Microaggressions Study

Microaggressions are those small annoying and degrading insults that can devalue the recipient. Sometimes it’s administered intentional and sometimes unintentional as Dr. Sue explains (Laureate, 2011). As a person of color I am constantly plagued with some type of microaggression verbal, behavioral, or environmental.

One of my memorable incidents happened in my neighborhood. A new family moved in a house across the street from our home. The husband was Caucasian as the majority of the subdivision residence, and his wife’s features are of Native American Indian. I never asked her Nationality because I didn’t want to be rude or unkind. After meeting the husband, I soon met his wife. Our conversation was one of a thousand questions she proceeded to ask me. One of her questions was what were we doing there, and how did we find this neighborhood? I kindly answered her because I wasn’t entertaining the idea that this lady could be having a problem with someone like me as her neighbor. I was passive and accepting of her obvious puzzled and disagreement of me living there. It didn’t matter that she moved into my neighborhood. I watched her house and many others be built from the foundation to the appliances and the fancy front door that finished the house. I even walked through the house way before they moved in.

My new neighbor exercised what Dr. Sue describes as microassault and microinsults to me (Laureate, 2011). She was attempting to devalue me and take power over me by hidden racial assaults and insults that said I didn’t belong there and I have no business living in that type of neighborhood.  

Reference

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011). Microaggressions in everyday life [video file].

     Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.deu.  

 

Perspectives on Culture & Diversity

Diversity & Culture

What exactly is culture, and diversity? When asked the definition of culture, and diversity, many people give basic surface information that is mainly based on their everyday life experiences. For example, a home builder/ home improvement contractor explains his definition as,

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“I see culture as familiarized people, area, and language, in carpentry people that know parts of the work I do, and the different request that clients would like done to their house”.

“I’m not sure about diversity”, after giving it some thought he added, “Diversity can be when people have different ways of doing things even within their culture. They can have mixed feelings of operating tools, machinery, and of how to do projects and measurements”.

 

A young teen’s view on culture, “things that run down your family line, like dance, different languages, different skills, and handmade crafts”. He wasn’t too sure about diversity, but I included his interview because his definition of culture is so intelligent for a really young person.

 

A young college student expresses that “culture is a way of life and doing things. Specific people, such as their race, nationality, and countries are all cultures. Diversity is the different types of culture; America is really divers because of the multitude of nationalities that live here”.

 

After reflecting on responses of the subjects interviewed, I immediately noticed learned information from this study; such as, how culture can be represented in different groups of people with likeness and differences.

I also noticed that some aspects of my study were omitted such as the understanding of deep culture. My subjects presented surface information about culture as they understand it, but some of them presented deep culture information without realizing it. For example, builders and carpenters are of a type of culture among themselves. Additionally, the young college student is of a culture, and that she lives on campus and in the dorms are cultures within themselves.

Thinking about how others define culture and diversity, have influenced me to become more aware of how I categorize all things and people. I decided to help my students learn to recognize the different areas and levels of culture and diversity mainly because when asked to define culture, the majority usually gives surface information without understanding that there’s a deeper meaning of culture, and diversity.    

My Family Culture

My Family Culture

If I were forced to live abroad in a forging country and could take only three personal items with me I would take the following items.

1.     I would take my family photo album with priceless photos with the image of my family members that I may not see again because of the forced assignment to live abroad. 

2.     I would take the baby shoes and blankets that I keep and cherish from each of my three sons. The shoes are their first pair of tiny shoes and the blankets that I wrapped each son in. One of the blankets was made just for them by a family member.

3.     The third item would be some jewelry that my grandmother gave me that she used to wear when she was a young woman. I clearly remember the day she gave them to me. We were just rummaging around in her jewelry box and I was admiring some the beautiful vintage pieces and she handed me a pair of ear rings and a ring. She is no longer living so of course I cherish the pieces.

I would explain to others the importance of family value and love that can be represented in tangible items. Each item touches my heart with priceless memories of the person who actually touched and wore the item creating a connection with it. In addition, the photos are captured images of my family members that could not be replaced. After arriving in the forging country, if I were told that I could only bring one item with me and leave two personal items behind I would be heart broken.

The insights I gained is that I am a very sentimental person and family oriented, and my family is the same. Our family culture believes in passing on family history and traditions.