A recent speaker at the University of Michigan celebrated Martin Luther King Day by discussing the “brutal” racism that blacks in America face daily.
Claudia Rankine, a professor of poetry at Yale and author, spoke on the University of Michigan campus about “structural racism” and “microaggressions.”
She read from her own poetry book, “Citizen: An American Lyric,” for much of the presentation. During which she gave her feelings on police brutality, reading, “Because white men cannot police their imagination, Black men are dying,” The Michigan Daily reports.
Microaggressions, which were talked about during the presentation, is the liberal idea that mildly rude or intrusive questions about one’s race or gender gradually wear down and oppress nonwhites and women on an everyday basis.
Some, however, thought that microaggressions wasn’t a damning enough term for these perceived racist incidents.
“The phrase ‘microaggressions’ has always struck me as odd — isn’t it just racism? Isn’t that still the word? The way that racism structures our world, there’s nothing micro about it,” remarked Amanda Alexander, an assistant professor of Afro-American studies at Michigan.
The University of Michigan received $295 million in state funding in 2015.