Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions
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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Thanks for your post this week, Rachel. So many microaggressions are couched in humor, aren't they? I can feel for your dilemma as a wife and as a teacher. When life is congruent, when our value system on the inside match our actions on the outside, honesty and integrity live there. Like your husband, I think we all practice microaggressions at times, without ever intending to hurt others. I know this weeks lesson caused me to reflect on my behavior. I will be asking others to take the IAT to spark a conversation at work about microaggression.
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