecution of gays, now we have it so good that we need to invent problems to solve. The youth wants to leave its mark on the world and looks back longingly on the era of the civil rights movement, but the world has already run out of dragons to slay. This was represented best in 2016 by some student leaders at the University of Oregon who considered removing Martin Luther King's famous quote, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character", from one of the walls. King failed to embrace multiple gender identities.
The recent books of Steven Pinker demonstrate that our tolerance for violence has radically decreased. Capital punishment, with the notable exception of the US, is almost eradicated in the Western world. Corporal punishment, either at the hands of schoolmasters, police officers, or parents, instead of being the norm, can draw lawsuits immediately. War has such a terrible image that the Vietnam-draft would be inconceivable today. As a consequence of changing the norms, former trivialities trip our sensibilities. An un-PC joke, a spicy compliment on a woman's appearance, a Mexican hat on Halloween, or just some un-sugarcoated criticism is found suddenly outside the window of discourse.
The social scientist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Coddling of the American Mind, argues that the helicopter parenting starting the '90s, combined with the omnipresence of social media, produced a fragile, anxious, and insecure generation that never learned to cope with the unpleasant realities of life.
'Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!''
- student protesters at Stanford University, 1987
Besides the over-charged moralism, there is a pronounced anti-West sentiment in the air. The offender is always white, heterosexual, and almost invariably male. Students at Ivy League universities demand the partial removal of Dead White Males (that is, Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy, ...) from the curriculum. White males have done a lot of bad things, but even being dead is a transgression now?
In the reigning narrative of Social Justice Warrior activists, Western society is patriarchal, homophobic, misogynistic, and systematically racist. White heterosexual males are the privileged class that oppresses and exploits women, racial minorities, and gays.
This is not a new idea. It is the line of criticism left-leaning liberals have always leveled against society, but the volume has suddenly turned up to 11.
As recently as a couple of decades ago, the criticism was broadly justified. But is it still? And compared to what other societies has the West it so bad?
The liberation of women from ossified gender roles has been afoot for generations. Today there are more women in higher education than men and they occupy all the jobs, including leading whole nations, that used to be male territory. Sexist attitudes are fading visibly. Heads of states get removed for sexual harassment.
The tidal turn on racist attitudes was similarly slow and steady but the change even greater. In the '50s American blacks were segregated from whites on the bus, in the restaurant, and in the classroom. In less than 3 generations later the same America elected a black president.
The progress in gay-rights has been gradual, then sudden. In Biblical times homosexuals used to be put to death with divine sanction. In 1954 Alan Turing was driven to suicide by the British government. After the sexual revolution being gay became tolerated but still remained a stigma. Sodomy laws were in effect in 14 states of the US until 2003. Even Obama was against gay marriage in 2006. Fast forward 10 years and we have openly gay prime ministers and political leaders all around the Western world, and any remark that can be interpreted as even slight homophobia is called out instantly. It's not clear at all why the dam of resistance to gay rights broke so suddenly and completely. But break it did.
Check your privilege!
As for the allegedly privileged class in America, white heterosexual males, they don't do so well. You'd expect the rulers to be at the top in health, wealth, and education. But they are not the ones earning the highest wages; the honor goes to Asian males, and now even gays have a slight advantage over heterosexuals. In education, men are behind women, and whites behind Asians. In longevity, women beat men across the racial spectrum, and Asians are again ahead of whites.
Being habitually outraged by the injustices against blacks, gays, and transexuals is, surprisingly for some and not at all for others, the pastime of the educated white middle-class - which is exactly the cohort Jonathan Haidt identifies. Recently a poll was conducted to measure how people would feel about voting for an old white man (in the frail shape of Joe Biden). It's telling that 49% of whites were bothered by it, in contrast to only 28-30% of blacks and Hispanics. The level of education was also proportional to the degree of disapproval.
In a 2014 interview on CNN Morgan Freeman visibly surprised Don Lemon by answering the question "Do you think race plays a part in wealth distribution?" with "Today? No...You and I. We are proof ... Why would race have anything to do with it?... It's like religion to me. It's a good excuse."
The Economist frequently refers to the refuted pay-gap myth or the one about one in four women getting sexually assaulted in college. In a lengthy article discussing the Damore-case, the author churned out a strangely revealing sentence. It was something like "Despite recent progress in diversity, the leaders in the US tech industry are still predominantly white and Asian". Highlight from me. It was as if the writer had kicked off the sentence with the intention of building up the argument for rampant racial discrimination, but upon reaching the end - it is the Economist, after all - he couldn't leave out the fact that many of those leaders are of Asian origin. And that flatly contradicted the assumption the statement had been going to be built upon.
It's a joke. Until it's not.
The movement and incidents mentioned above are dismissed by many as fringe occurrences, with more smoke than fire. But they creep into the center. Yale, Standford, Cambridge, UC Berkely are the cream of education. Across Academia, social science professors lean heavily to the Left and the diversity of viewpoints on social and political topics is disappearing. As the joke goes "“What's the difference between a Communist and a Nazi?”... “Tenure.”".
The crude barometer of the public mood, Twitter, has been overtaken by Trumpist trolls on the Right and the virtue-signaling liberal mob on the Left (and Russian agents posing as both).
Magazines like The New York Times or The Economist both represent and sway the liberal zeitgeist, and when they shift in any direction, they pull half the world with them. When individuals and companies start to realize that bad things happen to people who dissent, they react by censoring themselves and their employees to be on the safe side. Do you think the British legacy in India had some positives (law, schools, railways?), I challenge you to say it on Facebook.
It's much more likely that Google wanted to protect its image than that the leadership seriously thought Damore was a right-wing misogynist.
The New York Times' decision to hire Sarah Jeong despite the scandal seemed to be supported by similar reasons. This story is maybe not as widely known as it would deserve, so let's visit it briefly.
In 2018, shortly after Sarah Jeong was hired by The New York Times to join its editorial board, ugly tweets from her past surfaced.
"Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men."
Or "Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins,".
Or “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”
If in any of these tweets the world "white" had been swapped for "black", Jeong would not have a job again in her life, not even at Breitbart. The NYT defended its decision by tortuously explaining that these tweets have to be understood in context, and her views have somewhat softened since. Ah, right. Let's extend this courtesy next time to KKK-members coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, too?
Sometimes the self-censorship goes to ridiculous lengths.
In 2018, during an internal meeting Jonathan Friedland, Netflix Communication Chief, raised the attention to the problem with using the word "retarded", referring to a stand-up comedy on Netflix. His argument was that parents of children with disabilities can find it as insulting as the N-word. But he uttered the latter fully and got fired for it.
In October 2019, a black security guard at a US school got into a spat with an unruly black student. He told the teenager to stop calling him the N-word. The school's decision was swift. The guard was fired - then, after sensing the change in the wind, reinstated.
Free speech for me but not for Thee
It used to be conservatives who liked to tell others what and what not be said in public, and liberals rebelled against them. The tables have turned. In 2017 Richard Dawkins was disinvited to an event in Berkeley, once the beacon of free thought. The reason was his ostensible "Islamophobia". Why they took offense on behalf of Muslims in particular, is a mystery, considering that Dawkins has a well-documented and well-justified phobia to every religion and has spent the last 30 years bashing Christianity. In 2014 Bill Maher's invitation to UC Berkely was canceled for the same reason. In March 2019 Cambridge University rescinded its earlier invitation of Jordan Peterson.
Disagreeing is not enough anymore. The general pattern is to equate someone with the worst of his or her views or public statements and deny them the venue for conversation. Not that there is a desire for nuanced conversation. Who disagrees with Black Lives Matters is a racist. Who says men and women are different is misogynist. Who supports Brexit or Trump is a fascist (can't people be simply idiots nowadays?).
This is just dogmatic, sanctimonious, self-righteous bullshit. Relatively few people got fired because of it. Some of them deserved it. But the damage to public discourse is wide and substantial.
Your Rights end where my Feelings begin
Once hurting one's feelings is equated to physical aggression, it opens the gates of the mental asylum. And in the age of Twitter, the outrage-addicts are having the time of their lives. It seems like there is a substantial number of people whose main daily occupation is to sieve through the news to find something to be upset about.
Avenger's Endgame's portrayal of the self-pitying, overweight Thor was decried as "fat-shaming".
When Pete Buttigieg talked about his early-twenties struggles with his sexual identity he said "If there was a pill, a pill that I could take and not be gay anymore, then I would’ve jumped on it. And thank God I didn’t." He didn't receive much sympathy from Twitter critics. His words were called “the most evil shit”, and they are “absolutely going to do damage” to thousands of “vulnerable LGBTQ youth.”
In 2017, the Independent took the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party to task for her sexism. Ruth Davison had said that the Conservative Party should "man up". The fact that Davidson is a woman and a lesbian was no excuse.
What goes around comes around
Those who think that political correctness has achieved something that is worth this price - and I'm still among them - would better keep in mind that radical changes in society always invoke backlash. And these have already had.
It doesn't require much empathy to guess how a white manual laborer somewhere from flyover country feels when urbane middle-class pundits from New York or San Francisco tell him to check his privilege and rather shut up. "My what?" he might think while walking to the voting booth and pulling one for Trump.
Most voters never visited a University Campus. Most of them don't follow daily politics. Trans-right disputes barely coincide with their daily lives (and watching male-born self-identified women MMA fighters beating the shit out of biological females certainly won't make them sympathetic to the ideas). And they definitely don't feel privileged. They are not necessarily right, but they have to be won over, and what's happening now is the exact opposite.
Conclusion
All things considered, political correctness does a fraction of the damage its opposite would. At one time the West really was (and a large part of the world still is) racist and oppressive and homophobic, and it was a bad place. But the excesses of PC deny and ignore the facts of history and reduce the public discourse to a shouting contest based on a black and white moralistic worldview. Wokeness is a dogmatic and humorless mess of ideology that treats any attempt for nuance as a sign of racism or homophobia to be nipped in the bud.
For the more practically minded, let's just state that this is the strongest force in upholding Donald Trump's presidency.
And for everyone, listen to what the inimitable Stephen Fry has to say in the matter.
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