Wow, been awhile, but I could no longer resist blogging after seeing this
hilarious article at the Huff and Puff.
To set the stage, Bari Weiss, an oped columnist at the New York Times, tweeted about Mirai Nagasu, an Asian-American who was born in the US, who became the first American woman to land a triple-axel at the Olympics this horrifying message:
Immigrants: They get the job done.
Okay, now understanding what was wrong with this is complicated. You see, there is a subset of children of immigrants, who don't want to be called immigrants anymore. They were born here. And this is not entirely unreasonable.
But in the context, it's hard to see what there is to get upset about. Weiss seems to be celebrating immigration.
Oh, but that does not take into account the precious (and apparently young) snowflakes working at the Times. Check out some of the comments (approvingly cited by the Huff writer) from a message board:
Person B: and frankly microaggressions and people being obtuse cut the deepest. and this is DAILY.
Person G: i wasn’t here when we had a public editor,
but i understand how it worked. it was clear. what i don’t understand
now and now what’s unclear is what’s supposed to happen when the same
mistakes keep getting made again and again. at what point is the company
willing to take the responsibility off the public for calling this
stuff out? will the reader center step in? is that even what the reader
center is for? i genuinely don’t know!
oh, and is there any way to capitalize the first word of a sentence? i genuinely don't know.
The microaggressions part is just getting started:
Person J: thank you for bringing up this issue here! I
had thought about posting about it yesterday but opted instead to vent
privately to other AAPI/Asian-American colleagues because I didn’t know
if I had the energy to address micro aggressions and /or defend my right
to feel frustrated at something other people might look at as not a big
deal. I’m glad you had the courage to mention this!
I feel the need to translate from snowflake into English. The micro aggression in this case is apparently not tweeting how Americans get it done, screw those immigrants. Ooops, I suppose that would be a macro-aggression in itself. I mean maybe you just want to say that's how persons of a non-specific gender identity and a non-specific immigration status and a non-specific racial and national background get it done.
Although of course it does kind of raise the question of why we are celebrating individual achievement on the basis of national identity.
