The Biden Administration has given millions of taxpayer dollars to a university’s efforts to study the effects of so-called “microaggressions” on minorities who claim to be offended by everything.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Biden’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) has provided the funding for a $2.2 million program at the University of Miami since September of 2021. The study has focused on the effects of alleged “microaggressions,” and specifically their impact on “black cisgender queer women” who are suffering from the disease of HIV.
The program in question is formally titled “Monitoring Microaggressions and Adversities to Generate Interventions for Change.” According to the grant listing from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the survey is attempting to explain how “comments, jokes, and behaviors that are demeaning to a marginalized group” allegedly have an impact on health.
Black women with HIV and who identify as “queer,” the grant says, “live at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities and within social structures that take a daily toll.” The purpose of the study is to focus on the impact of microaggressions that have “largely been ignored.”
The program’s supervisor is associate professor of psychology Sannisha Dale, who is the current chair of HHS’s Diversity and Equity Committee. She first began contacting the university for such a project in 2019. Through multiple text messages and visits to the campus, Dale and others on the grant team have monitored 151 black women and recorded their daily distress levels, as well as their regular consumption of medication.
The concept of a “microaggression” began in about 2015 and 2016, largely originating from college campuses. The idea behind microaggressions is that even lighthearted jokes or off-hand comments that are not intended to be offensive can be perceived as offensive by minorities, who are often insecure about themselves and project this insecurity by attacking those who “commit” such microaggressions.
In conjunction with the concept of a microaggression is the idea of “triggering” or “being triggered,” which suggests that even the slightest remark or visual indicator can activate trauma or stress inside a certain minority, causing them to panic or lash out. These notions have largely been dismissed as pseudo-scientific by real professionals, while being accepted as truth by academics and left-wing activists.
In the case of this particular study, Dale said, “[Microagressions] can be someone saying, ‘She doesn’t look like she’s positive,’ as if HIV has a face. Or ‘I’m HIV negative, I’m clean,’ as if someone else is dirty.”