An instance that happened today is an instant where I observed microaggression. My husband and I are youth leaders at our church, and we live in town, not far from our church. Many of our youth kids stop by randomly at our house to see us. Today one of our youth, that has been gone all summer visiting his mom, stopped by to see us and catch up since he had been gone awhile. The boy's father is white and his mother is black. He has dark skin. Before I go any further, I just want to point out that I think that this is an unintentional microaggression and I do not think in any way that harm was meant. My husband jokes around with any dark skin person we know and makes different comments, such as, ("wow, you got a tan.." or "you have been eating so much chocolate, it turned you brown." Most of our friends will come back at him and make a joke of some kind about being white. When the boy came to see us today, my husband said, "wow, did you go to the beach, it looks like you tanned to much, it turned you brown." As soon as I heard my husband say his comment, I felt a cringe in my stomach. I recognized this immediately as a microaggression. The boy smiled and laughed but did not seem to favor his comment, and did not offer a response. My husband, I think, sensed the this discomfort and apologized and said he did not mean anything by it, he was just joking around. The boy waved it off and started telling my husband about everything he did this summer. I did not say anything to my husband about the incident, however I think my husband quickly learned that jokes like the ones he made today are not always liked and funny. Again, I do want to stress my husband was only trying to joke around and was not in anyway trying to hurt the boy's feelings or discriminate against him. He did not intentionally commit a microaggression against the boy.
Before this week, I had never heard of microaggressions. After I listened to Dr. Sue define and give demonstrations of microaggressions, I realized that I had witnessed microaggressions before, I just never knew the term for the actual incidents. My perception of discrimination, prejudice, and/or sterotypes of people have been widened and more defined in a way. As said, I knew that discrimination against people of different race or culture than another is real, it happens everyday, however, I was not aware of it in my life. Taking the IAT test this week has really opened my eyes to how the world of being prejudice. It's real, and it happens, sadly enough. Microaggressions are very dangerous and they need to be dealt with, our children and our future deserves it.
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For this week's assignment, I interviewed three different people and asked each of them to give me their definitions of culture and diversity. I interviewed my dad, my teenage cousin, and a foreign exchange student I met in high school from Korea. I chose these three people so that the answers that I received would be diverse. My dad's (age 47) definition of culture was: "Culture is the lifestyle of a generation." My dad's definition of diversity was: "Diversity is alot of different cultures and lives, it's also different ways of doing things and different ways of living." My teenage cousin's (age 17) definition of culture was: "Culture is the complete make up of a person's external environment, for example, their clothes, language, food, and family." My teenage cousin's definition of diversity was: "Diversity is a whole bunch of people from different cultures who live and work in the same area." My Korean friend's definition of culture was: "Culture is a group of people who have shared the same belief, behavior, or pattern of living." My Korean friend's definition of diversity was: "Diversity is a difference related to culture. It is different groups of people from different cultures living together. They might share their cultures and it could be a positive way of to create a cross-cultural thing that connects the world together."
An aspect that we have studied in this course that I see included in some of the answers that I received is diversity itself. Each person has their own definition of culture and diversity. Each person has formed these definitions by experiences in their lives, their cultures, their social identities. Stemming from diversity, I see the aspect of social identities. The definitions that they gave, for example, my dad's, come from their social identities. My dad is has seen different generations interact, he was the youngest of seven children and when he was born, he had adult siblings. He grew up observing interactions between generations. I think an aspect that has been omitted from discussion in the interviews was dominant culture, simply because it was not called for, it was not up for discussion. I simply wanted to know the basis of their thinking as it refers to culture and diversity.
Asking these three people these two questions has influenced my thinking on these two key elements. It is always better to have "another pair of eyes" when looking at something, and it is the same when it comes to culture and diversity. Being able to hear what others have to say about culture and diversity gives me the chance to think about the two topics in ways that I have not thought of before. I am able to see through someone's eyes and maybe understand it in more depth than my initial thoughts.
If a major catastophic event happened and ruined our country, and my family and I had to be evacuated to a different country as refugees, I know which three items I would take with me that would represent my family culture. I would take my Bible, a family portrait, and a frying pan. I would take the Bible because it represents everything that my family is. God is our life, He is first and foremost, and my Bible would be my most important possession. My dad is a pastor and my parents have been in the ministry for around 20 years. My husband has recently surrendered to the ministry, and we currently work in our church in anyway we can. God has been great to us and has always provided, my Bible would represent the whole essence of my life. I would take a family portrait because after God, comes my family. We are very close, we see or talk to each other everyday. We share everything and we love each other very much. The family portrait would respresent my support system in life. I would take a frying pan because to me it represents where I am from. I live in the South, in Arkansas. We like good old-fashioned home cooked meals! We have big family get-togethers and have a huge table covered with food and all the counters too!! The frying pan represents where I am from and how I grew up.
If upon arrival, I was told that I could only keep one of the personal items and had to give up the other two items, the item I would keep would be my Bible. I would be upset and hate to part with the other two items and maybe even give a little protesting at first. However, if it was necessary I would give them up, but I would feel that I was fortunate to be able to keep the one thing that is the life blood of my whole being. My Bible is that important.
I am glad we were given this assignment! I enjoyed it so much! My family culture is interesting but to me it seems whole and I feel blessed to be a part of such a culture.
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