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!