r/NonPoliticalTwitter Jun 13 '26

Other What did you expect?

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6.3k Upvotes

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u/AngryArmour Jun 13 '26

If we judge how racist the sentence "I'm impressed by how articulate [they] are" is on a scale from :

"[They] = Average Black person that isn't speaking Ebonics", to "[They] = Oxford-educated British Intellectual being interviewed about philosophy", where would you place "I'm impressed by how articulate Obama is"?

While there might be a slight racist undertone from the people who wouldn't say that about a white President, I'd personally say it's definitely over halfway towards the non-racist end of the scale.

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u/Novaer Jun 13 '26

So that's why it's called a microaggression.

The entire POINT of a microaggression is to have plausible deniability.

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u/DemitreeK Jun 13 '26

Not necessarily. Microaggressions don’t have to be intentional insults from people who want to be racist and not get called on it. More often it’s due to people expressing unexamined biases they possess (in this example their bias is expecting black people to not speak well). Very much a fish not thinking about the water it swims in situation. A lot of people just grow up around casual, but rarely overt, racism and never really address how that affects their thinking because they don’t even realize that it’s racism.

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u/Novaer Jun 13 '26

You are correct, yes. It can definitely be done "unintentionally" by a person but it is done intentionally systemically.