I can recall a situation from High
School where I was a target of microaggression. I was a target of verbal
unintentional microaggression. My field hockey team and I were working on
posters for our team. We were each to make our own and I was hesitant about
mine. I had made people aware of this verbally. Another team member came over
and told me mine should be great because I was left-handed and left-handed
people are artists. At this moment I felt unsure of my poster and that I had
more to prove because I was left handed.
Reflecting back on this scenario I
feel as if the person who made that comment to me had a stereotype about
left-handed people and how they are good artists. Thinking about this makes me
realize the number of stereotypes that people have and how it seems one can
have a stereotype for anything.
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteI can completely relate. I too am left handed and of course have had comments shared throughout my life. I am proud of my left handedness and think of it as a part of my uniqueness. This pride I'm sure also stems from the fact that both of my parents are left handed, so in my home the left hand was the dominant hand. I have always had neat handwriting and many made comments especially in art class. I recall a classmate looking at my work of art and stating "man I wish I was left handed, left handed people are good at art". ( It just so happened that there were a couple of other left-handed classmates who were talent in the arts.)On the other end of the spectrum, just last week the custodian who cleans my classroom and with whom I am friendly with joked after seeing me actively writing for the first time "you're writing with the wrong hand". Thanks to my confidence and experience with this type of conversation I bantered back that "no, everyone else is writing with the wrong hand". Prior to your post Lisa, I'm not sure that I would have thought of all those comments as microaggressions because they didn't bother me since I was confident and liked being left handed however they are aggressions nonetheless.
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing how being ourselves or things we do can experience microaggression. We may not think about it but being in this class has opened my eyes to several types of microaggression. I also realized most of the time it is the simple things and we tend to over look them. I also informed my co-worker of how she displays mircoaggression to another co-worker.