Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

My Horrible Mistake 

I choose an example that happened to me just this week.  My class was working on a cornucopia for Thanksgiving.  We were discussing the different fruits and vegetables that were in the basket.  Without thinking I asked one of my Hispanic students about the hard green bananas that they sold at Food City (a grocery store that caters to Hispanic cooking supplies).  I assumed that since he was Hispanic that he would know what I was talking about.  This is an assumption that I have to get rid of.  I am quite embarrassed by my behavior. 

The second example was from when I was in high school.  I lived in New Mexico on the boarder of the Navajo reservation.  The reservation schools would recruit student teachers from back east.  They would stay in the dorms with the students and have meals with them.  The student teachers statements when they came were that they were “going to save the Navajos”.  I am not sure what they were going to save them from but this was their attitude.  The unstated message was that the Navajos were unable to care for themselves and that they were uncivilized and educationally deprived.  This was so far from the truth.  The students were the ones that were hurt the most.  They had to correct the perceptions about them that these teachers came with.  The students were actually the teacher in this situation.

In taking this course, watching the videos and reading through the materials I have seen how hurtful these unintended comments are.  Most of the perceptions that we have about people are completely wrong. 

Culture and Diversity

Culture and Diversity

Culture-

Defining culture was not an easy task.  I asked many people their definition of what culture meant to them.  They all looked at me and thought it was going to be an easy task.  They found it to be as difficult as I did.  I always thought culture to be your ethnicity and the country you were from.  I am finding it is not as simple as that.

I asked my best friend and longtime colleague what culture was to her.  She immigrated to the US when she was a child from Mexico.  Her idea of culture is acknowledging your race and traditions, looking at your family values and morals.  It is also where your ancestors came from.

My mother’s idea of culture is the accumulation and development of beliefs.   Culture also encompasses a specific group’s heritage and history.

My father had a different idea of culture.  He said culture is anything you want it to be.  I thought this was a sarcastic definition, but as I have been reading and watching the videos I am finding this to more true than not. 

In reviewing my parent’s definitions and ideas of what culture encompasses I do not see my definition of culture before I started this course.  I gathered my ideas from my family but also from friends and coworkers. 

Diversity-

The definition of diversity came a little easier to most people.  I always thought of diversity meaning differences.

My friend Elida said diversity was being able to understand every culture, knowing their background knowledge.

My mother’s definition was variety amongst a common group of people.

My father’s definition was variety among others.

In looking at my parent’s ideas of diversity I can see where I got my definition for diversity.  We lived in a fairly diverse population as a child in regards to ethnicity and religion.

The parts of culture that were included in the answers I got were surface answers.   The definitions were very clinical.  The parts of culture that were not included were the parts of deep culture.  Specific parts of culture were not mentioned.    

If my family were to have to pick up and move to another country it would be a very traumatic experience.  The thought that we would not be able to go back to our home is hard to imagine.  I can only imagine the stress that families have to deal with in this situation.  The three items that I would grab are my study Bible, notepad, and click pen.  I grabbed my study Bible for guidance and hope.  I grabbed my notepad and pen to write down all my experiences and feelings.  I would also use the paper to write down phrases of the new language that are going to be important to the survival of my family. 

Now that we are in the new country we will try to set up our new life.  At this time we are scarred and confused by the new culture and expectations.  We have just been told that we have to leave two of the items we brought from our homeland.  I am confused as to the change in expectations.  I am frustrated and feel deprived.  I don’t understand why this is happening and just want to go back home.  I know that is no longer possible, so I am just going to have to make do and adjust.

          While thinking about my responses to this assignment many ideas and feeling came to my mind.  I learned that there were few items that came to my mind when thinking of the items I would take.  The items that I chose were items that I feel would be most useful to me.  My Bible is the one item that I would not want to live without.