This week, the Asian American Students Association at fancypants Brandeis University created an art project outside a campus building drawing attention to the slights they feel they suffer on a regular basis because of their ethnic backgrounds.
The briefly-lived Rabb Steps Microaggressions installation consisted of a large series of small printed signs featuring “microaggressions” the Asian-American students claim they hear “frequently” from other students on campus.
The “microaggressions” signs taped to the ground and the stair railings of the Rabb building steps include “I totally have an Asian fetish,” “Chinese people will eat anything” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.”
There’s also “You’re my favorite Asian!” and “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?”
Another gem is “Why can’t people learn English when they come to this country?” This sign is printed in impeccable English.
Another sign titled “Microaggressions” explains that “microaggressions” are “the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”
The sign explains that the Asian students behind the project “hope that this will foster a healthy dialogue about racism in the Brandeis community and how harmful and pervasive microagressions can be.”
The Asian American Students Association also sent a lengthy email to the general Brandeis student population saying that the “burden” of “microaggressions” “can be overwhelming and frustrating.”
“Now, you see how these words, when visually placed together on the Rabb steps, become impossible to ignore,” the email from the group’s president, Esther Lee, declares. “These papers are invasive of a space that you often inhabit and must pass through; similar to how these remarks invade our communities and the space we share as a whole: Brandeis. The experience is often alarming, alienating, and ultimately harmful. To us, it is unavoidable.”
The 1,278-word email apologizes “to the Asian students on campus who were triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions in our installation.”
“As Asian students, we had no intention of mocking or harming our own community and ourselves,” Lee explained. “We acknowledge the disconnect between intention and effect.”
“We want to reinforce that this installation is a commentary on how these insults build up together to create a campus environment that does not welcome Asian students,” the email also stated.
Nowhere in the “Microaggressions installation” or in the email do the Asian-American students explain the reasons they continue to attend a school so rife with racism where one year of tuition, mandatory fees and room and board costs about $60,300 (a little over $6,000 more than America’s median household income of $53,891).
Brandeis is most famous, of course, because a student, Khadijah Lynch, spouted “i have no sympathy for the nypd officers who were murdered today” and “i hate this racist fucking country” after the brutal, execution-style murder of two New York Police Department officers in December. (RELATED: Fancypants, $60,000-A-Year College Student: ‘No Sympathy’ For Brutally Executed Cops)
The school, one of America’s foremost hothouses of silly leftism, also took back an honorary degree it was going to bestow during its commencement ceremonies upon Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s rights advocate and a very vocal critic of Islam. (RELATED: The 13 Most Rabidly Leftist, Politically Correct Colleges For Dirty, Tree-Hugging Hippies)
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