Blog: Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

CD 6164~ Week 4

Ann Geddes Babies

Describe at least one example of a microaggression which you detected this week or remember from another time. In what context did the microaggression happen? What did you think and feel when you observed the microaggression or when you found yourself as the target of a microaggression?

One microaggression that I experienced this week was walking around the local mall and going into Starbuck and asking for a cup of ice. A psychological dilemma that I noticed was that I was constantly being watched. I got a “clash of racial reality” when the cashier at Starbucks ask me twice what I wanted and I stated clearly that I only wanted a cup of ice. He saw a drink in my hand and thought the drink was from Starbucks and I was trying to steal it. My presumption is that when I walk around the mall or even just comb the store, that someone is looking at me or following me. I know when there is an undercover police in the store because my uncle was undercover in the mall and he said that an undercover police is usually a white male walking around carrying nothing or a small bag pretending to shop. 

When I go to the mall, I always carry money and a purse. I don’t go into stores that I don’t intend to get something. If I go into another store and have bags with me, I ask to have them held behind the counter. 

In what ways did your observation experiences this week affect your perception of the effects of discrimination, prejudice, and/or stereotypes on people

There is a nationwide disparity, racial profiling, discrimination and prejudice and racial stereotype when Blacks go into stores/malls that they are there to steal something. This disparity is constant in the Black community were you have store owners who are Muslim, Korean or Asian. My daughter was about 18-years old and getting ready for her Homecoming Dance, when she drove to a small hair shop owned by Asians. She had a bag of hair with her to match the hair she had purchased at another store. 

The owner saw her come into the store with a shower cap on and carry a bag. She said that she walked into the back and the owner said that she was trying to put things into the bag and that she was going to call the police if she didn’t exit the store. My daughter called me in tears; she had not been in the neighborhood before or ever in that store. The store was known for robberies by high school students getting off the bus and robbing the store. I told her that I would be right there and that to show the lady that she had money and that she carried the bag to match hair color for a weave hairstyle. I think the store has since been closed down, but there attitude was horrible for first time young customers. 

Nancy ~ circa 2011

Blog Assignment: Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

CD 6164 Week 3 Assignment 3

September 18, 2012

My Blog Link: http://www.nmcclain-nmcclain.blogspot.com/

lee white~artist

• I interviewed the following people:
  
  
  Cynthia- Culture~Your heritage where your family comes from your customs. 
  
  
  Cynthia- Diversity~when you are in a room of all men, this is not diversity, but when it is mixed it is diversity. Diversity is religion, nationality, color, races, and ages. A variety of everything, a mixture, when it is not all the same than it is diversity.
  
  
  Cynthia is a middle aged woman with mixed race of Mexican and Armenian. She has never worked outside her home. She has a husband and two grown children. She presently lives alone with her husband and watches her grandson so that her daughter can work and finish college. She is my care-giver to my son with Autism.
  
  
  
  
   **********************
  Saleh:Culture: Your culture is something you cannot change, culture is embedded in your DNA, your race. 
  
  
  Saleh: Diversity: Something that makes me different. Something that divides people. If someone walks into your store, and they look like a “thug”, you are going to have a bias opinion that they are going to rob your store. Everyone is bias toward races.
  
  
  Saleh is my 17-year old son. He is a senior in high school. He is the first and only Afro-American cheerleader on his squad. He is musically gifted and aspires to go into youth ministry. 
  

  ********************
  
  
  

  Cori: Culture: She mentioned that culture is the differences in culture.

  Cori: Diversity: Diversity is the customs, traditions of different people. The language of people.

  Cori is a 17-year old female in high school honor classes. She is the first girlfriend of my son. She lives in the Big Bear Mountain region of California and has grown up with a mother who is a special education teacher and is deaf. She is Swedish. She believes that she is part of the dominant culture.
  
  
  

• 

  Diversity in Nature

  
  
  • Which aspects of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course are included in the answers I received—and what are some examples?    
  •  In Child Development 6164, we learned about the dominant culture, cultural pluralism, culture clash, culture identities, surface culture, cultural group, culture socialization and culture continuity/discontinuity. I think you can change your outlook on culture just like me and my colleagues. We learned that diversity is what makes you who you are in society. For example, just because society labels you a “woman” you are so much more, a mother, a wife, a care-giver, etc. 
  •  
  • Which aspects have been omitted—and what are some examples of such omission?

  • 

    Diversity in Color

    One main aspect that has been omitted is identity formation. How you view yourself in society, not how others view you. An example would be “who I am” and “what makes me the person, “I am” and also, the person, “I want to be”. 
    
    
    
    
  • In what ways has thinking about other people’s definitions of culture and diversity influenced my own thinking about these topics?
  • I think that other people’s definitions of culture and diversity is very narrow. We have learned that culture and diversity is not just “Black and White”, nor “Cold or Hot” but everything in-between, the “gray areas” of our existence. Culture goes far beyond heritage and what type of family you were born into, yet culture and diversity is how you see yourself and others that began at a very young age. 
    
    References:
    
    
    

    Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

    
    
    

    Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2008). Diversity in Early Care and Education (5th ed., pp. 8–13). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.

    
    
    

    Laureate Education, Inc. (2011). "Culture and Diversity" with Gonzalez-Mena, J., Media presentation.

    
    

    Ngo, B. (2008). Beyond "culture clash": Understanding of immigrant experiences. Theory into Practice, 47(1), 4–11.