URBANA, Ill. – A new study about “racial microaggressions” against minorities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus is a practice in self-pity and relies on suspect anecdotal evidence, according to one editorial.

The News-Gazette writer Jim Dey assailed the study in an editorial today that acknowledged racial issues on college campuses, but pointed out the fact that the research relied heavily on the perceptions of the victims and their interpretation of “non-actions, actions, words and imputed motives of others.”

The study is based on an online campus survey of minority students at the University of Illinois Urbana during the 2011-12 school year, which garnered over 4,500 responses regarding “racial microagressions.”

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“Thirty-nine percent (39%) of the students of color who responded to the survey reported feeling uncomfortable on campus because of their race. The most frequently cited uncomfortable locations for students of color were ‘fraternity and sorority certified housing,’ ‘Green Street,’ ‘on the bus’ and ‘classrooms and labs,’” according to the research.

“Over half of participants (51 percent) reported experiences of stereotyping in the classroom. About a third (27 percent) of the students of color reported feeling that their contributions in different learning contexts were minimized and that they were made to feel inferior because of the way they spoke. Additionally, a quarter (25 percent) of students of color reported feeling that they were not taken seriously in class because of their race.”

But Dey questioned some of the seemingly innocent comments that students in the survey took offense to under certain circumstances:

“Your English is excellent.”

“The major you’ve chosen is extremely difficult.”

Depending on who makes those statements and to whom the statements are made, those comments could be what a new university study calls “racial microaggressions” that reflect relentlessly hostile attitudes toward members of a racial minority.

Sometimes, the perpetrators of racial microaggressions don’t have to say or do anything because the victims of these horrific assaults can mind-read the invidious thoughts of their oppressors.

“People do not necessarily say that I do not belong, but I feel as if I do not when I am in a classroom and I am the only non-white person there,” states an unidentified Latina UI student.

Not only can recipients of racial microaggressions mind-read, their powers of interpretation are so immense that they can translate direct quotes expressing racial animus.

“I get stares when I walk into classrooms as if to say, ‘What the hell are you doing here?'” states an unidentified black female UI student.

Several students in the study complained specifically about “microaggressions” allegedly directed toward them by their advisors when they requested to change majors. But Dey points out there are more obvious reasons whey advisors might be hesitant to approve a change, and it has nothing to do with race.

Dey wrote:

A black female student described how she felt “insulted and disrespected” after meeting with an advisor who questioned “me on whether I could stay in the major” and, as a consequence, that she resented “every other meeting I had with her.”

When an advisor suggested an Asian male consider changing majors, he said, “I voiced my anger to him and the department head and got a new advisor who was very supportive.”

Good for the Asian male for making a change. Too bad the black female didn’t find an advisor she liked better.

But do either realize how many UI students change majors every year? Given the frequency with which that occurs, is it really a racist microaggression to raise that question with a student facing challenges in their current field of study?

Another black female student complained because her advisor said the major she had chosen is “not for some people.”

Is there any more obvious comment in the world than that some majors are either better or worse for some people than others? Do pre-medicine students ever switch to pre-law? Do aspiring engineers struggle with physics and switch to business? Why do they do that? Because regardless of their ethnicity, their first choice wasn’t for them.

Yet, the study suggests, the reason UI advisors raise the question of change with minority students is that, as one student said, “I felt he was looking down on me because of my race and socioeconomic background.”

Dey explained that the study resonates because it supports the current era in which “feelings” of being “disrespected,” “insulted,” or “offended” trump all.

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Some of the alleged “microaggressions” may be simply disagreements between personalities or perspectives that are being incorrectly attributed to racial discrimination because “nothing is more comforting than the thought that those who do not share your views are moral reprobates,” Dey wrote.

But that position neglects the more complex nature of relationships, whether between different races or personalities or political perspectives.

According to Dey:

Studies like these reflect a young person’s natural inclination to take dogmatic positions and blame any disagreement on the worst of motives — you’re stupid, you’re evil, you’re a racist. …

Unfortunately, the world is far more complicated than that, and encouraging infantile self-pity of students seeking to make their way to a successful life does them no benefit.

While this 19-page study reeks of self-pity, it also calls for a declaration of war against the racist establishment through a massive re-education effort on campus. The apostles of microaggressions are seeking to make a macro-impact.

“The campus leadership must signal to the entire campus that racism, whether implicit or explicit, is unacceptable at the (UI),” the study concludes.