Late Thursday afternoon, sophomore Michael Johnson was reportedly publicly shamed when he failed to recognize the significance of intersectional identity in the context of his intro level race and ethnic studies course.

“To be honest I thought I was killing it,” noted Johnson. “I was in my element talking about redlining and the dark history of housing discrimination against African Americans. Then I stupidly mentioned how women still experience unequal pay to their male counterparts within the workplace without noting how these struggles cannot be properly understood as separate experiences. Man, if I had known what was to come, you better believe I would have stayed in Tamarac this morning.”

“I knew I was in trouble once that one kid began with, ‘I would really like to push back on what was just said,’” chuckled Michael. “It’s not often people will disagree with you in Whitman class discussions, but when they do, you know you fucked up. Once that happened, you better believe the damn floodgates opened…All I could do was weather the storm of nuanced intersectional critiques and save face until I could make some textually substantiated claim about body politics to get the heat off me.”

Now that we are a few days removed from the debacle, Michael is again looking forward to the future. In preparation for next week’s class, Michael plans to spend his weekend watching Judith Butler interviews and memorizing political buzzwords that will hopefully begin to rebuild his damaged credibility.