I find myself reading every word of Derald Wing Sue’s book, “Microaggressions in Everyday Life,” with fascinated horror, like when you drive by a hideous accident on the freeway and just have to rubberneck.
You know it’s wrong to look. You don’t really want to see blood, gore, mangled limbs, lifeless bodies, twisted metal—or so you tell yourself. But you look anyway.
Sue’s book is like that. It’s so bizarre, so distorted, so maleficent in its message, which it hammers at you with ruthless sadism. And that message is: If you’re White, you’re a racist. Whether you know it or not, you’re a racist. Whether you admit it or not, you’re a racist. Whether you’re kind-hearted or not, you’re a racist. If you feel no guilt about being a racist, there’s something wrong with you. If you do feel guilt about being a racist, you’re even worse. There’s no way for you to not be a racist, because racism is in your DNA, in your blood, in your heart. The more you try to not be a racist, the more it proves that you are. You’re just a monster, a White monster, so you might as well get used to it.
Sue presents his case with academic precision, which makes sense because he teaches psychology and education at Columbia University. Everything sounds so scientific: charts, graphs, categories, hierarchies, hifalutin phraseology. He practically invented the field of “microaggressions,” which are small insults to people of color. White people practice microaggressions in order to hurt people of color; whether the White people are conscious of it or not, they’re guilty. White people are rapacious predators who just can’t help preying on people of color, any more than a vulture can help from swooping down on its victim. The more we try, according to Sue, the more it shows consciousness of guilt.
There are many insidious effects of such a philosophy. It’s obviously insulting to White people. White people feel accused of something they didn’t even know they were doing, and then they’re shamed because of that very ignorance. Sue’s ideology becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody likes being lectured about how ignorant and racist they are. It’s possible that, in return, White people may begin to resent people of color, or at least those who claim to speak for them (like Sue), thus driving a wedge between the races.
But the worst part of Sue’s theory is the effect it has on people of color, especially Black people. Sue and his cohorts have been spreading their misinformation for decades in the Black community, where it enjoys widespread admiration. It’s almost certain that every university humanities department employs professors who buy into it and implant it into their students’ tender young minds. “You are hated by White people,” the professors preach to their students of color. “You must understand this, in order to demolish structural racism.”
And so entire generations of people of color are taught to resent White people. Word trickles down to the street, where it’s reinforced. The end result is a graffiti I saw yesterday on a lamp post on Broadway: “White people love to put us down.” That was written, presumably, by a young Black person, who has had the Sue ideology pounded into his brain. He actually believes that White people “love” to make people like him suffer. How sad. What kind of future does this young person have?
Most people, White or Black, are kind, compassionate and decent. But we might as well admit there’s a growing malignancy in the Black community, where some people actually believe White people are “the devil” (as Louis Farrakhan used to preach), and are beyond redemption. Yet this phenomenon goes almost entirely unreported by our media. This is cancel culture at its most pernicious.
I seriously don’t see the difference between this damaging lie of “White racism,” on the one hand, and Josef Goebbels’ media portraying Jews as lice, poison and bacteria. Both lead, intentionally, to civil war, the complete collapse of societies, as varying racial and ethnic groups turn on each other.
What can we do about this sad state of affairs? Stop obsessing on race. No matter what the color of your skin is, focus on the content of people’s character. And let’s stop agitators like Derald Wing Sue from destroying young Black minds. The last thing we need in a divided America is race baiters like Sue segregating us by ethnic and racial tribe, and instilling suspicion, fear, paranoia and hatred, especially in vulnerable communities. If anyone, of any race or ethnicity, is always going around looking for “microaggressions,” they’ll find them. That’s how psychology works. But why bother? It’s such an unhealthy, dreary, unpleasant way to live. Isn’t it better to seek out what’s best in us all?
Steve Heimoff