Practicing awareness of microaggressions

    When I read over the assignment this week, I really thought I would struggle with finding something to write to about.  Well, here it is only the 2nd day of this school week and I already encountered two examples of microaggression.  I was excited at first because I was able to make the connection between school and my personal and professional life, but then sad that I was already able to see two microaggressions in just one day.  How many have I seen over the course of my life???

1.) My first encounter happened today at work.  The teacher I used to work with, an African-American lady, was sitting outside with her class getting ready to ride the bus up to the "Big Gym", which is what the children call the School-aged center where they get to go do their sporting/large motor activities with our sports director.  Another teacher, who is Mexican, came by with her class and asked where the children were going.  They all said "the big gym!" and she just stared at them like she had no idea what they were saying.  My old co-teacher said, "the big gym. Have you ever heard of that or do you not understand these words?"  Now this all sounds incredibly harsh without knowing these two teachers, but they really have a great relationship.  The Mexican teacher openly talks about her lack of knowing English words on a daily basis, plus reminds us that she is Mexican daily, so she was not offended in any way.  To an outsider though that does not know their relationship, it was very demeaning and condescending.  It was insulting to the Mexican teachers racial heritage because she speaks Spanish as her first language and struggles at times with English.

2.)  The second encounter was much more obvious.  I went to Buffalo Wild Wings with people from my softball team after our game and there was a high school aged boy that decided to do the blazing wing challenge at the table next to us.  For those of you who do not know what that is, you have to eat 12 traditional chicken wings(not boneless) with the HOTTEST sauce you can think of as fast you can: no drinks, no other food and no wiping of the hands or face during the challenge.  Well, this boy did the challenge in less than 5 minutes and really did not seemed bothered by it.  I made the comment how impressive that was because my medium wings were spicy to me and I only ate one.  The one guy with me said, "Well, I think he has had probably had some practice eating some spicy foods."  I asked how he knew that and he said, "Well, just look at him. He's Mexican or something and they eat spicy stuff all the time.  No actually I think he's Indian, so I'm sure that's nothing compared to what he eats all the time at home.  Yeah, he's probably straight Ingun."  (He used what I was always taught was a racial slang for an American-Indian and I'm not sure how to spell it).  The other two guys at my table both laughed and agreed this guy was probably right.  I was shocked and couldn't believe it because that was a clear example of what we had been talking about in class!!  I am not sure how this kid felt because he was long gone by the time this conversation had taken place, but I felt it was degrading to him to make this assumption based on the outward appearance of this boy.  I realized that my preception was affected because I did not see the kid as anything more than a crazy high-schooler doing a really awful (my opinion) challenge. I was happy that I had not jumped to that conclusion about him, but just looked at him as a male high school student. 

This assignment made me realize that prejudice and discrimination are all around me, even being used by people I hang out with on a regular basis and really admire.  People are very judgemental and I need to work on seeing past these things and helping them see past them as well.