Examples of microagression are everywhere. When I watched the video for this week, I immediately began self-reflecting to see if anything I do would be considered microagression. The first thing I thought of was when I deal with people who speak another language. At my preschool there are several families who speak Spanish as a first language. Unfortunately, I do not speak Spanish. Sometimes my teachers are available for translation, but most of the time I try to communicate with them on my own. I find myself speaking very slowly, but also much louder than I normally speak. Although this is not something I do intentionally, I am sure they notice this. I imagine it may make them feel as if I think they are stupid, or hard of hearing. I will definitely be more conscious of this in the future.
Some other examples I can recall are girlfriends talking about guys they have dated. I have heard statements like, "police officers are abusive", "latin men are controlling", and "jewish men are cheap". These comments really irritate me. I think classifying all people based on the actions of one or two you may have come into contact with is a true sign of ignorance.
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI agree that often people are lumped into larger steriotypes by job or religion. I have have exprienced similar examples of people talking load and slow when talking to people of a different language.