Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

Microaggressions are those everyday indignities, invalidations, and insults that people inflict on others because of their belonging to different racial, ethnic, language backgrounds among others. Some of the most practiced microaggressions are racism, sexism, ableism, ethnicism among other isms. Apart from microassault, which is a deliberate act to inflict psychological or physical harm to a person, perpetrators of the other types of microaggressions (microinvalidation and microinsult) are often unaware of their actions. For example children who are enrolled in classrooms where their home language, cultural or ethnic identities are not represented, receive the message that those aspects of their lives are not valued by the program. A child might believe that they need to change facettes of their identities to belong. In my case, people often tell me that my English is perfect; they could not tell I was from Africa. Wow, you are so beautiful; I could not tell you are from Africa. I am so sick of it. And, believe me and I do understand this that most of those who say it believe they are complementing me. I have a Master’s degree in English, how can I not speak good English? I am from Senegal not Africa. How can you tell where someone is from? I would hope by learning geography and researching an understanding of the diversity of people and cultures and having direct contact with people among others, or simply by asking them. However, we often rely on the stereotypes provided by the media. In my case the poor, uneducated African who is victim of war and is waiting for Christian charity to survive. Often they sound so stupid; I do not want to answer those questions for fear of appearing sensitive. The great Maya Angelou once said that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Consequently, whether we are in classrooms, parks, or outside interacting with people and children included, let’s thrive to make them feel good, safe and respected because that the way we can boost dignity  and pride in their own human experiences and realities.