Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

My personal experience with micro-aggressions would have to be being “classism” as pregnant when I was not.  A few years ago I gave birth to a baby boy and had a really hard time losing weight after the birth of my son.  A few times after that when my son was around a year old and I return to work I was asked was I pregnant.  Of course this made me feel bad because I knew I wasn’t pregnant but everyone saw me as being fat!  This made my self esteem very low and made me wear larger sized clothes which I though would hide the weight but it only made me look larger.  Professionally I didn’t want to do anything that needed me to be center of attention.  This meant standing to speak in front of crowds, or even giving tours of our work space.  These alone made me realize that I needed to lose weight and get my health and self-esteem back on track.  I did lose the weight and now I often see myself thinking when I see a woman with a large stomach area “is she pregnant”.  But I dare to ask because I know how it made me feel and that’s not the feeling I want anyone to experience especially if their not pregnant.  This is also "sterotyping"

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

The people that I decided to talk with are a co-worker (Caucasian), my sister in law (Hispanic) and my youngest son’s preschool teacher (African-American) who just moved to Tennessee from California.  The person that I feel in some ways isdifferent culturally is my sister in law.  She is Hispanic and her religion is Catholic. When I asked each of them to define culture and diversity this is what they each stated:

Co-Worker (Caucasian) defined culture as a set of values within a family.  He defined diversity as people with different opinions, backgrounds religious beliefs, political beliefs, sexual orientations, heritage, and life experiences.

Sister in Law (Hispanic) defined culture as a belief system within a group of people or family.  She defined diversity as anything that sets one individual apart from another (gender, race, ethnicity, and more recently sexual orientation differences).

Pre-school teacher (African-American) defined culture as a way in which we live.  Our music, foods we eat, and family traditions.  She went on to explain that culture is something that can come from a variety of combined things like lifestyles, religion, class etc.  She defined diversity as a wide range of interests, backgrounds and experiences

When speaking with them all their views on culture and diversity was pretty much inline with what I have been learning the course so far.  An example would be we all believe that culture is the values and beliefs that we are accustom too or part of our family traditions.  

This assignment has gotten me to expand on my knowledge of different cultures within my family.  I thought that I knew my sister in law well but I never asked her about her culture.  She explains to me that her culture and religion is very important to her and she was so excited to share many things with me and the rest of my family.  I’m so excited that this assignment brought awareness to me on the importance of making everyone feel welcome and respected regardless of their culture.  An example that she gave was never making a decision with asking her husband because he is head of the house.  She explained that a wife shouldn’t work but staying at home to care for the children, home and the needs of her husband.  There were many family and culture experiences she shared with me and I’m grateful that I got to learn more about her personally because I want her to feel respected and valued in our family.

My Family Culture

       If I had to leave this country after a major catastrophe and I had to only take three small items with me that represent my culture I would take my Holy Bible, a family photo album and my smart phone.  The holy bible to me is my foundation in which I try to live by.  Its something  that my culture has strongly abided by for generations and having my personal bible with me which contain notes and highlighted scriptures could really help to get me through what I think would be a difficult adjustment.  My family photo album is has pictures of past and present family members.  My family is very big on pictures and when where together we take a lot of photos.  Having the album with me will help me to remember those that are not with me and even have picture to pass down to my children of family members.  I would take my smart phone because it contains a lot of information about my family.  Email address, contact information, pictures and if there is internet connection I can stay connected by social media, text and email.       

       Upon arrival to this country I were  told  that I could only keep one personal item and would have to give up the other two items I brought with me I would choose to keep my family photo album or my smart phone.  This one was hard for me to answer because if I was allowed to use my phone to take pictures of photos from the album I would keep the phone.  If I wasn’t allowed to take the pictures I might take the photo album. ( this was a hard one for me)

Doing this assignment really got me to thinking about my family culture and how much they mean to me.  I value my relationships with my family and culture and would hate to have it all taken away from me due to any devastation.  This also got me to thinking about the many families who had to leave their families and homes during hurricane Katrina.  Until I had to think and answer these questions it got me to thinking about how hard it was for them and my heart goes out to them all over again.  This has made me more aware of the things I value most (family and culture) can be taken away.  If I ever had to go anywhere in this world would others understand me and my culture?