The MacArthur Genius grants were announced and they’re the usual weird collection of legitimate nice white lady scientists, such as microbe researcher Diane Newman of Caltech, and hilariously shameless race hustlers, such as Genius T. Coates last year and this year, Claudia Rankine, a poetry professor at Pomona College, who won for her collection of microaggressions she and her friends say they have suffered. From the Wikipedia article on her award-winning 2014 book Citizen: An American Lyric:

… These factors, subtly and metaphorically penned in the first paragraph grants these citizens a means to press forward against the subtle microaggressions, which, metaphorically speaking, is a wake for them in the very wake of the book. … The first chapter immediately transfers the reader into a black persona who is quickly becoming invisible by the harassment of microaggressions. The necessity of tolerance ascribed by blacks, that is, in these occurrences even are subjected to children in grade school. Still consistent with second person perspective use of you, the short narration is of a child: “You”, who experiences a microaggression by first a student who is copying her work throughout the school year, and secondly, from Sister Evelyn, who never acknowledges the blatant incidences. “…… The microaggression described here is that, you are unworthy of a genuine acknowledgment of gratitude.

Chapter 3[edit] This chapter, similar to Chapter 1, is composed of events in the form of micro-aggressions. … This form of micro-aggression reference is common throughout Citizen. …

Rankine refers to her own personal micro-aggressions and others of importance in real world situations that might have seemed flagrant. … Then continues to describe more moments of micro-aggressions. … ‘Did he just say that?’ ‘Did I just hear what I think I heard?’” (Believermag). These questions refer to responses made by Rankine throughout Citizen after instances of microaggressions. The way in which both the black body and the heads hold a history of racism and question instances of microaggressions supports Rankine’s purpose of relating the history of slavery and racism to the present form of racism in the form of microaggressions. …