Microaggressions, Woke Culture, and Verbal Gentrification
How the culture wars serve elites on both sides
One day, I hope to be microaggressed.
That’s how I’ll know I’ve made it in life.
…
Now, to be fair, I’ve probably been microaggressed countless times.
I might have even been microaggressed two or three times today. I can only hope.
The key thing is, most days, I’m blind to the microaggressions I face. I’m too busy worrying about actual problems, like keeping a roof over my head and food on the table.
I don’t think I’m alone in this.
That’s probably why whenever I hear about microaggressions, it’s usually from some kid who went to private school.
Apparently microaggressions are a big deal at Deerfield and Groton. They’re a big deal at selective liberal arts colleges; the kinds with winning rowing and squash teams, and the sorts of buildings that are designed to look way older than they really are.
They’re a big deal in expensive cities—Brooklyn is full of people who have survived microaggressions.
San Francisco used to have a lot of microaggressions, too, until it got so expensive that even the private school kids ended up homeless. Now all of the microaggressing has moved to Portland, but there, it has to compete with macroaggressions. The constant gunshots keep interrupting microaggressors and microaggressees alike.
Occasionally, middle class people manage to win the microaggression lottery, but crucially, those people are usually under the age of 18. Or occasionally they’re housewives with husbands who help out around the house a lot and don’t mind paying for grocery delivery.
Those women sometimes find the energy to be microaggressed.
The ones standing in line at ALDI usually don’t. They’re too busy bagging their own cans of cream of mushroom soup.
Bagging one’s own groceries really gets in the way of noticing microaggressions.
Chelsea Clinton feels microaggressed. She thinks jokes are inherently mean, because she’s Chelsea Clinton.
If my dad had been President of the United States, I’d probably feel the same way, but he wasn’t. He was a purchasing manager, which, while a good job, wasn’t nearly good enough to allow me to experience the magic of a microaggression. Instead of getting picked on by late night comedians during my awkward teen years, I got to sweat it out in a polyester gym uniform while an equally awkward kid named Jason threw pieces of chicken nugget in my hair.
The issue with Jason wasn’t that his jokes hurt my feelings. The issue with Jason was that he liked to throw fried chicken products at people.
Frankly, it was a waste of chicken. And as a lover of fried chicken, that part hurt more than anything.
I’m not sure anybody in my entire high school was fortunate enough to be microaggressed.
One girl had a wedding with a flower budget that was larger than the budget for my first house, but I’m not even sure if she’s been microaggressed. She was probably too busy hanging out at Pottery Barn and making sure that she never became a peasant like the rest of us. I feel like a crucial part of awakening one’s microaggression consciousness is not only having enough money to skip the ALDI bagging counter, but also being so insulated that the ALDI bagging counter exists only in the realm of imagination, sort of like unicorns or fire breathing dragons.
If it’s still a thing that could happen, sorry kiddo, no microaggressions.
In fact, this is one of my great objections to political correctness in general.
For all of the talk about helping the disenfranchised, wokeness and political correctness require a lot of thought and discussion about things that, at least on the surface, don’t have any relation to pragmatic concerns.
Making sure that people in wheelchairs can afford the necessary vehicle modifications to be able to get around is a practical concern.
Making sure that there’s enough affordable housing so that the guy working the cash register at McDonald’s can afford to not be homeless is a practical concern.
Figuring out how to protect people in poor neighborhoods from crack dealers and gang violence while also making sure that black boys don’t get sentenced to 60 years in prison for beer is a practical concern.
Making sure that professors use person-first language to describe any of the aforementioned groups is not a practical concern.
In fact, I dare say that if the guy working at McDonald’s were given a choice between only being referred to as a person of color from here on out, versus every customer rounding up to the nearest dollar for a tip, he’d probably pick the latter. It might only come out to an extra $10 per shift, but I know what I would do with an extra $10 a day.
If an extra $10 would improve my quality of life, I’m guessing it would do even more for him.
But no, discussions around microaggressions never touch on that. Political correctness never touches that. Wokeness pays lipservice to income inequality, but then the discussion always moves to why people should be referred to as “unhoused” rather than “homeless”, because obviously that’s what the guy napping under an overpass is most worried about.
Bro doesn’t need a place to live or anything. He just needs some empowering language.
That’ll totally fix all of his problems.
Political correctness is verbal gentrification of the worst kind. And I say this as somebody who thinks that a lot of “gentrification” concerns are overwrought.
I mean, at its best, gentrification brings tax revenue back into cities. At its best, gentrification means that middle-income workers can afford to live in a safe neighborhood five minutes from work, rather than a safe neighborhood 42 miles away. At its best, gentrification means that poor kids in the inner city will get to experience some of the perks of middle class life—that they’ll get to attend better schools, and grow up with successful neighborhood role models, and benefit from classmates’ parents who are happy to help with the carpool and chip in an extra $10 for Girl Scout dues.
Political correctness is the kind of gentrification that doesn’t come with any of those benefits.
Political correctness is just a bunch of buildings being bought up by Blackstone, with the remaining handful of houses being flipped by former slumlords. Slumlords who don’t even fix the cracked foundation and shoddy wiring before selling a $40k house for $400k, but rather who just throw up some subway tile, give everything a fresh coat of paint, and call it a day.
In fact, in many ways, those slumlords are the physical embodiment of political correctness—they aren’t fixing a single problem. They aren’t improving the neighborhood’s housing stock. They aren’t restoring old houses, complete with the trouble and expense that actually goes into restoring an old house. They’re just making the old, shoddy crap look a little nicer on the surface. They’re making it so that when strangers drive by, they’ll think the neighborhood has improved, even if it hasn't.
Political correctness does the same thing.
“Wow, these people care enough to say “unhoused” rather than “bum”. I guess they really care about the less fortunate!”
“This is fantastic! The brochure for my kids’ $45k a year elementary school shows so many pictures of black and brown faces. This place is so inclusive, and doing so much to erase inequality!”
“InBev put a trust fund dude in a dress on their beer cans to celebrate women! Life for chicks, trans people, and dudes in dresses is going to be amazing from here on out!”
Also, like gentrification, this prices people out.
Wokeness and political correctness make for good wedges.
I’m guessing that any number of people working at InBev would agree that they aren’t making enough; that working conditions kind of suck.
That’s not a slight towards InBev, or even an implication that they aren’t taking care of their employees—the compensation and benefits are probably competitive for the industry. But, the vast majority of workers at any company would agree that some things could be improved, and they usually aren’t wrong. An extra week or two of paid vacation would be good for most Americans. Most people who aren’t making CEO money would benefit from an extra $5k a year, or at least a little more job security.
But culture wars make a good distraction: If half of the rank and file workers are celebrating the end of homophobia because of how stunning and brave a beer can was, and the other half are staging Kid Rock-eque “boycotts” by shooting up $20 cases of beer, nobody is going to talk about how much the company health plan sucks. Nobody is going to be campaigning for an extra couple of days of vacation each year. Nobody is going to be campaigning for more job security, or for the company to structure things in such a way that workers get to enjoy a bit more dignity and autonomy on the job.
Nah, everybody is going to be too busy talking about beer cans. And for shareholders, that’s…not a bad thing. That’s not a bad thing at all.
Political correctness lets AOC screw over independent dress designers so that she can have her Cinderella moment at the Met Gala, while still patting herself on the back for helping the less fortunate. It lets Tucker Carlson build on that Swanson Foods fortune by pandering to the very people who are legitimately upset about the local food processing facility closing—the food processing facility that used to pay a decent wage, and allowed guys to save up for a nice truck, and a jon boat to go fishing on the weekends. The same facility that Swanson closed, so that they could pack up and move somewhere with cheaper labor.
Political correctness is really, really useful for elites on both sides, because well, it doesn’t ask much of them.
They can champion it, or they can be against it, but for the .1%, the culture wars are a win no matter what.
For everybody else?
Meh. Much as how an actual war means that a few of Raytheon’s rank and file managers will get an extra $1,000 raise, the culture wars mean that a couple of unappreciated HR managers will get promoted to “Director of Diversity and Inclusion” (with a $1,000 raise). But…those are pretty small wins, even for the people benefitting.
And, crucially, just as how the rank and file at Raytheon will ultimately see that raise eaten by higher gas and commodity costs, the new DEI director will ultimately lose her title and raise as soon as a new culture war grenade is thrown.
“Well Karen, it’s great that you’ve helped ensure our minimum wage staff looks like a Benetton float at PRIDE, but what about aquarium offices for those who identify as fish? AQUARIUM ACCESS IS LITERALLY A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH FOR TRANS BASS!”
The elites will get to throw one of their own trans-bass children in the ring to rake up some sweet endorsement deals. InBev will once again get to distract everybody with a beer can that’s designed to look like rainbow fish scales. Somebody at Fox News will get to make a big performance of breaking an empty fish bowl. And…things for regular people (including those who identify as fish) won’t actually improve at all.
Political correctness and the woke language police aren’t about making things better for the truly disadvantaged. They aren’t about fixing actual problems, that have actual consequences for actual people.
The sorts of people talking about how words are violence are generally the sorts of people who don’t have to worry too much about actual violence—no matter how genuine the belief might be, best case scenario, that group is operating on a completely different plane with regards to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
To genuinely believe that words are violence is a good indication that one’s neighborhood has a pretty low murder rate. To genuinely give a shit about what term is used to describe homelessness tells me that the threat of actually being homeless is on par with the threat of being trampled by leprechauns. To consider “gender affirming care” a top priority means that one already considers access to a doctor to be a given; that there’s already money for boring things like insulin and blood pressure medication.
That’s not to be dismissive—there are a lot of really good people out there who are genuinely worried about those things, and not because they’re in the .1% benefitting from the culture wars.
The thing is, those are still educated, affluent concerns.
Those are concerns about making sure that marginalized groups get to feel self-actualized through empowering language, as opposed to making sure that everybody has food on the table, functioning utilities, and the chance to go in for a physical. Those are concerns that, by definition, one only tends to worry about once the fundamentals have been taken care of. Those are the kinds of concerns that are easy to think about while sitting at home in one’s comfortable suburban bungalow, surrounded by Anthropologie decor; the kinds of concerns that are less prescient in an Amazon warehouse, or over on the other side of Delmar with bullets whizzing by and a space heater that just gave out on the coldest night of the year.
Frankly, they’re the kinds of concerns every person should dream of being fortunate enough to one day have.
But also they’re also the kind of concerns that most people will never get to have, so long as the culture wars keep distracting everybody from the bigger picture.