Awareness of Microaggressions

                 I did not come across any forms of microaggression in my daily life this week but I do have an example that happened to my family this summer.  We had been at the beach for a week and we were on our travels home when we had to stop at a gas station.  Now, my family is Caucasian but my husband and my sister’s boyfriend tend to get very dark when they tan and they both have dark hair.  We were walking in the door of this gas station as this lady was coming out and she said “Wow, I feel like I’m at the Jersey Shore, look at all these guidos.”  I remember looking behind us to see if there were any other people coming in the door because I was certain she couldn’t have been talking to us.  I didn’t see anyone and when I asked my husband if he heard what she said, he said yes and was she talking about us?  I remember being very appalled at what she said but the funny thing is, I wasn’t offended by the fact that she had called us “guidos”,  but by the fact that she had compared me to someone from the Jersey Shore.  Now I think that if we had been Italian, this would in fact have been very insulting to my heritage because she was using a white person’s derogatory term to describe someone with darker skin and black hair.  She was also comparing all of these people to the ones that are on the television show “Jersey Shore.”  Now I’m not sure if this lady was trying to be insulting or if she was trying to say that we were all pretty good-looking young people.  I think in looking back now and after learning about biases, what really surprised me is my own bias that I have towards the people on “Jersey Shore.”  I have only caught parts of the show (in flipping through channels) a couple of times but I have seen the characters on other TV shows.  The way they are portrayed to me comes across as not very intelligent people who live crazy and wild lives.  I was offended that this lady would compare me to that even though it couldn’t be farther from the truth.  This shows that I have built a bias towards those people because of what I have seen and heard and in fact I’m sure that most people who live in Jersey Shore do not act the way that these people do.   These people are stereotyped by their behavior and because a couple of them happen to be Italian they are even being stereotyped that way.  These stereotypes lead to the microaggressions that this lady displayed to us.  

                Through the readings and reflecting this week I have learned that I had a very narrow perception of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes.  I think that I always assumed that these things had to be done or said intentionally to hurt someone.  I didn’t think about how just little comments can show discrimination or prejudice and can sometimes hurt someone even more than if they would have just called them a name.  It has opened my eyes that we all probably have formed certain stereotypes by the things that we have heard, seen, or read and that it is these stereotypes that lead to prejudice against people.  Our prejudices will then lead us to discriminate against other people and to make hurtful comments both intentionally and unintentionally.   As human beings, this is not the way in which we should be interacting with one another.  It is education like what I got this week that opens our eyes to the things we say and do and will hopefully lead us down the path to realization of the microaggressions we may be a part of.  It is important when interacting with other people that we are always talking with respect and dignity and are making empowering statements instead of hurtful ones.  It is then that we will see people for who they really are and treat them the way they deserve to be treated – like human beings! 

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

         

            I found it very interesting that the assignment this week was to find out what other people thought about the meaning of culture and diversity because it just so happened that in my second grade classroom our Language Arts story this week had the word culture as a vocabulary word.  I was able to ask my entire class what they believed culture means and I actually only had a couple of children raise their hand.  The first student that I called on (a boy) told me that culture means when people are from different countries.  I then took it a step farther and asked them if they could tell me what diversity means.  This seemed much harder for them and the answer I ended up getting was that it meant they spoke a different language.  I was able to use this assignment as a learning tool for my second graders and teach them what the two words actually mean.  We then did an activity where they had to look through magazines and find pictures that show what each vocabulary word means.  They put pictures of all kinds of things (people celebrating, people talking with each other, people eating together) on the poster for the word culture.  I could tell by the end of the activity that they now knew what the word meant. 

            I then came home and asked my son (who is also in second grade but in a different school from where I teach) if he could tell me what either word meant.  He thought for a long time but was not able to give me a definition for either word.  He told me that he had never heard of them before.  This led me to ask my 9 year old daughter.  She also had to think about this for a long time but finally told me that culture means where you live and what’s around you.  When I asked her about the word diversity, she said she didn’t know because she had never heard of that word. 

            Next I talked to my 17 year old niece and asked her what she thought culture was.  Her first words were “That’s a hard one; I need to think about it.”  She then said that culture is something in a certain group of people’s history that affects the way they live, their religious beliefs, and the way they raise their children.  I then asked her about diversity.  She said that diversity is people from different cultures joining together.

            After talking with these kids, I realized that I needed to speak with someone from a different era so I called my 87 year old grandmother.  I asked her what culture is and she paused and had to think and then she gave me a couple of things that she thought it was.  She said culture is different names of things and then she said that it means the different things you do.  When I asked her about diversity she said she didn’t know about that without having to look it up. 

            In reflecting on these responses I can see that the definitions that people had about culture was mostly the surface culture that we discussed.  They talked about people from other places and religious beliefs.  I think my grandmother had it the closest to what we have learned when she said that it is the different things that you do.  This reminded me of what Janet Gonzalez Mena said in the video when she said that culture is the unconscious rules that govern everything that we do (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).  I have learned so far through this course that diversity is the ways in which we are different in all of the aspects of our lives and no one that I talked to said this for a definition.  Actually most of the people I talked to were not able to give me a definition at all because they didn’t know or had never heard the word before.   

            I think that most of the answers that I received omitted things that I learned like the true definition of diversity being how we are different and that the cultures that we have are what make us diverse.  No one talked about how culture is everything about us from our race and religion to the traditions and customs that are shared within a family.  No one also mentioned how everyone comes from a different culture and can suffer or soar because of it.   There was not one response about people not being accepted because of their culture or mention of biases related to culture.

            I was extremely surprised by the responses that I received about culture and the way it has influenced my thinking is that we are not doing an adequate job of educating our youth about what culture truly means.  I think that there is the misconception (especially in my area) that culture is basically when someone is from a different country or speaks a different language.  I realize now that as a nation in general we need to be aware of culture and the depth of it.  Many people are just seeing the surface of culture and not seeing how deep it goes within a family and also how it can help to shape the people that we become.  I have seen from these responses that I need to educate my own children more and teach them that their culture comes from our family and the way that we do things together.  I also need to make sure that they know that diversity means the way in which we are different and the differences that people have need to be celebrated.  This assignment really opened my eyes to how important it is to talk about these two topics and teach them as well.  Knowledge is power and everyone (especially our youth) needs to be armed with the knowledge that we are all diverse and that diversity makes up the cultures that shapes us as human beings. 

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer) (2010). Culture and Diversity. [Course Media].

            Baltimore, MD: Walden University.

My Family Culture

First of all I have to say that I dislike even thinking about a major catastrophe happening to our country and the thought of having to leave this wonderful nation in which we live.  It was very difficult to think of three items that I would have to choose but after much thought, this is what I came up with.

My Bible:

The very first thing that I would take is my Bible.  It is very important to my family's culture because we live by the principles that are within it.  I would know that I was alive by the grace of God and although I wouldn't need the bible to pray, reading God's word is the basis for my everyday life.  It is the roadmap by which my life is designed and being able to read it on a daily basis would bring me comfort during what sounds like a very difficult time. 

My Photo Album:
I would definitely want pictures of my family members that would not be with me.  I know that I would always have them in my mind and heart but we all know how time works on the mind and forgetting things is a natural process that we have to deal with.  I would want my photos so that I would be able to look at them each day and remember the people who were so very dear to me.  Being able to look at these photos would refresh my memory each day and also keep these people alive in my mind's eye.  The pictures would also allow me to remember family events that had occured and were special to me. 

The American Flag;

The final item that I would bring would be the American flag.  In not knowing what country I would end up in I would want the flag as a reminder of the wonderful nation that I was a part of.  Seeing the flag would always remind me of what our country stood for and the freedoms that we enjoyed while living here.  It would make me appreciate all that I had while giving me peace in knowing that Americans are strong and can overcome many things.  The flag is the root of our culture and a symbol of all that we know and love and having it with me would provide comfort and peace.

If when I got there they told me that I could now only keep one personal item the feelings that I would have would probably be sadness and anger.  I would be angry because they had misled me and now I would have to choose between three items that are very important to me.  The next would be sadness in knowing that I would have to leave some very important items behind.  These emotions would not overtake me though because first of all I have my immediate family with me(that's the most important thing) and I know that God would bring me peace about all of the rest. 

This exercise was a little difficult for me because as I sat and thought about it, my first reaction was that I didn't really need to bring anything else if I have my immediate family with me.  I then thought about living without a Bible and knew that I would not want to do that for fear that the country that I was going to would not have a basis in the same spiritual being.  I then thought about the idea of not having an America anymore and that thought was so very scary to me.  I think the very thought leads to feelings of the fact that I don't appreciate the country that I live in enough because we have so many freedoms that we take for granted.  This led me to wanting to have the American flag with me.  I then began to think what immediate family might mean.  To me immediate family means my husband, children, mother, grandmother, and sisters.  If I had all of these people, I would be fine where I was going because next to God they are my strength and foundation.  I then thought that it might not mean all of these people and so if not, I would definitely need pictures of them with me to bring me comfort in times that I missed them which would be everyday.  This exercise was really enlightening because it reaffirmed for me the things that are truly at the heart of who I am - a Christian American whose family is the most important thing next to God!