Awareness if Microaggressions

Before studying microaggressions in class I never realized just how prominent they were in everyday society. In just the past 5 days I have noticed a number if unintentional slights against myself and others that before would have been ignored as just another person’s way of thinking. Tuesday afternoon while preparing to leave for work I was talking with a few of my parents, one male and several female and the father made a comment about how all of our families must eat well having women to cook for them. This father is a single father and from interaction with his child I know that they eat out a lot. The father just assumed that because we were all women that we enjoyed cooking and could do it well. When one of the mothers laughed and claimed to hate cooking and not being very good at it either he was dumbfounded. He could not understand how a woman could not be good at or like cooking. As it turns out, I do love to cook and can hold my own in the kitchen but I am one of the few in that particular group that could. Several of the women took offense to the comment and one or two just laughed it away. I do not believe that the man meant to offend, I do not know a lot about his life or behaviors outside of his home (he keeps his home life very guarded) so he may have been raised to believe these things.

After hearing the offensive comment I was at first upset to think that someone could be so callous but then I realized that no offense was meant and I probably would have laughed the statement away had I not been in this course. I did notice however that some of the other women in the group felt a little more hurt by the comment. One of the women went so far as to blatantly correct the man which made him feel embarrassed and fool. I almost felt more embarrassed for the man after he was admonished than I did for the women when he made the comment. The one thing that stands out to me the most is that words hurt. Whether intended or not our words have the power to hurt others and we have to make a conscious effort to say the right thing all the time. That means educating ourselves on other cultures and ways of life as well as educating ourselves in the people in our communities and how their cultures may fit in or stand apart from ours.