The task this week was to observe microaggressions. I did not observe many, in fact only one that was on television. I think the reasons for this are the environments in which I live and work. My school is an international school and, as such, most of the teachers are acutely aware of different cultures. Most teachers are think carefully about how they say things because of this. This doesn't mean there are no microaggressions at my school, just that I did not see any this week. My home environment is in a language that is not my own. While I can follow conversations, I often miss hidden messages if they are present. This makes it difficult to identify microaggressions.
The one microaggression I did observe was on a cooking show on tv. The idea is that amateur and professional cooks from a certain region compete against each other to represent their region in the final. The task was for the eight cooks to be divided into teams with a team leader choosing who they wanted. One team leader, male, chose all women to work with because they wanted attention and would be more easily led. This statement made me indignant. The hidden message is that women are weak and need a strong leader to achieve something.
Stereotypes are an easy way to define people. They release you from having to open yourself up to other possibilities. They can give you a target for your frustrations. The most common target here is the Morrocan community. They are stereotypically portrayed as troublemakers who are too lazy to work. The members of this minority are often blamed, individually and collectively, for many of the ills and troubles in the country. One result of this is that some members of the Morrocan community are very angry at everyone. This can promote hatred and feed into the cycle of exclusion that already exists.
The one microaggression I did observe was on a cooking show on tv. The idea is that amateur and professional cooks from a certain region compete against each other to represent their region in the final. The task was for the eight cooks to be divided into teams with a team leader choosing who they wanted. One team leader, male, chose all women to work with because they wanted attention and would be more easily led. This statement made me indignant. The hidden message is that women are weak and need a strong leader to achieve something.
Stereotypes are an easy way to define people. They release you from having to open yourself up to other possibilities. They can give you a target for your frustrations. The most common target here is the Morrocan community. They are stereotypically portrayed as troublemakers who are too lazy to work. The members of this minority are often blamed, individually and collectively, for many of the ills and troubles in the country. One result of this is that some members of the Morrocan community are very angry at everyone. This can promote hatred and feed into the cycle of exclusion that already exists.
Hello Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the idea of you watching a TV cooking show to view any microaggression, I did not think of that. You are not, we do not see much negativity towards one another because they are working together to win a prize. I love cooking shows, and the only microaggressions that I have viewed in the past was the competitors degrading each other in the intent to make them lose or become distracted, but this was a personal intent for a game.