Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

During this week, I have seen the behavioral microaggression occur.  It happened at my place of work where a parent comes in to pick up their child and he was of an Asian.  I spoke to him and we held a conversation about the school and education objectives.  During that conversation my case manager, who is Caucasian, walked pass and looked at the parent strangely.  I stopped in middle of my conversation, because the parent’s eyes left mine to look at her.  When I looked at the case manager, her face was showing a face of discouragement.  I looked back at the parent and the smile left the parents face.  I felt uncomfortable when I looked at the way she looked at the parent.  It made me feel awkward and different.  Therefore, I know the parent felt the same way.  I immediately begin to return to my conversation about inviting him to the Open House that night and the parent said he would try.  After the parent left, the case manager came to me and said, "I doubt if he comes because those families do not have time to come to this type of event."  I looked at her and walked away.  However, that evening the parent did show up and I greeted him with pleasure and my case manager did not even acknowledge his presence.  I felt that she only assumed because she had encounters with other Asian families that did not show interest in coming to Open House, that this parent would do the same.  This made me think immediately that she had placed him a group of different people to the point of stereotyping.

Observing other people this week on verbal and body language, I learned that people say things to each other that contains microaggression in brief conversations or non-verbal looks.  I realize that we only say things unintentionally that can be harmful to children and adults.  Therefore, there is a need for change in every one.  As in the video as Dr. Sue  explains how he felt flustered and embarrassed at how people thought that he was from another country just because his looks.  I thought about it all week and in my observations of others and myself, I seen that we actually do make assumptions of people.  One incident as an example that occur this week, is that a parent comes in and drops off her child, but if you did not know that she is the mother of the child you would of assumed she was the grandparent because of her looks.  I did it to her when she first started coming to our center.  I called her grandma and she corrected me to say that I am the mother but I started late with my children.  At that moment, I apologized and felt horrible for making the assumption.  Now I understand it as environmental microaggression.


Reference:
Video, (2011). Microaggressions in everyday Life. Dr. Derald Wing Sue. Retrieved from:http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/