Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

This week I was learning about microaggression. I really was looking around and concentrating hard throughout this week to detect an example of microagression. Today, I finally received an example, and it was from my little Kindergartners. In class this week we are learning about American symbols. In my class I also have a boy that was born and raised in America, but still does not have what would be considered “normal” English because of his second language and the accent that he has developed from this. I was having my students turn and talk to each other about American symbols and one other student in my class raised their hand and stated, “Why does he (the little boy in ESL) have to learn about American symbols when he doesn’t belong here anyways?” I was shocked by this and could not believe how blunt the statement was.  I explained to the class that the little boy does live here and was born here, he is just lucky enough to know two different languages. We talked about how hard it is to learn how to talk, and if they could imagine learning to talk in two different ways. We also discussed how it is not nice to single out other people like this and how they would feel if someone said that they did not belong. I feel my students understood more about being nice to others now and how we cannot make racial/ethnic remarks about others.

My observation of my experiences this week affected my perception of the effects of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping by understanding that these ideas and personas start with young children. If young children are exposed and have an understanding of all different types of people and grow up knowing this as the norm, the ideas of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping could eventually vanish. I hope that one day, this concept could become a reality. 

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

This week I am diving into looking at different people’s definitions and ideas amour culture and diversity. I have found 3 people that have shared their views with me that are all culturally diverse from myself in either the areas of gender, race, class, religion, abilities, or age.

The first person I asked was my husband.
His definition of culture is – People that have a commonality in ethnicity or language.
His definition of diversity is – How people different from each other.

The second person I asked was a co-worker.
Her definition of culture is – People that have the same basis of language and writing system
Her definition of diversity is – what makes people unique

The third person I asked was one of my neighbors.
His definition of culture is – People that are located in a certain area with genetically similar traits.
His definition of diversity is – How individuals are unique and how people are categorized.

When looking at these answers and how different they were, they all had key points in them about what culture really is and how people view it. Culture to me contains so much. Culture is; a person’s beliefs, social forms, traits, religion, race, values, goals, traditions, attitudes, and language. Culture involves so much that it can be hard to find a short definition of what culture truly means. I feel that all of my three interviewees made a good attempt at defining culture, but I also feel that not all of them thought about all the different aspects that go into culture. I feel that for diversity, the people I interviewed has good definitions for that. I specifically liked the definition my co-worker gave. It is a definition that puts a focus on the positive of diversity instead of the negatives that can come with it. I feel that by interviewing these people about their definitions I now have a better understanding of how others view these two major concepts of our world. The influence these definitions have had on my own thinking about these topics is to look beyond the basics and into the details and to also turn these definitions that can be thought of as negative, into something with rejoice and with pride. 

My Family Culture

In my class at Walden University, we were given this scenario:

A major catastrophe has almost completely devastated the infrastructure of your country. The emergency government has decided that the surviving citizens will be best served if they are evacuated to other countries willing to take refugees. You and your immediate family are among the survivors of this catastrophic event. However, you have absolutely no input into the final destination or in any other evacuation details. You are told that your host country’s culture is completely different from your own, and that you might have to stay there permanently. You are further told that, in addition to one change of clothes, you can only take 3 small items with you. You decide to take three items that you hold dear and that represent your family culture.

The three items that I would take to represent my family culture are:

1.       My Wedding Rings. My engagement ring actually has a diamond that has been passed down in my husband’s family for generations. Usually every other generation receives the diamond and puts the diamond into a new setting to represent that individual. The diamond is from the 1800’s when my husband’s relatives found a diamond while hiking through Wales. It is important for my family because it represent my husband’s culture and us together as a family making a union and joining our two cultures together.

2.       To represent my mother’s side of culture, she is Italian and German, I would take my great-grandmother’s Christmas ornaments hand made by her in Italy when she was a girl. They are very special to me because of how beautiful they are and they are all made with Italian glass and a hobby that is/was popular in Italy.

3.       To represent my father’s culture, Slovak, I would take her recipes of food that she wrote out in the “old language”. My family always makes these dished on special occasions and they are important because culture is food, and food brings people together.

After that scenario now we had to imagine this:

Your feelings if, upon arrival, you were told that you could only keep one personal item and have to give up the other two items you brought with you

If I was told I could only keep one thing, I would keep my wedding rings. They mean so much to my husband’s side of the family, and so much to me to be accepted into his culture and family traditions. It also would show the culture and ideals of us joining different cultures together.

In general what I have gained from this exercise was truly thinking of things that support culture and how we show culture in our everyday lives. I also feel that today’s generation is such a mix of different cultures, that sometimes it is hard to represent your own culture or family culture with just 3 small things.