President Obama Slams Coddled College Students, Microaggressions, and Culture of Victimhood

“The victim stance is a powerful one. The victim is always morally right, neither responsible nor accountable, and forever entitled to sympathy.” — Zur Institute
 
Few days go by at Cornell or most other college campuses in which there is no mention of trigger warnings, oppression, sexism/heterosexism/genderism/racism/ableism/classism or the patriarchy, white societal favoritism, microaggressions, safe spaces, or hurt feelings.
 
It wasn’t always this way. Remember when children who cried for silly reasons were told to toughen up? Or when they were encouraged to be strong and self-reliant so that they would grow up to be productive adults? The growing idea that everybody’s lives should revolve around avoiding offending anyone in any way, shape, or form is creating a new generation of whining, childish victims.
 
The problem likely arose in part due to parenting and teaching styles in which the smallest accomplishments are rewarded, and misbehavior often ignored. When a child is told “great job” or wins a ribbon for a simple activity such as tying his shoes or getting fifth place in a race, he will believe that everything he does from that point is great and will be unable to develop a sense of what failure is. His ego will be ten times bigger than his brain. Anything that makes him feel bad later will make him yell and cry, and that’s just what we see today.
 
The Atlantic details an interaction taken from a blog called Oberlin Microaggressions in which a student attacks a man via email for “appropriating” the Spanish language by using the word “futbol” instead of soccer, among other microaggressions. The whole conversation is worth a read, but that’s the gist of it.
 
Compare this flustered girl to real victims—abused children, ISIS’s sex slaves, victims of terrorist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria— who are all examples of real oppression. They don’t compare, because while the Oberlin co-ed tries in vain to make herself a victim, the others try in vain to escape victimhood.
 
But here in the land of the spineless, anybody and everybody is a victim (well, everyone unless you are white and male). Today, victimhood culture has spread so rapidly and widely across young generations and academic life that a mere greeting by someone whose physical characteristics you don’t like is often received as a threat or an oppressive statement of power. No small comment can be ignored, and everything out of line with complete PC is an outrage.
 
Last spring on Cornell’s campus, students held a protest in which they impressively covered more than ten injustices in one demonstration. Students cried out against whiteness, straightness, capitalism, rape culture, masculinity, racism, Cornell’s occupation of native land, etc. The students prudently blocked an intersection with police tape—blocking buses and cars bringing people to work—to sit in the road in a circle and complain to one another about their hard lives and societal persecution. It’s hard to imagine the world in which these students would like to live.
 
What is baffling is that almost always what SJWs find offensive are simply ideas with which they don’t agree, not hate speech or true racism or sexism. So, in order to gain a sense of thought control, these SJWs will label opposing viewpoints as offensive and off limits. In fact, rarely do you see such whiners complaining about true injustices, but rather about instances in which they have taken a comment or event and construed it in their mind to be oppressive or offensive. Is wearing a sombrero actually racist? Or dressing up like a non-white Disney character for Halloween?
 
These self-made victims don’t know how to effectively react in situations they don’t like. Why would an individual so ardently opposed to Cornell’s “occupation of native land,” for example, attend the university? Why not spend the money somewhere else? It’s quite self-destructive, too, to react so tactlessly to different viewpoints. It would be surprising to see any of these perpetual protesters find success or happiness later in life, as they come with hard work and resiliency. Good luck to the SJWs who may find themselves with bosses whose opinions don’t align perfectly with their own.
 
Even President Obama has come out against the coddling of the college student, saying that the purpose of college is “not just to teach skills but to also broaden students’ horizons.” It’s true—the idea of an American institution producing endless batches of narrow-minded, brainwashed robots is frightening and should obviously not be the object of higher education.
 
Responsibility is important. No, you didn’t fail that test because of the systematic racism against you or because your professors are out to get you and your femininity or queerness. You are not special and you do not deserve to get ahead solely because you believe you are discriminated against or because you have been wronged.
 
Unfortunately, these illogical ideologies being thrown around by college students and radicals have created a more serious problem than simply a new batch of children in adult bodies for the rest of the world to deal with. By labeling everything under the sun as “triggering” or “offensive,” we ultimately shut down the free exchange of ideas, we instill fear and create a society in which political correctness trumps free speech.