Colleges against microinvalidations

The NY Times reports:

Some graduates have curtailed donations, and students have suggested that diversity training smacks of some sort of Communist re-education program. ...

Her two-hour presentation on Aug. 27 aimed to help students identify microaggressions and to teach them how to intervene when they observe one. Microaggressions can be verbal, nonverbal or environmental, she said.

“What’s an environmental microaggression?” Ms. Marlowe asked the auditorium of about 525 new students. She gave an example. “On your first day of class, you enter the chemistry building and all of the pictures on the wall are scientists who are white and male,” she said. “If you’re a female, or you just don’t identify as a white male, that space automatically shows that you’re not represented.”

But Ms. Martinez, a sophomore transfer student, also realized that she, too, was guilty of microaggressions, because she frequently uses the phrase “you guys,” she said. “This helped me see that I’m a microaggressor, too.”

The presentation elicited a lively question-and-answer session, during which students asked about the N word, discrimination against white people and men, and the definition of “Asian.”

Ms. Marlowe said she questioned the validity of the concept of reverse racism, arguing that racism is a system in which a dominant race benefits from the oppression of others. ...

A nonverbal microaggression could be when a white woman clutches her purse as a black or Latino person approaches.

Another subset of microaggression is known as the microinvalidation, which includes comments suggesting that race plays a minor role in life’s outcomes, like “Everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough.” ...

But Ms. Martinez, a sophomore transfer student, also realized that she, too, was guilty of microaggressions, because she frequently uses the phrase “you guys,” she said. “This helped me see that I’m a microaggressor, too.” ...

Ms. Marlowe said she questioned the validity of the concept of reverse racism, arguing that racism is a system in which a dominant race benefits from the oppression of others.

Besides blaming white males, a new book blames math and big data for doing objective number crunching:

In a new book, "Weapons of Math Destruction," Cathy O'Neil details all the ways that math is essentially being used for evil (my word, not hers).

From targeted advertising and insurance to education and policing, O'Neil looks at how algorithms and big data are targeting the poor, reinforcing racism and amplifying inequality.

These "WMDs," as she calls them, have three key features: They are opaque, scalable and unfair.

There is a longer review on SciAm. See also her blog, and this book excerpt.

See also this negative review:

The remaining chapters all follow the same pattern. Unbalanced and inaccurate summary of a popular news account, made up facts and distorted quotes, uneven speculation about mathematical models, and strong but unsupported conclusions.