Panic Attack

by Robby Soave

  For the Boston-based black feminist lesbian organization known as the Combahee River Collective, which existed in the 1970s, “simultaneity” was the word they used to describe the cumulative impact of the various oppressions they experienced. Their manifesto called not just for the abolition of racism and sexism but for “the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well.”8 Avowed enmity toward all the various isms: this is the strategy required by the intellectual framework that became known as intersectionality.

  Patricia Hill Collins, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, expanded upon Crenshaw’s work, publishing Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment in 1990. Taking a cue from Crenshaw, she used the term “intersectionality” to refer to the interlocking matrixes of oppression that serve to marginalize people. Initially focused on race and gender, Collins gave additional consideration to class as a matrix in her 1992 book Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology. A decade later, Black Sexual Politics added sexual orientation to the mix. “Intersectional paradigms view race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age, among others, as mutually constructing systems of power,” she wrote in Black Sexual Politics. “Because these systems permeate all social relations, untangling their effects in any given situation or for any given population remains difficult.”9

  That’s quite the understatement, since every new addition to the list of interrelated oppressions makes the task even more cumbersome. There are more of these categories than most people might imagine, and every year, intellectual peers of Crenshaw and Collins propose new ones. Meanwhile, intersectionality has become a ubiquitous force on college campuses, where young people are taught to perceive all social issues through the lens of interrelated oppression, and to find smaller and smaller grievances to add to the pile. Young people who grasp the truth of intersectionality are said to be “woke,” Zillennial slang that describes someone who has awakened to the reality of their own privilege and adopted a progressive worldview.

  The spread of intersectionality poses some problems for the left, since the theory divides people as often as it unites them. In the wake of Trump’s election, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a prestige drama based on feminist author Margaret Atwood’s beloved novel, became mandatory #Resistance viewing for its depiction of an oppressive society where women have been enslaved by theocratic authoritarians—a future toward which Trump’s America is hurtling, according to many on the left. But season two of The Handmaid’s Tale, which debuted in 2018, drew criticism; the show was accused of a “failure of intersectionality” because it never grappled with racism, only sexism. “This is a show all about gender—it is built entirely around that concept—but until The Handmaid’s Tale learns to make its feminism intersectional, it’s going to keep letting its audience down,” commented BuzzFeed TV writer Louis Peitzman.10

  Spreading the Gospel

  In the years since Crenshaw introduced the term, intersectionality has broadened in both scope (that is, more kinds of oppression have been identified) and reach (more people are aware of the concept and what it implies).

  The academy loves intersectionality, and the theory’s popularity has soared in sociology, psychology, English, philosophy, history, and other social science and humanities departments. Indeed, more and more universities have created entire academic wings dedicated to studying specific kinds of oppression and explaining how they relate to others. Thus the rise of women’s studies, African American studies, Hispanic studies, Asian studies, queer studies, and others.

  Indeed, what began at the intersection of race and sex now includes economic class, gender identity (the gender category to which a person feels attachment—it may be different from the person’s biological sex), gender expression (the way a person looks and behaves), sexual orientation, immigration status, age, disability status, religious belief (though certain believers—among them Muslims—are perceived as more oppressed than others), and size (whether you are overweight or not).

  Take that last example. I’m betting you might not believe that intersectionality requires its adherents to denounce “sizeism” as a form of oppression against differently bodied people.

  Well, consider that in recent years Tufts University, Dickinson College, Oregon State University, and Portland State University all added courses aimed at studying and reducing sizeism.11 Portland State’s course is called Every Body Matters: Embracing Size Diversity.12 According to its online description, the course “focuses on fatness as a social and cultural construction, examining the relationship between discrimination caused by body size and gender, race, and social class.” Students in the class “will use social justice and healthcare perspectives to question weight bias and explore ways in which the fat community and its supporters resist sizeism.” Readers might quibble with the blanket assertion that obesity is a social construct. They might also ask whether students in the course are being taught—or trained.

  At Colorado College, a young activist named Jade penned a manifesto against the institution’s outdoorsy culture and conventionally attractive, physically fit student body.13 Jade lacked “body privilege,” which caused her “emotional injury.” Not to worry, Jade: sizeism and all the other isms have been informally banned on college campuses across the country. The New Republic estimated that at least a hundred institutions of higher education employ what are known as “bias response teams,” or BRTs, which investigate complaints.14 BRTs consist of students, academics, and administrators, though campus police often have a seat at the table as well. BRTs will investigate the complaint based on the information given. Some maintain hotlines that ask complainants to provide the accused party’s contact info and identifying details. The BRT will then intervene: administrators have a conversation with the accused about the alleged offensive behavior, or refer the case to a campus authority with more explicitly punitive powers, such as a diversity czar or conduct enforcer.

  Complaints are often filed anonymously, by members of the student body who feel they have been victims of bias, unintentional or otherwise. The relevant categories typically include all the familiar matrixes of oppression: race, gender, sex, orientation, class, disability status, age, size, and so forth. The kinds of harms we’re talking about here are very minor in effect but broad in scope, and go by the name of “microaggressions.”

  That term was first coined by Harvard University professor Chester Pierce in 1970 but gained little attention until Derald Wing Sue, a professor of psychology at Columbia University, helped to popularize the concept decades later. His definitive book on the subject, Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact, was not published until 2010.

  Sue defined microaggressions as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” His 2007 paper in American Psychologist, “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life,” provided numerous examples of things that counted as microaggressions.15 It included:

  Asking “Where are you from?” The question presupposes the person being addressed is from somewhere other than the United States, and therefore “others” the person.

  Saying “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” This statement promotes the “myth of meritocracy” and suggests that perhaps certain people are getting an unfair advantage because of their race via affirmative action.

  Claiming “There is only one race, the human race,” which denies a person’s “racial/cultural being.”

  Telling an Asian person to “speak up more” in class could also be a microaggression, though the assertion that it is a microaggression relies on the lazy stereotype that Asian people are less assertive than white people.

  Some examples are more obvious than others, like a cabdriver deliberately ignoring a potential customer who is black, or a white woman
clutching her purse when a man of color walks past her. For Sue, it was self-apparent that “almost all interracial encounters are prone to microaggressions.”

  The idea here is that these small, often unintentional acts of hostility toward people for reasons of race, sex, orientation, et cetera aren’t just problematic but represent a form of aggression—a tiny dose of violence. It’s little wonder that a generation of young people for whom everything is dangerous and safety is the most important factor—including safety from verbal and emotional harm—sees the elimination of microaggressions as an important task for the authorities.

  When asked by the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2016 about the tremendous growth in appreciation for his work, Sue struck a cautious note. “People who engage in microaggressions are oftentimes well-intentioned, decent individuals who aren’t aware that they are engaging in an offensive way toward someone else,” he said.16 Christina Capodilupo, an adjunct professor at Teachers College and a coauthor with Sue of “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life,” said that the point had been to open people’s minds, not cause them to shut their mouths.

  At some universities, the antics of the BRTs are kept private. At others, the curtain is occasionally pulled back. In 2016, I obtained the University of Oregon’s annual report on its BRT. The report was later removed from the university’s website, and thus from public view. Having read example after example of the kind of things its BRT thought were worth investigating, I can see why. In one case, a staff member reported that a poster featured a triggering image. The type of bias listed was “body size.” The report notes that the administration offered “support” to the offended party. Another report concerned a “culturally appropriative themed party” and involved the BRT sitting down with students who dared to host it.

  A student reported a professor for writing a negative comment on the student’s blog—thus impugning the student’s religion. A student reported the campus newspaper for failing to give adequate space in its pages to the opinions of transgender students. A student filed a report to complain that a sign encouraging cleaning up after oneself was sexist. In this last example, I gather that the sign, which was probably posted by a cafeteria worker or janitor, said something to the effect of “Clean Up After Yourself—We’re Not Your Mother.” This message, which made gendered assumptions about the kind of work mothers do in the household, was so offensive to a student that a campus agency had to investigate and intervene. One wonders if the intersectional feminist who called out the sign ended up getting the janitor or cafeteria worker fired.

  Perhaps the strongest indictment of microaggression theory was made by Scott Lilienfeld, a clinical psychologist at Emory University. Lilienfeld evaluated the core claims of the theory and found them lacking. For one thing, there isn’t a widely agreed-upon list of things that definitely count as microaggressions, and a significant segment of the minority population consistently fails to take offense at various proposed examples. For another, the evidence that microaggressions cause mental health problems just isn’t there. In fact, Lilienfeld expressed concern that educating people about microaggressions could itself exacerbate mental health issues.

  I asked Lilienfeld what his recommendation to university administrators would be, given these findings.

  “My negative recommendation—what not to do—is to stop distributing microaggression lists on campuses and to cease training faculty and students to identify microaggressions, at least until the concept is far better defined,” he told me. “Undoubtedly, there’s some truth to the idea that many or most of us at times inadvertently offend others. But at present, the microaggression concept is so vaguely defined and open-ended that it can encompass almost any statement or behavior that offends other people.”

  In 2017, the Cato Institute surveyed people of color and asked whether they were offended by various examples taken from a list of possible microaggressions. Sure enough, in nearly all cases, a majority of the respondents who ought to have felt victimized said that they were not.

  The point isn’t that microaggressions are completely harmless, or that offended people need to just get over it, or something similarly insensitive. What’s remarkable, though, is the radical transformation that has taken place on campuses over the last twenty years. Pursuing truth is still the purpose of higher education, but education can be uncomfortable, and discomfort is now considered oppressive.

  Only a small percentage of students move through the academic disciplines where intersectionality has taken hold most strongly. But it would be a mistake to think that microaggression training and awareness are primarily in-class experiences. Bias response teams don’t just intervene inside the classroom: they’re an omnipresent facet of campus life—inside the residence halls and cafeterias, on the quad, and elsewhere. At Oberlin College, the school’s Multicultural Resource Center teaches activist students about microaggressions—and it also pays them $8.15 an hour to run training modules designed to teach other students.17

  Part of the story here is administrative bloat: over the past quarter century, universities have hired an army of bureaucrats to micromanage the lives of students outside the classroom. Between 1993 and 2009, universities more than doubled the number of administrators they employed.18 These employees are often handsomely paid. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry, the University of Michigan, for instance, currently employs a hundred different administrators whose sole job is to advance diversity on campus—and more than a quarter of them make more than $100,000 per year.19 (Meanwhile, faculty salaries have barely budged the entire time I’ve been alive.)

  More presidents of diversity, vice presidents of diversity, and diversity coordinators mean more bias response teams, more attention to microaggressions, and more attempts to make campus as diverse, sustainable, equitable, and emotionally calming as possible. In addition to their primary functions, these bureaucrats act as the enforcement arms of intersectionality. The administration trains young people to identify the various flavors of oppression, hunt for new ones, and expect protection from them.

  It’s not pleasant being oppressed by a wide range of connected isms. Thus the overhyped (albeit accurate in some small way) “snowflake” phenomenon itself intersects with intersectionality. Young people have learned that the world is scary and violent, and that there are overlapping matrixes of oppression rooted in distinct but interrelated forms of exploitation. The campus—and perhaps one day the rest of society—should be structured as a safe haven from intersectional oppression, but there’s a long way to go. In the meantime, emotional and psychological trauma is evidence that oppression is real. Thus the most engaged activist students—the ones most fluent in the language of intersectionality—are positively eager to identify themselves as traumatized. It’s a sign of being truly woke.

  Traumas and Triggers

  “Asking for help is a sign of your strength, not of your weakness,” read a sign at Arizona State University, which I visited on a gorgeous November afternoon. The sign invited readers to check out the university’s wellness website.

  I did not have to walk far before I stumbled across another message from ASU’s wellness department: “Four tips to overcome anxiety.” The tips included “Move your body,” “Recognize and accept your feelings,” “Interact with someone in person,” and “Take a deep breath (or ten).”

  Students on skateboards zipped past me as I continued to wander the campus. It happened to be Trans Day of Remembrance, and students had set up a series of portraits of transgender individuals who had died in 2017—many of them by suicide. “Today we remember those victims and continue to strive to make the world safer for the community,” read a sign. The display had been organized by the campus’s Rainbow Coalition, a female student told me. She wore a T-shirt that said “Scum Fuck Flower Boy,” the unofficial title of a rap album by musician Tyler, the Creator.

  With its palm trees and endless sunshine, ASU is without a doubt one of the most beau
tiful campuses in America. (Even the students are good-looking: on its list of colleges with the most attractive girls, Maxim magazine ranked ASU third.)20 But one would be forgiven for thinking all those attractive young people must be suffering from some staggeringly serious mental illnesses, at least according to the endless series of official health warnings.

  “Burnout is preventable!” read yet another sign referring students to ASU’s online wellness portal, in case they had somehow overlooked all the other signs.

  Another sign informed readers that “44% of ASU students report having difficulty managing stress.” And then there were the constant reminders to keep performing normal bodily functions. “Breathe in. Breathe out. You got this,” read another sign. Are ASU students in the habit of routinely forgetting to breathe?

  Urban Dictionary, a crowdsourced online database that offers plenty of what young people would call #realtalk, defines ASU as “sort of a college, but not really.”21 That’s a joke, obviously. And yet it fits. ASU is sort of a college, but also sort of group therapy.

  The destigmatization of talking about mental health has been a good thing, broadly speaking; some people do struggle with depression or other mental illnesses and can benefit from a range of formal remedies provided by a university. If students are struggling, on the outside or the inside, they should seek help. Increasingly, they are more than willing to do so.